Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000
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.
Episodes
41 episodes
Episode 41: Sweating into AI Fall, September 9 2024
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 em...
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Episode 41
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1:01:28
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Episode 40: Elders Need Care, Not 'AI' Surveillance (feat. Clara Berridge), August 19 2024
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) be...
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Episode 40
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1:00:43
Episode 39: Newsrooms Pivot to Bullshit (feat. Sam Cole), Aug 5 2024
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, a...
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Episode 39
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1:02:04
Episode 38: Deflating Zoom's 'Digital Twin,' July 29 2024
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, m...
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Episode 38
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1:02:29
Episode 37: Chatbots Aren't Nurses (feat. Michelle Mahon), July 22 2024
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...
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Episode 37
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1:00:26
Episode 36: About That 'Dangerous Capabilities' Fanfiction (feat. Ali Alkhatib), June 24 2024
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 joi...
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Episode 36
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1:02:00
Episode 35: AI Overviews and Google's AdTech Empire (feat. Safiya Noble), June 10 2024
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
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Episode 35
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1:01:42
Episode 34: Senate Dot Roadmap Dot Final Dot No Really Dot Docx, June 3 2024
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 spen...
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Episode 34
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1:03:57
Episode 33: Much Ado About 'AI' 'Deception', May 20 2024
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
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Episode 33
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1:00:30
Episode 32: A Flood of AI Hell, April 29 2024
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 fo...
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Episode 32
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57:48
Episode 31: Science Is a Human Endeavor (feat. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri), April 15 2024
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 rese...
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Episode 31
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1:02:57
Episode 30: Marc's Miserable Manifesto, April 1 2024
Dr. Timnit Gebru guest-hosts with Alex in a deep dive into Marc Andreessen's 2023 manifesto, which argues, loftily, in favor of maximizing the use of 'AI' in all possible spheres of life.Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director...
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Episode 30
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1:00:45
Episode 29: How LLMs Are Breaking the News (feat. Karen Hao), March 25 2024
Award-winning AI journalist Karen Hao joins Alex and Emily to talk about why LLMs can't possibly replace the work of reporters -- and why the hype is damaging to already-struggling and necessary publications...
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Episode 29
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1:02:30
Episode 28: LLMs Are Not Human Subjects, March 4 2024
Alex and Emily put on their social scientist hats and take on the churn of research papers suggesting that LLMs could be used to replace human labor in social science research -- or even human subjects. Why these writings are essentially calls ...
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Episode 28
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1:00:57
Episode 27: Asimov's Laws vs. 'AI' Death-Making (w/ Annalee Newitz & Charlie Jane Anders), February 19 2024
Science fiction authors and all-around tech thinkers Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders join this week to talk about Isaac Asimov's oft-cited and equally often misund...
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Episode 27
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1:04:42
Episode 26: Universities Anxiously Buy in to the Hype (feat. Chris Gilliard), February 5 2024
Just Tech Fellow Dr. Chris Gilliard aka "Hypervisible" joins Emily and Alex to talk about the wave of universities adopting AI-driven educational technologies, and the lack of...
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Episode 26
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59:52
Episode 25: An LLM Says LLMs Can Do Your Job, January 22 2024
Is ChatGPT really going to take your job? Emily and Alex unpack two hype-tastic papers that make implausible claims about the number of workforce tasks LLMs might make cheaper, faster or easier. And why bad methodology may still trick companies...
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Episode 25
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56:29
Episode 24: AI Won't Solve Structural Inequality (feat. Kerry McInerney & Eleanor Drage), January 8 2024
New year, same Bullshit Mountain. Alex and Emily are joined by feminist technosolutionism critics Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney to tear down the ways AI is proposed as a solution to structural inequality, including racism, ableism, and sexi...
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Episode 24
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1:00:17
Episode 23: AI Hell Freezes Over, December 22 2023
AI Hell has frozen over for a single hour. Alex and Emily visit all seven circles in a tour of the worst in bite-sized BS.References:Pentagon moving toward letting AI weapons autonomously kill huma...
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Episode 23
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1:04:42
Episode 22: Congressional 'AI' Hearings Say More about Lawmakers (feat. Justin Hendrix), December 18 2023
Congress spent 2023 busy with hearings to investigate the capabilities, risks and potential uses of large language models and other 'artificial intelligence' systems. Alex and Emily, plus journalist Justin Hendrix, talk about the limitations of...
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Episode 22
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57:52
Episode 21: The True Meaning of 'Open Source' (feat. Sarah West and Andreas Liesenfeld), November 20 2023
Researchers Sarah West and Andreas Liesenfeld join Alex and Emily to examine what software companies really mean when they say their work is 'open source,' and call for greater transparency.This episode was recorded on November 20, 2023....
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Episode 21
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1:04:08
Episode 20: Let's Do the Time Warp! (to the "Founding" of "Artificial Intelligence"), November 6 2023
Emily and Alex time travel back to a conference of men who gathered at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956 to examine problems relating to computation and "thinking machines," an event
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Episode 20
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1:04:53
Episode 19: The Murky Climate and Environmental Impact of Large Language Models, November 6 2023
Drs. Emma Strubell and Sasha Luccioni join Emily and Alex for an env...
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Episode 20
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1:01:21
Episode 18: Rumors of Artificial General Intelligence Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, October 23 2023
Emily and Alex read through Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas' recent proclamation that "artificial general intelligence is already here." Why this claim is a maze of hype and moving goalposts.References:Noema Magazine: ...
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Episode 18
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1:00:02
Episode 17: Back to School with AI Hype in Education (feat. Haley Lepp), September 22 2023
Emily and Alex are joined by Stanford PhD student Haley Lepp to examine the increasing hype around LLMs in education spaces - whether they're pitched as ways to reduce teacher workloads, increase accessibility, or simply "democratize learning a...
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Episode 17
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1:01:54