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PODCAST

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

Artificial Intelligence has too much hype. In this podcast, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna break down the AI hype, separate fact from fiction, and science from bloviation. They"re joined by special guests and talk about everything, from machine consciousness to science fiction, to political economy to art made by machines.

technology tech news

All Episodes

62:35

Episode 46: AGI Funny Business (Model), with Brian...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/12/18

Once upon a time, artificial general intelligence was the only business plan OpenAI seemed to have. Tech journalist Brian Merchant joins Emily and Alex for a time warp to the beginning of the current wave of AI hype, nearly a decade ago. And it sure seemed like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and company were luring investor dollars to their newly-formed venture solely on the hand-wavy promise that someday, LLMs themselves would figure out how to turn a profit.Brian Merchant is an author, journalist i...

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60:33

Episode 45: Billionaires, Influencers, and Ed Tech...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/11/26

From Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires with no education expertise keep using their big names and big dollars to hype LLMs for classrooms. Promising ‘comprehensive AI tutors', or just ‘educator-informed’ tools to address understaffed classrooms, this hype is just another round of Silicon Valley pointing to real problems -- under-supported school systems -- but then directing attention and resources to their favorite toys. Former educator and DAIR research fellow Adrienne Williams jo...

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60:11

Episode 44: OpenAI's Ridiculous 'Reasoning'

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/11/13

The company behind ChatGPT is back with bombastic claim that their new o1 model is capable of so-called "complex reasoning." Ever-faithful, Alex and Emily tear it apart. Plus the flaws in a tech publication's new 'AI hype index,' and some palette-cleansing new regulation against data-scraping worker surveillance.References:OpenAI: Learning to reason with LLMsHow reasoning worksGPQA, a 'graduate-level' Q&A benchmark systemFresh AI Hell:MIT Technology Review's AI 'AI hype index'CFPB Takes A...

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61:22

Episode 43: AI Companies Gamble with Everyone's...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/10/31

Technology journalist Paris Marx joins Alex and Emily for a conversation about the environmental harms of the giant data centers and other water- and energy-hungry infrastructure at the heart of LLMs and other generative tools like ChatGPT -- and why the hand-wavy assurances of CEOs that 'AI will fix global warming' are just magical thinking, ignoring a genuine climate cost and imperiling the clean energy transition in the US.Paris Marx is a tech journalist and host of the podcast Tech Won’t ...

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59:54

Episode 42: Stop Trying to Make 'AI Scientist'...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/10/10

Can “AI” do your science for you? Should it be your co-author? Or, as one company asks, boldly and breathlessly, “Can we automate the entire process of research itself?”Major scientific journals have banned the use of tools like ChatGPT in the writing of research papers. But people keep trying to make “AI Scientists” a thing. Just ask your chatbot for some research questions, or have it synthesize some human subjects to save you time on surveys.Alex and Emily explain why so-called “fully auto...

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61:28

Episode 41: Sweating into AI Fall, September 9 2024

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/09/26

Did your summer feel like an unending barrage of terrible ideas for how to use “AI”? You’re not alone. It's time for Emily and Alex to clear out the poison, purge some backlog, and take another journey through AI hell -- from surveillance of emotions, to continued hype in education and art.Fresh AI Hell:Synthetic data for Hollywood test screeningsNaNoWriMo's AI failAI is built on exploitationNaNoWriMo sponsored by an AI writing companyNaNoWriMo's AI writing sponsor creates bad writingAI assis...

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60:43

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Episode 40: Elders Need...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/09/13

Dr. Clara Berridge joins Alex and Emily to talk about the many 'uses' for generative AI in elder care -- from "companionship," to "coaching" like medication reminders and other encouragements toward healthier (and, for insurers, cost-saving) behavior. But these technologies also come with questionable data practices and privacy violations. And as populations grow older on average globally, technology such as chatbots is often used to sidestep real solutions to providing meaningful care, while...

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62:04

Episode 39: Newsrooms Pivot to Bullshit (feat. Sam Cole)

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/08/29

The Washington Post is going all in on AI -- surely this won't be a repeat of any past, disastrous newsroom pivots! 404 Media journalist Samantha Cole joins to talk journalism, LLMs, and why synthetic text is the antithesis of good reporting.References:The Washington Post Tells Staff It’s Pivoting to AI: "AI everywhere in our newsroom."Response: Defector Media Promotes Devin The Dugong To Chief AI Officer, Unveils First AI-Generated BlogThe Washington Post's First AI Strategy Editor Talks LLM...

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62:29

Episode 38: Deflating Zoom's 'Digital Twin,' July 29...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/08/14

Could this meeting have been an e-mail that you didn't even have to read? Emily and Alex are tearing into the lofty ambitions of Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who claims the future is a LLM-powered 'digital twin' that can attend meetings in your stead, make decisions for you, and even be tuned to different parameters with just the click of a button.References:The CEO of Zoom wants AI clones in meetingsAll-knowing machines are a fantasyA reminder of some things chatbots are not good forMedical science s...

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60:26

Episode 37: Chatbots Aren't Nurses (feat. Michelle...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/08/02

We regret to report that companies are still trying to make generative AI that can 'transform' healthcare -- but without investing in the wellbeing of healthcare workers or other aspects of actual patient care. Registered nurse and nursing care advocate Michelle Mahon joins Emily and Alex to explain why generative AI falls far, far short of the work nurses do.Michelle Mahon is the Director of Nursing Practice with National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the country. ...

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62:00

Episode 36: About That 'Dangerous Capabilities'...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/07/19

When is a research paper not a research paper? When a big tech company uses a preprint server as a means to dodge peer review -- in this case, of their wild speculations on the 'dangerous capabilities' of large language models. Ali Alkhatib joins Emily to explain why a recent Google DeepMind document about the hunt for evidence that LLMs might intentionally deceive us was bad science, and yet is still influencing the public conversation about AI.Ali Alkhatib is a computer scientist and former...

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61:42

Episode 35: AI Overviews and Google's AdTech Empire...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/07/03

You've already heard about the rock-prescribing, glue pizza-suggesting hazards of Google's AI overviews. But the problems with the internet's most-used search engine go way back. UCLA scholar and "Algorithms of Oppression" author Safiya Noble joins Alex and Emily in a conversation about how Google has long been breaking our information ecosystem in the name of shareholders and ad sales.References:Blog post, May 14: Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for youBlog post, May 30:...

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63:57

Episode 34: Senate Dot Roadmap Dot Final Dot No...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/06/20

The politicians are at it again: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's series of industry-centric forums last year have birthed a "roadmap" for future legislation. Emily and Alex take a deep dive on this report, and conclude that the time spent writing it could have instead been spent...making useful laws.References:Driving US Innovation in Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for Artificial Intelligence Policy in the United StatesTech Policy Press: US Senate AI Insight Forum TrackerPut the Pu...

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60:30

Episode 33: Much Ado About 'AI' 'Deception', May 20 2024

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/06/05

Will the LLMs somehow become so advanced that they learn to lie to us in order to achieve their own ends? It's the stuff of science fiction, and in science fiction these claims should remain. Emily and guest host Margaret Mitchell, machine learning researcher and chief ethics scientist at HuggingFace, break down why 'AI deception' is firmly a feature of human hype.Reference:Patterns: "AI deception: A survey of examples, risks, and potential solutions"Fresh AI Hell:Adobe's 'ethical' image gene...

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57:48

Episode 32: A Flood of AI Hell, April 29 2024

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/05/23

AI Hell froze over this winter and now a flood of meltwater threatens to drown Alex and Emily. Armed with raincoats and a hastily-written sea shanty*, they tour the realms, from spills of synthetic information, to the special corner reserved for ShotSpotter.**Lyrics & video on Peertube.*Surveillance:*Public kiosks slurp phone dataWorkplace surveillanceSurveillance by bathroom mirrorStalking-as-a-serviceCops tap everyone else's videosFacial recognition at the doctor's office*Synthetic info...

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62:57

Episode 31: Science Is a Human Endeavor (feat. Molly...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/05/07

Will AI someday do all our scientific research for us? Not likely. Drs. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri join for a takedown of the hype of "self-driving labs" and why such misrepresentations also harm the humans who are vital to scientific research.Dr. Molly Crockett is an associate professor of psychology at Princeton University.Dr. Lisa Messeri is an associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, and author of the new book, In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in ...

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60:45

Episode 30: Marc's Miserable Manifesto, April 1 2024

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/04/19

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62:30

Episode 29: How LLMs Are Breaking the News (feat....

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/04/03

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60:57

Episode 28: LLMs Are Not Human Subjects, March 4 2024

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/03/13

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64:42

Episode 27: Asimov's Laws vs. 'AI' Death-Making (w/...

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 ·

2024/02/29

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