But the authors of “The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype And Create The Future We Want” ($32 in hardcover from HarperCollins; also for Amazon Kindle), linguist Emily Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna, call foul on both claims. With careful analysis and a conversational (and sometimes sardonic) tone, the authors inveigh against both the Boosters and Doomers.
They are “two sides of the same coin … the belief that the development of AI is inevitable and that that resulting technology will be both autonomous and powerful…. One shows a utopian world of abundance, the other a dystopian hellscape.” And, pointedly, “Neither depicts the real harms of actually existing automation, at best dismissing them as less important than the imaginary existential threats.”
Though the authors are writing at the end of 2024, their critique of AI (“a marketing term”) remains surprisingly relevant despite the debut of increasingly powerful frontier systems. (The authors refuse to anthropomorphize chatbots, calling them instead “text synthesis machines.”)
Though there is certainly good automation, the authors say, the examples of companies misusing AI (like insurance companies determining whose claims get rejected) are legion (they cite hundreds of examples). The focus on “AI safety” deals with “fake scenarios” whereas those “working on issues of concrete harms of AI systems” (dealing with “racial and economic equity, freedom of movement across borders, personal safety from state violence” and more) are interested in the here and now.
AI is high on its own supply. So fight the AI hype which “helps others get rich by giving them cover to collect (e.g., steal) and then launder massive amounts of data.” Ask questions about what is being automated, resist using the “tools” at work, demand accountability, create and enforce current legislation protecting civil rights, engage in collective action.
No AI was used in the writing of this column.
