"With their expansive, interdisciplinary expertise, Bender and Hanna write with absolute authority and unapologetic clarity about all the ways AI companies wield and weaponize language—in their marketing hype and as training data for their monstrous AI models—to create a less rigorous, less verifiable, more unequal, and more BS-filled world. Despite the depressing nature of their subject, Bender and Hanna narrate it with incredible wit and verve...Come for the piercing observations; leave with the tools to slice your way through the absurdist narratives that prop up the AI industry and to hold it accountable." — Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI
“A powerful and timely deep dive into what the AI hype cycle is REALLY about, why it's bound to crash, and what we can all do to protect ourselves from it. An absolute must-read!" — Karla Ortiz, artist and artist activist
"The AI Con is a must-read...Drs. Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender cut through the dizzying hype to provide the clearest picture yet of what AI is, what it is not, and why none of us need to accept it being shoved down our throats. Their expertise and independence from the tech companies claiming to have created what the CEO of OpenAI calls 'magic intelligence in the sky,' makes them two of the few voices writing on this topic motivated by the public’s interests rather than their personal gains." — Timnit Gebru, Founder and Executive Director at The Distributed AI Research Institute
"In The AI Con, Bender and Hanna deliver a hard-hitting, no-nonsense takedown of the so-called 'artificial intelligence revolution.' Far from the sci-fi fantasy of machines thinking for themselves, this book shows how tech giants are using AI as a cover for their real agenda: data exploitation, surveillance, and a race to replace human labor with soulless automation. With irreverence and razor-sharp analysis, Bender and Hanna dismantle the hype and arm readers with the tools to see through the corporate doublespeak. This isn’t just about debunking myths—it’s about reclaiming control over the future that’s being sold to us." — Ruha Benjamin, author of Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want
"If you've been confused and bedazzled by all the chatter about AI, this book will help you make sense of all of it. Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna break down all the science-fictional flights of fancy, and painstakingly reveal the troubling reality that lies beneath. The AI Con is required reading for anyone who wants to survive the twenty-first century." — Charlie Jane Anders, author of Victories Greater Than Death
"In this AI hype era, Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna are here to deliver the well-informed debunking our algorithm overlords deserve." — Annalee Newitz, bestselling author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind and Autonomous
"The blizzard of excitement, misinformation and pure hype around AI has driven many of us to want an honest guide to both its promises and its limitations as well as its bizarre history. If, like me, you’re one of those many, you need to read this book. It’s clear, objective and comprehensible. It’s essential reading." — Brian Eno
"A refreshingly contrarian take on AI and the clouds of hyperbole surrounding it." — Kirkus Reviews
"The AI Con takes the thunder out of the dark cloud in our technological future. I am so grateful for the reality check, in Emily’s and Alex’s inimitable style. A must-read for those who don’t want to believe the hype." — Aleks Krotoski, presenter of The Digital Human
"A powerful antidote to the AI hype that dominates tech writing today. The authors show that the development of modern labour saving technologies is not neutral. Instead, these technologies will serve to deepen existing inequalities, and further 'enshittify' life and work for the vast majority of people." — Grace Blakeley, author of Vulture Capitalism
"A book to inoculate your mind against Big Tech's AI utopian hype and the resulting dystopian dread." — Yanis Varoufakis, economist
"Artificial intelligence is going to reshape our economy and society. And we'd all better get used to it, right? Wrong, say the authors of this incredible book. This is a truly eye-opening book that will be an indispensable 'field manual' for those who want to fight for a more humane economy and a better society." — Ha-Joon Chang, author of Economics: The User's Guide and Edible Economics
"A fascinating and thought-provoking analysis of one of the most charged debates in the world." — Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus
"The industry known as AI is fifty pounds of BS in a ten-pound bag, but politicians, the press, and CEOs are falling for it. Into the breach step Bender and Hanna...speaking truth about the most dangerous tech scam of our lifetime. The big lie of AI is that statistical processes can replace humans in jobs where a human touch is essential...There may be constructive use cases of 'extruded text' in the future, but accelerated climate change, loss of copyrights and privacy, increased unemployment, and a wide range of health problems are happening now and will only get worse." — Roger McNamee, New York Times bestselling author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
“The authors drive home the troubling ways in which [AI] technology is transforming society. AI skeptics will find plenty of fodder for their critique." — Publishers Weekly
2025-02-15
The bots probably aren’t going to kill you, but they’re probably not going to save you, either.
Linguist Bender and sociologist Hanna, the founders of a merrily debunking podcast about all things AI, write that there’s hoopla aplenty about how AI will make our lives better—or perhaps worse. In an opening salvo, they write, gamely, “each time we think we’ve reached peak AI hype—the summit of bullshit mountain—we discover there’s worse to come.” There are real concerns, of course, especially for people of color, whom AI facial recognition algorithms are altogether too likely to identify as crime suspects and who are likely to be judged risky candidates for pretrial release if they’ve been charged. Those “daily harms being done in its name” are more profound than a feared robot apocalypse, as are other sequelae of AI: the replacement of human workers with machines, the shredding of career tracks with gig work, the collapse of creative industries. (Actually, the authors add, AI probably won’t replace your job, “but itwill make your job a lot shittier.”) Those holding that AI promises a shining future for all are selling just as much of a bill of goods as the doomsayers. AI—or, better, its antecedent, machine learning—has done some useful things along the way, the authors allow, but on a relatively modest scale: spell-checking, for instance, and advances in medical image processing. Those who buy into the end-of-the-rainbow stuff are courting trouble, they add, such as a lawyer who let ChatGPT write a brief for him that turned out to be so full of holes as to land him in front of a judge. The con of which they write is more comprehensive still, though, based on errant machine-driven financial speculation, data and IP theft, the deprecation of human skills, and other clear and present dangers.
A refreshingly contrarian take on AI and the clouds of hyperbole surrounding it.
