Explore every episode of the podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| You Talked to Workers for This Labor Research... Right? (with Sophie Song), 2025.11.17 | 02 Dec 2025 | 00:53:14 | |
Last month, Senate Democrats warned that "Automation Could Destroy Nearly 100 Million U.S Jobs in a Decade." Ironically, they used ChatGPT to come to that conclusion. DAIR Research Associate Sophie Song joins us to unpack the issues when self-professed worker advocates use chatbots for "research." Sophie Song is a researcher, organizer, and advocate working at the intersection of tech and social justice. They’re a research associate at DAIR, where they're working with Alex on building the Luddite Lab Resource Hub. References:
Also referenced:
Fresh AI Hell:
Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Drag It All To Hell, 2025.10.27 | 18 Nov 2025 | 00:56:44 | |
It's been six months since our last all-Hell episode! In honor of Halloween season, we take a long journey into the very scary Fresh AI Hell mines. Topics include terrifying uses of AI in education, scientific research, and politics — plus, some delicious palate cleansers along the way. AI bubble: bigger than dot-com bust? No one wants to pay for ChatGPT Meta lays off 600 from AI unit AI data centers: an even bigger disaster than we thought Public universities anticipate data center-driven power outages Chaser: Deloitte has to pay back Albanese government after using AI in report "AI" schools are "dead classrooms" Fake sources in "ethical AI" education report Parents letting kids play with AI Startup sells 'synthetic influencers' AI-powered textbooks fail to make the grade Chaser: "High-reliability" AI slop Nature offers "AI-powered research assistant" AI bots wrote all papers at this conference AI medical tools downplay symptoms in women and POC Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT Chaser: Microsoft blocks Israel's use of its technology German initiative uses "AI" for voter education Police gunshot detection mics will listen for human voices SF's AI chatbot for RV dwellers Cuomo campaign posts racist AI slop DHS Ordered OpenAI To Share User Data Chaser: LA County moves to limit license plate tracking "AI Superintelligence" prohibition letter Prizes must recognize machine contributions to discovery Chaser: The hot new trend in marketing: hating on AI Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| "Like Magic Intelligence in the Cloud", 2025.05.26 | 20 Jun 2025 | 00:59:50 | |
Because Sam Altman hates opening his laptop, OpenAI is merging with iPhone guy Jony Ive's design firm in the name of some mysterious new ChatGPT-enabled consumer products: Alex and Emily go full Mystery Science Theater and dissect the announcement video. Plus how tech billionaires like Sam Altman mythologize San Francisco while their money makes it less livable for everyone else. References: Sam Altman and Jony Ive are merging (Video) Emplacedness, real estate, and gentrification in San Francisco Anthropic? More like anthropomorphic Karen Hao on her new book "Empire of AI" in conversation with Alex and Emily Fresh AI Hell: Don't use ChatGPT to summon demons AI prompts accidentally left in novels "AI" tutors are teaching fentanyl recipes xAI's data center polluting Memphis with unpermitted methane generators Gemini's on Bluesky - block it Family uses "AI" generated avatar to give victim impact statement The market for "AI friends"? Lonely losers ***** You can check out future streams at on Twitch, and send us any AI Hell you see for future episodes. Our book, The AI Con, is out! Get your copy now. Follow Emily: Bluesky/Mastodon Music: Toby Menon. Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| The "AI"-Enabled Immigration Panopticon (with Petra Molnar), 2025.05.05 | 28 May 2025 | 01:01:58 | |
This week, Alex and Emily talk with anthropologist and immigration lawyer Petra Molnar about the dehumanizing hype of border-enforcement tech. From hoovering up data to hunt anyone of ambiguous citizenship status, to running surveillance of physical borders themselves, "AI" tech is everywhere in the enforcement of national borders. And as companies ranging from Amazon, to NSO Group, to Palantir all profit, this widening of automation threatens a future of faceless human rights violations with no attempts at accountability of any kind. Petra Molnar is associate director of York University's Refugee Law Lab, and a faculty associate for the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She's also the author of the book The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving immigration in the age of artificial intelligence. References: Department of Homeland Security: Robot Dogs Take Another Step Towards Deployment at the Border Leaked: Palantir’s Plan to Help ICE Deport People Athens prepares to host DEFEA 2025, a major hub for international defence cooperation Fresh AI Hell: Meta served teen girls beauty product ads whenever they deleted selfies Dating app/luxury surveillance leaks personal info "AI" for subway crime prediction CA used "AI" to make bar exam questions CA using "AI" tool to bypass building permit process Wildly unethical "AI persuasion" research on Reddit users AI makeup to retouch Holocaust images Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| AGI: "Imminent", "Inevitable", and Inane, 2025.04.21 | 14 May 2025 | 01:05:02 | |
Emily and Alex pore through an elaborate science fiction scenario about the "inevitability" of Artificial General Intelligence or AGI by the year 2027 - which rests atop a foundation of TESCREAL nonsense, and Sinophobia to boot. References: Fresh AI Hell: AI persona bots for undercover cops Palantir heart eyes Keir Starmer Anti-vaxxers are grifting off the measles outbreak with AI-formulated supplements The cost, environmental and otherwise, of being polite to ChatGPT Actors who sold voice & likeness find it used for scams Addictive tendencies and ChatGPT (satire) Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| AI Hell in a Handbasket, 2025.04.14 | 30 Apr 2025 | 01:00:25 | |
It's been 4 months since we've cleared the backlog of Fresh AI Hell and the bullshit is coming in almost too fast to keep up with. But between a page full of awkward unicorns and a seeming slowdown in data center demand, Alex and Emily have more good news than usual to accompany this round of catharsis. AI Hell: LLM processing like human language processing (not) Sebastian Bubeck says predictions in "sparks" paper have already come true WIRED puff piece on the Amodeis Foundation agents & leaning in to the computational metaphor (Fig 1, p14) Chaser: Trying to recreate the GPT unicorn The WSJ has an AI bot for all your tax questions AOL.com uses autogenerated captions about attempted murder AI coding tools fix bugs by adding bugs "We teach AGI to think, so you don't have to"
MAGA/DOGE paints teachers as glorified babysitters in push for AI Chaser: How we are NOT using AI in the classroom AI benchmarks are self-promoting trash — but regulators keep using them DOGE is pushing AI tool created as "sandbox" for federal testing "Psychological profiling" based on social media "I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government" Pulling back on data centers, Microsoft edition Abandoned data centers, China edition Bill Gates: 2 day workweek coming thanks to AI...replacing doctors and teachers?? Chaser: Tesla glue fail schadenfreude Chaser: Let's talk about the genie trope Chaser: We finally met!!! Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| "AI" Agents, A Single Point of Failure (with Margaret Mitchell), 2025.03.31 | 17 Apr 2025 | 01:03:02 | |
After "AI" stopped meaning anything, the hype salesmen moved on to "AI" "agents", those allegedly indefatigable assistants, allegedly capable of operating your software for you -- whether you need to make a restaurant reservation, book a flight, or book a flight to a restaurant reservation. Hugging Face's Margaret Mitchell joins Emily and Alex to help break down what agents actually are, and what to actually worry about. References: PwC launches AI agent operating system to revolutionize AI workflows for enterprises Other references: Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake Fully Autonomous AI Agents Should Not be Developed Bender vs. Bubeck: The Great Chatbot Debate: Do LLMs Really Understand? Fresh AI Hell: DOGE suggests replacing workers with "AI" (of course) Vape, or the tamagotchi gets it "AI" for psychotherapy, still bad, still hyped
Palate cleanser: "AI is the letdown" Comic relief: "Fortified with AI" Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Linguists Versus 'AI' Speech Analysis (with Nicole Holliday), 2025.03.17 | 02 Apr 2025 | 01:00:28 | |
Measuring your talk time? Counting your filler words? What about "analyzing" your "emotions"? Companies that push LLM technology to surveil and summarize video meetings are increasingly offering to (purportedly) analyze your participation and assign your speech some metrics, all in the name of "productivity". Sociolinguist Nicole Holliday joins Alex and Emily to take apart claims about these "AI" meeting feedback tools, and reveal them to be just sparkling bossware, with little insight into how we talk. Nicole Holliday is Acting Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley. Quick note: Our guest for this episode had some sound equipment issues, which unfortunately affected her audio quality. Main course: Read AI Review: This AI Reads Emotions During Video Calls Zoom rebrands existing and introduces new generative AI features Speech analysis startup releases AI tool that simulates difficult job interview conversation Fresh AI Hell: Amazon Echo will send all recordings to Amazon beginning March 28 Trump’s NIST no longer concerned with “safety” or “fairness” Reporter Kevin Roose is feeling the bullshit UW’s eScience institute pushing “AI” for information access OpenAI whines about data being too expensive, with a side of Sinophobia Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency', 2025.03.03 | 19 Mar 2025 | 01:00:00 | |
Emily and Alex read a terrible book so you don't have to! Come for a quick overview of LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman's opus of magical thinking, 'Superagency: What could possibly go right with our AI future' -- stay for the ridicule as praxis. Plus, why even this tortuous read offers a bit of comfort about the desperate state of the AI boosters. References: AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre Fresh AI Hell: Parents rationalizing exposing kids to AI Underage, sexualized celebrity bots CalState faculty union opposes AI initiative Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| The War on Knowledge (with Raina Bloom), 2025.02.24 | 05 Mar 2025 | 01:00:23 | |
In the weeks since January 20, the US information ecosystem has been unraveling fast. (We're looking at you Denali, Gulf of Mexico, and every holiday celebrating people of color and queer people that used to be on Google Calendar.) As the country's unelected South African tech billionaire continues to run previously secure government data through highly questionable LLMs, academic librarian Raina Bloom joins Emily and Alex for a talk about how we organize knowledge, and what happens when generative AI degrades or poison the systems that keep us all accurately -- and contextually -- informed. Raina Bloom is the Reference Services Coordinator for University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. References: OpenAI tries to 'uncensor' ChatGPT Elon Musk's DOGE is feeding sensitive federal data into AI to target cuts Guardian Media Group announces strategic partnership with OpenAI Elon Musk's AI-fuelled war on human agency (Post now deleted) A DOGE intern asks Reddit for help with file conversion When is it safe to use ChatGPT in higher education? Raina recommends the table on page 6 of UNESCO's QuickStart guide. Fresh AI Hell: Irish educational body, while acknowledging genAI's problems, still gives LLMs too much credit Attorneys still falling for "AI" search The latest in uncanny valley body horror robotics Google claims to have developed AI "co-scientist" Is AI 'reasoning' or 'pretending'? It's a false choice. Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Petro-Masculinity Versus the Planet (with Tamara Kneese), 2025.01.27 | 19 Feb 2025 | 00:46:34 | |
Sam Altman thinks fusion - particularly a company he's personally invested in - can provide the energy we "need" to develop AGI. Meanwhile, what if we just...put data centers on the Moon to save energy? Alex, Emily, and guest Tamara Kneese pour cold water on Silicon Valley's various unhinged, technosolutionist ideas about energy and the environment. Dr. Tamara Kneese is director of climate, technology and justice at the Data & Society Research Institute Due to some technical issues during our recording, this week's episode is a bit shorter than usual. References: Sam Altman is banking on fusion “Regenerative finance” in the crypto era Fears of subprime carbon assets stall crypto mission to save rainforest Corporate carbon offset company accidentally starts devastating wildfire The AI/crypto crossoverAI/crypto crossover no one asked for Blockchains wanted to build a smart city. The state could not sign off on its water rights Predatory delay and other myths of sustainable AI Book: Digital Energetics, on Bitcoin/AI computing as a larger energy problem Fresh AI Hell: Fake books about indigenous languages Surveillance company harrasses own employees with cameras Schools SWATing kids based on AI outputs LeCun says libraries etc owe him their data AGI is when OpenAI makes $100 billion in profits Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| The UK's Misplaced Enthusiasm (with Gina Neff), 2025.01.20 | 05 Feb 2025 | 01:02:12 | |
In January, the United Kingdom's new Labour Party prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced a new initiative to go all in on AI in the hopes of big economic returns, with a promise to “mainline” it into the country’s veins: everything from offering public data to private companies, to potentially fast-tracking miniature nuclear power plants to supply energy to data centers. UK-based researcher Gina Neff helps explain why this flashy policy proposal is mostly a blank check for big tech, and has little to offer either the economy or working people. Gina Neff is executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, and a professor of responsible AI at Queen Mary University of London. References: The AI Opportunities Action Plan ‘Mainlined into UK’s veins’: Labour announces huge public rollout of AI Gina Neff: Can democracy survive AI? Labour's AI Action Plan - a gift to the far right Fresh AI Hell: "AI" tool for predicting how Parliament will react to policy proposals "AI" detects age based on hand movements Apple Intelligence misleading summaries of news Book simplification as a service CEO doesn't understand why kid turned AI features of toy off Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Crunching the Numbers (with Decca Muldowney), 2025.10.20 | 30 Oct 2025 | 00:56:20 | |
So-called AI tools are increasingly infiltrating newsrooms, particularly when it comes to data analysis. DAIR writer-in-residence Decca Muldowney joins us to discuss the need for journalists to distinguish between "AI" and reliable, verifiable research methods. Decca Muldowney is a journalist and writer who was our fact checker for The AI Con. She's also a writer-in-residence and web editor at the Distributed AI Research Institute.
Fresh AI Hell:
Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Sam Altman's Fever Dream, 2025.01.13 | 22 Jan 2025 | 01:02:19 | |
Not only is OpenAI's new o3 model allegedly breaking records for how close an LLM can get to the mythical "human-like thinking" of AGI, but Sam Altman has some, uh, reflections for us as he marks two years since the official launch of ChatGPT. Emily and Alex kick off the new year unraveling these truly fantastical stories. References: OpenAI o3 Breakthrough High Score on ARC-AGI-Pub From the blog of Sam Altman: Reflections The brain is a computer is a brain "Time to Edit" as a metric predicting the singularity (Contributed by Warai Otoko) Seattle Public Schools calls ChatGPT a "transformative technology" A GitHub pull request closed because change would have been unfriendly to "AI" chat interface Elsevier rewrites papers with "AI" without telling authors, editors The UK: mainlining AI straight into their veins Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 47: Hell is Other People's AI Hype, December 9 2024 | 30 Dec 2024 | 01:00:47 | |
It’s been a long year in the AI hype mines. And no matter how many claims Emily and Alex debunk, there's always a backlog of Fresh AI Hell. This week, another whirlwind attempt to clear it, with plenty of palate cleansers along the way. Chaser: ShotSpotter as art Part IV: Surveillance, AI in science/medicine Part V: They tell us to believe the hype Thomas Friedman: AGI is coming Chaser: Emily and Alex's forthcoming book! Pre-order THE AI CON: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want at TheCon.AI. Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 46: AGI Funny Business (Model), with Brian Merchant, December 2 2024 | 18 Dec 2024 | 01:02:35 | |
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 in residence at the AI Now Institute, and co-host of the tech news podcast System Crash. References: Elon Musk and partners form nonprofit to stop AI from ruining the world How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers From Taking Over Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar AI Plan Is About Far More Than Saving the World Brian’s recent report on the business model of AGI, for the AI Now Institute: AI Generated Business: The rise of AGI and the rush to find a working revenue model Previously on MAIHT3K: Episode 21: The True Meaning of 'Open Source' (feat. Sarah West and Andreas Liesenfeld) Fresh AI Hell: OpenAI explores advertising as it steps up revenue drive If an AI company ran Campbell's Soup with the same practices they use to handle data Humans are the new 'luxury item' Itching to write a book? AI publisher Spines wants to make a deal A company pitched Emily her own 'verified avatar' Don't upload your medical images to chatbots A look at a pilot program in Georgia that uses 'jailbots' to track inmates Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 45: Billionaires, Influencers, and Ed Tech (feat. Adrienne Williams), November 18 2024 | 26 Nov 2024 | 01:00:33 | |
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 joins to explain the problems this tech-solutionist redirection fails to solve, and the new ones it creates. Adrienne Williams started organizing in 2018 while working as a junior high teacher for a tech owned charter school. She expanded her organizing in 2020 after her work as an Amazon delivery driver, where many of the same issues she saw in charter schools were also in evidence. Adrienne is a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest with The OpEd Project in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, as well as a Research Fellow at both (DAIR) and Just Tech. References: Funding Helps Teachers Build AI Tools Sal Khan's 2023 Ted Talk: AI in the classroom can transform education Bill Gates: My trip to the frontier of AI education
Book: Access is Capture: How Edtech Reproduces Racial Inequality Previously on MAIHT3K: Episode 26, Universities Anxiously Buy Into the Hype (feat. Chris Gilliard) Fresh AI Hell: Google, Microsoft and Perplexity are promoting scientific racism in 'AI overviews' 'Whisper' medical transcription tool used in hospitals is making things up X's AI bot can't tell the difference between a bad game and vandalism Prompting is not a substitute for probability measurements in large language models Self-driving wheelchairs at Seattle-Tacoma International Airpot Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 44: OpenAI's Ridiculous 'Reasoning', October 28 2024 | 13 Nov 2024 | 01:00:11 | |
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 LLMs Fresh AI Hell: MIT Technology Review's AI 'AI hype index' CFPB Takes Action to Curb Unchecked Worker Surveillance Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 43: AI Companies Gamble with Everyone's Planet (feat. Paris Marx), October 21 2024 | 31 Oct 2024 | 01:01:22 | |
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 Save Us. He also recently launched a 4-part series, Data Vampires, (which features Alex) about the promises and pitfalls of data centers like the ones AI boosters rely on. References: Eric Schmidt says AI more important than climate goals Microsoft's sustainability report Sam Altman's “The Intelligence Age” promises AI will fix the climate crisis Previously on MAIHT3K: Episode 19: The Murky Climate and Environmental Impact of Large Language Models, November 6 2023 Fresh AI Hell: Rosetta to linguists: "Embrace AI or risk extinction" of endangered languages A talking collar that you can use to pretend to talk with your pets Google offers synthetic podcasts through NotebookLM An AI 'artist' claims he's losing millions of dolalrs from people stealing his work University hiring English professor to teach...prompt engineering Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 42: Stop Trying to Make 'AI Scientist' Happen, September 30 2024 | 10 Oct 2024 | 00:59:54 | |
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 automated, open-ended scientific discovery” can’t live up to the grandiose promises of tech companies. Plus, an update on their forthcoming book! References: Sakana.AI keeps trying to make 'AI Scientist' happen Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? A Large-Scale Human Study with 100+ NLP Researchers How should the advent of large language models affect the practice of science? Relevant research ethics policies: ACL Policy on Publication Ethics Committee On Public Ethics (COPE) The Vancouver Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work Fresh AI Hell: Should journals allow LLMs as co-authors? Business Insider "asks ChatGPT" Otter.ai sends transcript of private after-meeting discussion to everyone AI generated crime scene footage "The first college of nursing to offer an MSN in AI" FTC cracks down on "AI" claims Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 41: Sweating into AI Fall, September 9 2024 | 26 Sep 2024 | 01:01:28 | |
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 screenings
AI assistant rickrolls customers Programming LLMs with "fiduciary duty" Canva increasing prices thank to "AI" features Clearview AI hit with largest GDPR fine yet 'AI detection' in schools harms neurodivergent kids CS prof admits unethical ChatGPT use College recruiter chatbot can't discuss politics "The AI-powered nonprofits reimagining education" Professors' 'AI twins' as teaching assistants LLMs still biased against African American English AI "enhances" photo of Black people into white-appearing Eric Schmidt: Go ahead, steal data with ChatGPT The environmental cost of Google's "AI Overviews" Jeff Bezos' "Grand Challenge" for AI in environment What I found in an AI-company's e-waste xAI accused of worsening smog with unauthorized gas turbines AI for "emotion recognition" of rail passengers Chatbot harassment scenario reveals real victim "AI" in a product description turns off consumers Is tripe kosher? It depends on the religion of the cow. Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Episode 40: Elders Need Care, Not 'AI' Surveillance (feat. Clara Berridge), August 19 2024 | 13 Sep 2024 | 01:00:43 | |
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 also playing on ageist and ableist tropes. Dr. Clara Berridge is an associate professor at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. Her research focuses explicitly on the policy and ethical implications of digital technology in elder care, and considers things like privacy and surveillance, power, and decision-making about technology use. References: Care.Coach's 'Avatar' chat program* For Older People Who Are Lonely, Is the Solution a Robot Friend? Care Providers’ Perspectives on the Design of Assistive Persuasive Behaviors for Socially Assistive Robots ***Care.Coach's 'Fara' and 'Auger' products, also discussed in this episode, are no longer listed on their site. Fresh AI Hell: Apple Intelligence hidden prompts include the command "don't hallucinate" The US wants to use facial recognition to identify migrant children as they age Family poisoned after following fake mushroom book It is a beautiful evening in the neighborhood, and you are a horrible Waymo robotaxi Dynamic pricing + surveillance hell at the grocery store Chinese social media's newest trend: imitating AI-generated videos Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 39: Newsrooms Pivot to Bullshit (feat. Sam Cole), Aug 5 2024 | 29 Aug 2024 | 01:02:04 | |
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." The Washington Post's First AI Strategy Editor Talks LLMs in the Newsroom Also: New Washington Post CTO comes from Uber The Washington Post debuts AI chatbot, will summarize climate articles. Media companies are making a huge mistake with AI When ChatGPT summarizes, it does nothing of the kind 404 Media: Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers (Because AI Companies Keep Making New Ones)
Google advertises Gemini for writing synthetic fan letters Dutch Judge uses ChatGPT's answers to factual questions in ruling Is GenAI coming to your home appliances? "AI" generated images in medical science, again (now retracted) Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Building Worlds Through Better Reading (with Reo Eveleth), 2025.09.29 | 14 Oct 2025 | 00:56:59 | |
Powerful AI boosters claim to love science fiction novels, but why do they always seem to take the wrong lessons from them? Reporter and writer Reo Eveleth joins us to discuss the ways tech leaders misuse storytelling, and how we can avoid their visions to imagine better futures.
Also Referenced: Fresh AI Hell:
Correction: We misstated Lee Ostertag's name during the livestream for this episode. We apologize for the error! Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 38: Deflating Zoom's 'Digital Twin,' July 29 2024 | 14 Aug 2024 | 01:02:29 | |
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: All-knowing machines are a fantasy A reminder of some things chatbots are not good for Medical science shouldn't platform automating end-of-life care The grimy residue of the AI bubble On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs: a work rant Fresh AI Hell: AI "teaching assistants" at Morehouse "Diet-monitoring AI tracks your each and every spoonful" A teacher's perspective on dealing with students who "asked ChatGPT" Using a chatbot to negotiate lower prices Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 37: Chatbots Aren't Nurses (feat. Michelle Mahon), July 22 2024 | 02 Aug 2024 | 01:00:26 | |
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. Michelle has over 25 years of experience as a registered nurse in various settings. In her role with NNU, Michelle works with nurses across the United States to protect the vital role that RNs play in health care as direct caregivers and patient advocates. References: NVIDIA's AI Bot Outperforms Nurses: Here's What It Means Hippocratic AI's roster of 'genAI healthcare agents' Related: Nuance's DAX Copilot Fresh AI Hell: "AI-powered health coach" will urge you to drink water with lemon 50% of 2024 Q2 VC investments went to "AI" Thanks to AI, Google no longer claiming to be carbon-neutral Click work "jobs" soliciting photos of babies through teens Screening of film "written by AI" canceled after backlash Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 36: About That 'Dangerous Capabilities' Fanfiction (feat. Ali Alkhatib), June 24 2024 | 19 Jul 2024 | 01:02:00 | |
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 director of the University of San Francisco’s Center for Applied Data Ethics. His research focuses on human-computer interaction, and why our technological problems are really social – and why we should apply social science lenses to data work, algorithmic justice, and even the errors and reality distortions inherent in AI models. References: Google DeepMind paper-like object: Evaluating Frontier Models for Dangerous Capabilities Fresh AI Hell: Hacker tool extracts all the data collected by Windows' 'Recall' AI In NYC, ShotSpotter calls are 87 percent false alarms "AI" system to make callers sound less angry to call center workers Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 3.5 evaluated for "graduate level reasoning" OpenAI's Mira Murati says "AI" will have 'PhD-level' intelligence Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 35: AI Overviews and Google's AdTech Empire (feat. Safiya Noble), June 10 2024 | 03 Jul 2024 | 01:01:42 | |
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 you Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, by Safiya Noble Fresh AI Hell: AI Catholic priest demoted after saying it's OK to baptize babies with Gatorade National Archives bans use of ChatGPT ChatGPT better than humans at "Moral Turing Test" Taco Bell as an "AI first" company AGI by 2027, in one hilarious graph Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 34: Senate Dot Roadmap Dot Final Dot No Really Dot Docx, June 3 2024 | 20 Jun 2024 | 01:03:57 | |
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: Tech Policy Press: US Senate AI Insight Forum Tracker Put the Public in the Driver's Seat: Shadow Report to the US Senate AI Policy Roadmap Fresh AI Hell: Homophobia in Spotify's chatbot StackOverflow in bed with OpenAI, pushing back against resistance OpenAI making copyright claim against ChatGPT subreddit Introducing synthetic text for police reports ChatGPT-like "AI" assistant ... as a car feature? Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 33: Much Ado About 'AI' 'Deception', May 20 2024 | 05 Jun 2024 | 01:00:30 | |
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 generator is still pulling from copyrighted material Apple advertising hell: vivid depiction of tech crushing creativity, as if it were good "AI is more creative than 99% of people" AI generated employee handbooks causing chaos Bumble CEO: Let AI 'concierge' do your dating for you. Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 32: A Flood of AI Hell, April 29 2024 | 23 May 2024 | 00:57:48 | |
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.
*Synthetic information spills:*
*Toxic wish fulfillment:* *ShotSpotter:*
*Selling your data:* *AI is always people:* *TESCREAL corporate capture:*
*Accountability:*
Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 31: Science Is a Human Endeavor (feat. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri), April 15 2024 | 07 May 2024 | 01:02:57 | |
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.
AI For Scientific Discovery - A Workshop Fresh Hell: Yann LeCun realizes generative AI sucks, suggests shift to objective-driven AI CBS News: Upselling “AI” mammograms Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 30: Marc's Miserable Manifesto, April 1 2024 | 19 Apr 2024 | 01:00:45 | |
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 of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR). Prior to that she was fired by Google, where she was serving as co-lead of the Ethical AI research team, in December 2020 for raising issues of discrimination in the workplace. Timnit also co-founded Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility and health of Black people in the field of AI, and is on the board of AddisCoder, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching algorithms and computer programming to Ethiopian highschool students, free of charge. References:
The Guardian: DrugGPT: New AI tool could help doctors prescribe medicine in England Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 29: How LLMs Are Breaking the News (feat. Karen Hao), March 25 2024 | 03 Apr 2024 | 01:02:30 | |
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. References: Adweek: Google Is Paying Publishers to Test an Unreleased Gen AI Platform The Quint: AI Invents Quote From Real Person in Article by Bihar News Site: A Wake-Up Call? Fresh AI Hell: VentureBeat: Google researchers unveil ‘VLOGGER’, an AI that can bring still photos to life Business Insider: A car dealership added an AI chatbot to its site. Then all hell broke loose. Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Three Years of Ridicule as Praxis, 2025.09.19 | 01 Oct 2025 | 00:55:42 | |
It's Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000's third birthday! To celebrate, Emily and Alex respond to listener questions about the show, and reflect on the past and future of AI hype. Topics range from how to talk to your kids about LLMs, to what the MAIHT3k birthday cake looks like. Artifacts referenced: AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark Alex and Emily’s media appearances about The AI Con Emily and Alex on The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan Emily’s interview with Dr. Carl Rhodes Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire October 21st event for The AI Con FAccT AI Workers’ Inquiry Panel Emily’s presentation at UNESCO Digital Learning Week — Paper version on pp.41-45 here A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In. Fresh AI Hell: Meet the Robot Using AI to Ink Your Next Tattoo Medicare Will Start Paying AI Companies a Share of Any Claims They Automatically Reject Can AI doulas improve maternal health? Countries are struggling to meet the rising energy demands of data centers Bluesky post about Business Insider OpenAI has reportedly misjudged its cash burn by $80 billion Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 28: LLMs Are Not Human Subjects, March 4 2024 | 13 Mar 2024 | 01:00:57 | |
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 to fabricate data. References: PNAS: ChatGPT outperforms crowd workers for text-annotation tasks
Political Analysis: Out of One, Many: Using Language Models to Simulate Human Samples Behavioral Research Methods: Can large language models help augment English psycholinguistic datasets? Information Systems Journal: Editorial: The ethics of using generative AI for qualitative data analysis Fresh AI Hell: Advertising vs. reality, synthetic Willy Wonka edition
A news outlet used an LLM to generate a story...and it falsely quoted Emily Trump supporters target Black voters with faked AI images Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 27: Asimov's Laws vs. 'AI' Death-Making (w/ Annalee Newitz & Charlie Jane Anders), February 19 2024 | 29 Feb 2024 | 01:04:42 | |
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 misunderstood laws of robotics, as debuted in his short story collection, 'I, Robot.' Meanwhile, both global and US military institutions are declaring interest in 'ethical' frameworks for autonomous weaponry. Plus, in AI Hell, a ballsy scientific diagram heard 'round the world -- and a proposal for the end of books as we know it, from someone who clearly hates reading. Charlie Jane Anders is a science fiction author. Her recent and forthcoming books include Promises Stronger Than Darkness in the ‘Unstoppable’ trilogy, the graphic novel New Mutants: Lethal Legion, and the forthcoming adult novel Prodigal Mother. They both co-host the podcast, 'Our Opinions Are Correct', which explores how science fiction is relevant to real life and our present society. Also, some fun news: Emily and Alex are writing a book! Look forward (in spring 2025) to The AI Con, a narrative takedown of the AI bubble and its megaphone-wielding boosters that exposes how tech’s greedy prophets aim to reap windfall profits from the promise of replacing workers with machines. References: DARPA's 'ASIMOV' program to "objectively and quantitatively measure the ethical difficulty of future autonomy use-cases...within the context of military operational values." Fresh AI Hell: AI generated illustrations in a scientific paper -- rat balls edition.
"[Abramovic's] work explores themes of endurance, vulnerability, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. [...] To create AI art in Marina Abramovic's style, we recommend using Artvy, our free AI art generation tool." Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 26: Universities Anxiously Buy in to the Hype (feat. Chris Gilliard), February 5 2024 | 15 Feb 2024 | 00:59:52 | |
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 protections they offer students in terms of data privacy or even emotional safety. References:
ASU press release version: New Collaboration with OpenAI Charts theFuture of AI in Higher Education MLive: Your Classmate Could Be an AI Student at this Michigan University Chris Gilliard: How Ed Tech Is Exploiting Students
Politico: Psychologist apparently happy with fake version of himself WSJ: Employers Are Offering a New Worker Benefit: Wellness Chatbots NPR: Artificial intelligence can find your location in photos, worrying privacy expert Palette cleanser: Goodbye to NYC's useless robocop. Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 25: An LLM Says LLMs Can Do Your Job, January 22 2024 | 01 Feb 2024 | 00:56:29 | |
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 into trying to replace human workers with mathy-math. References: FYI: Over the last 60 years, automation has totally eliminated just one US occupation.
The AI-led enshittification at Duolingo
University of Washington Provost highlighting “AI” Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 24: AI Won't Solve Structural Inequality (feat. Kerry McInerney & Eleanor Drage), January 8 2024 | 17 Jan 2024 | 01:00:17 | |
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 sexism -- and why this hype can occlude the need for more meaningful changes in institutions. Dr. Eleanor Drage is a Senior Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Dr. Kerry McInerney is a Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and a Research Fellow at the AI Now Institute. Together they host The Good Robot, a podcast about gender, feminism, and whether technology can be "good" in either outcomes or processes. References: HireVue promo: How Innovative Hiring Technology Nurtures Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Algorithm Watch: The [German Federal Asylum Agency]'s controversial dialect recognition software: new languages and an EU pilot project Want to see how AI might be processing video of your face during a job interview? Play with React App, a tool that Eleanor helped develop to critique AI-powered video interview tools and the 'personality insights' they offer. Philosophy & Technology: Does AI Debias Recruitment? Race, Gender, and AI’s “Eradication of Difference” (Drage & McInerney, 2022) Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies: Copies without an original: the performativity of biometric bordering technologies (Drage & Frabetti, 2023) Fresh AI Hell Internet of Shit 2.0: a "smart" bidet Fake AI “students” enrolled at Michigan University Synthetic images destroy online crochet groups “AI” for teacher performance feedback Palette cleanser: “Stochastic parrot” is the American Dialect Society’s AI-related word of the year for 2023! Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 23: AI Hell Freezes Over, December 22 2023 | 10 Jan 2024 | 01:04:42 | |
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 humans NYC Mayor uses AI to make robocalls in languages he doesn’t speak University of Michigan investing in OpenAI Tesla: claims of “full self-driving” are free speech LLMs may not "understand" output LLMs can’t analyze an SEC filing How GPT-4 can be used to create fake datasets Paper thanking GPT-4 concludes LLMs are good for science Will AI Improve Healthcare? Consumers Think So US struggling to regulate AI in healthcare Presenting the “Off-Grid AGI Safety Facility” DropBox files now shared with OpenAI Underline.io and ‘commercial exploitation’ Axel Springer, OpenAI strike "real-time news" deal Adobe Stock selling AI-generated images of Israel-Hamas conflict Sports Illustrated Published Articles by AI Writers Cruise confirms robotaxis rely on human assistance every 4-5 miles Underage workers training AI, exposed to traumatic content Prisoners training AI in Finland ChatGPT gives better output in response to emotional language UK judges now permitted to use ChatGPT in legal rulings. Michael Cohen's attorney apparently used generative AI in court petition Brazilian city enacts ordinance secretly written by ChatGPT The lawyers getting fired for using ChatGPT Using sequences of life-events to predict human lives Your palette-cleanser: Is my toddler a stochastic parrot? Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 22: Congressional 'AI' Hearings Say More about Lawmakers (feat. Justin Hendrix), December 18 2023 | 03 Jan 2024 | 00:57:52 | |
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 these hearings, the alarmist fixation on so-called 'p(doom)' and overdue laws on data privacy. Justin Hendrix is editor of the Tech Policy Press.
TPP tracker for the US Senate 'AI Insight Forum' hearings Balancing Knowledge and Governance: Foundations for Effective Risk Management of AI (featuring Emily) Emily's opening remarks at virtual roundtable on AI Fresh AI Hell: Asylum seekers vs AI-powered translation apps UK officials use AI to decide on issues from benefits to marriage licenses Prior guest Dr. Sarah Myers West testifying on AI concentration Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 21: The True Meaning of 'Open Source' (feat. Sarah West and Andreas Liesenfeld), November 20 2023 | 30 Nov 2023 | 01:04:08 | |
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. Dr. Sarah West is the managing director of the AI Now Institute. Her award-winning research and writing blends social science, policy, and historical methods to address the intersection of technology, labor, antitrust, and platform accountability. And she’s the author of the forthcoming book, "Tracing Code." Dr. Andreas Liesenfeld is assistant professor in both the Centre for Language Studies and department of language and communication at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He’s a co-author on research from this summer critically examining the true “open source” nature of models like LLaMA and ChatGPT – concluding.
Yann LeCun testifies on 'open source' work at Meta Stanford Human-Centered AI's new transparency index Opening up ChatGPT (Andreas Liesenfeld's work) Fresh AI Hell: The Verge: Meta disbands their Responsible AI team Call-out of Stability and others' use of “fair use” in AI-generated art A fawning profile of OpenAI's Ilya Sutskever Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 20: Let's Do the Time Warp! (to the "Founding" of "Artificial Intelligence"), November 6 2023 | 21 Nov 2023 | 01:04:53 | |
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 commonly mythologized as the founding of the field of artificial intelligence. But our crack team of AI hype detectives is on the case with a close reading of the grant proposal that started it all. References: "A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence" (1955) Re: methodological individualism, "The Role of General Theory in Comparative-historical Sociology," American Journal of Sociology, 1991
Silly made-up graph about “intelligence” of AI vs. “intelligence” of AI criticism How AI is perpetuating racism and other bias against Palestinians: Palette cleanser: An AI-powered smoothie shop shut down almost immediately after opening. OpenAI chief scientist: Humans could become 'part AI' in the future A Brief History of Intelligence: Why the evolution of the brain holds the key to the future of AI. Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 19: The Murky Climate and Environmental Impact of Large Language Models, November 6 2023 | 08 Nov 2023 | 01:01:21 | |
Drs. Emma Strubell and Sasha Luccioni join Emily and Alex for an environment-focused hour of AI hype. How much carbon does a single use of ChatGPT emit? What about the water or energy consumption of manufacturing the graphics processing units that train various large language models? Why even catastrophic estimates from well-meaning researchers may not tell the full story. This episode was recorded on November 6, 2023. References: "The Carbon Footprint of Machine Learning Training Will Plateau, Then Shrink" "The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans" The growing energy footprint of artificial intelligence "Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP." Fresh AI Hell: Not the software to blame for deadly Tesla autopilot crash, but the company selling the software. 4chan Uses Bing to Flood the Internet With Racist Images Is this evidence for LLMs having an internal "world model"? “Approaching a universal Turing machine” Americans Are Asking AI: ‘Should I Get Back With My Ex?’ Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| The Robo-Therapist Will See You Now (with Maggie Harrison Dupré), 2025.08.18 | 11 Sep 2025 | 00:55:07 | |
Talking to chatbots can have serious mental health consequences — fueling delusions and leading users away from consensus reality. Futurism writer Maggie Harrison Dupré joins us to unpack the hype around AI therapists, based on her groundbreaking reporting on "AI psychosis." Maggie Harrison Dupré is an award-winning tech journalist at Futurism who’s reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping media, information, humans, and our real and digital lives. References: How AI Is Expanding The Mental Health Market He Had Dangerous Delusions. ChatGPT Admitted It Made Them Worse. OpenAI: What we're optimizing ChatGPT for Also referenced: Gov Pritzker Signs Legislation Prohibiting AI Therapy in Illinois People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling Into Severe Delusions Stanford: New study warns of risks in AI mental health tools Fresh AI Hell: Bluesky post about DEI by chatbot How AI is being used by police departments to help draft reports UK Asks People to Delete Emails In Order to Save Water During Drought Sam Altman says 'yes,' AI is in a bubble Google's AI pointed him to a customer service number. It was a scam. Mastodon post about Dieter Roth's Literaturwürste Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 18: Rumors of Artificial General Intelligence Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, October 23 2023 | 31 Oct 2023 | 01:00:02 | |
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: "Artificial General Intelligence Is Already Here." "AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark" "Targeting the Benchmark: On Methodology and Current Natural Language Processing Research" "Recoding Gender: Women's Changing Participation in Computing" "The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise" "Is chess the drosophila of artificial intelligence? A social history of an algorithm"
Using AI to meet "diversity goals" in modeling "Wildly effective and dirt cheap AI therapy." Applying AI to "improve diagnosis for patients with rare diseases." Using LLMs in scientific research Health insurance company Cigna using AI to deny medical claims. AI for your wearable-based workout Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 17: Back to School with AI Hype in Education (feat. Haley Lepp), September 22 2023 | 04 Oct 2023 | 01:01:54 | |
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 and knowing" in the Global South. Plus a double dose of devaluating educator expertise and fatalism about the 'inevitability' of LLMs in the classroom. Haley Lepp is a Ph.D. student in the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. She draws on critical data studies, computational social science, and qualitative methods to understand the rise of language technologies and their use for educational purposes. Haley has worked in many roles in the education technology sector, including curriculum design and NLP engineering. She holds an M.S. in Computational Linguistics from the University of Washington and B.S. in Science, Technology, and International Affairs from Georgetown University. Politico: AI is not just for cheating Extra credit: "Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning" by Audrey Watters Fresh AI Hell: AI generated travel article for Ottawa -- visit the food bank! Microsoft Copilot is “usefully wrong” “Ethical” production of “AI girlfriends” New York Times: How to Tell if Your A.I. Is Conscious EU on the doomerism train, warns about "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI." More AI in the legal system: 'jolly useful' ChatGPT gives judge legal summary Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 16: Med-PaLM or Facepalm? A Second Opinion On LLMs In Healthcare (feat. Roxana Daneshjou), August 28, 2023 | 28 Sep 2023 | 01:02:02 | |
Alex and Emily are taking another stab at Google and other companies' aspirations to be part of the healthcare system - this time with the expertise of Stanford incoming assistant professor of dermatology and biomedical data science Roxana Daneshjou. A look at the gap between medical licensing examination questions and real life, and the inherently two-tiered system that might emerge if LLMs are brought into the diagnostic process. References: Google blog post describing Med-PaLM Nature: Large language models encode clinical knowledge MedRXiv: Beyond the hype: large language models propagate race-based medicine (Omiye, Daneshjou, et al) Fresh AI hell: Fake summaries of fake reviews School administrators asking ChatGPT which books they have to remove from school libraries, given Iowa’s book ban Loquacity and Visible Emotion: ChatGPT as a Policy Advisor AI generated school bus routes get students home at 10pm Lethal AI generated mushroom-hunting books Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||
| Episode 15: The White House And Big Tech Dance The Self-Regulation Tango, August 11 2023 | 20 Sep 2023 | 01:04:05 | |
Emily and Alex tackle the White House hype about the 'voluntary commitments' of companies to limit the harms of their large language models: but only some large language models, and only some, over-hyped kinds of harms. Plus a full portion of Fresh Hell...and a little bit of good news.
White House press release on voluntary commitments Future of Life Institute hijacks SEO for EU's AI Act LLMs for denying health insurance claims NHS using “AI” as receptionist Can AI language models replace human research participants? A recipe chatbot taught users how to make chlorine gas Using a chatbot to pretend to interview Harriet Tubman Martin Shkreli’s AI for health start up Authors impersonated with fraudulent books on Amazon/Goodreads
Zoom restores terms of service after backlash to AI training clause Authors fight back on book-scanning model Prosecraft Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see. Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here. Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us! Emily
Alex
Music by Toby Menon. | |||