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 lit...
Feb 05, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 49
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 More about the ARC Prize o3's environmental impact The brain is a compute...
Jan 22, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 48
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. Fresh AI Hell: Part I: Education Medical residency assignments "AI generated" UCLA course "Could ChatGPT get an engineering degree?" AI letters of recommendation Chaser: 'AI' isn't Tinkerbell and we don’t have to clap Part II: Potpourri, as in really rotten AI x ...
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 47
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 ...
Dec 18, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 46
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...
Nov 26, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 45
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 How reasoning works GPQA, a 'graduate-level' Q&A benchmark system Fresh AI Hell: MIT Technology Review's AI 'AI hype index' CFPB Tak...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 44
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 Sa...
Oct 31, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 43
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 autom...
Oct 10, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 42
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 NaNoWriMo's AI fail AI is built on exploitation NaNoWriMo sponsored by an AI writing company NaNoWriMo's AI writing sponsor creates bad writing AI a...
Sep 26, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 41
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 al...
Sep 13, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 40
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 Blog The Washington Post's First AI Strategy Editor Talks LL...
Aug 29, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 39
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 meetings All-knowing machines are a fantasy A reminder of some things chatbots are not good for Medical science...
Aug 14, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 38
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. M...
Aug 02, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 37
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 d...
Jul 19, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 36
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 Blog post, May 30:...
Jul 03, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 35
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 States Tech Policy Press: US Senate AI Insight Forum Tracker Put the P...
Jun 20, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 34
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 ge...
Jun 05, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 33
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 data Workplace surveillance Surveillance by bathroom mirror Stalking-as-a-service Cops tap everyone else's videos Facial recognition at the doctor's office *Synthet...
May 23, 2024•58 min•Ep. 32
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 L...
May 07, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 31
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 c...
Apr 19, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 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: Alliance for the Future VentureBeat: Google researchers unveil ‘VLOGGER’, an AI that can bring sti...
Apr 03, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 29
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 Beware the Hype: ChatGPT Didn't Replace Human Data Annotators ChatGPT Can Replace the Underpaid Workers Who Train AI, Researchers Say Political Analysis: Out o...
Mar 13, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 28
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, fr...
Feb 29, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 27
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: Inside Higher Ed: Arizona State Joins ChatGPT in First Higher Ed Partnership 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...
Feb 15, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 26
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. Visit us on PeerTube for the video of this conversation. References: OpenAI: GPTs are GPTs Goldman Sachs: The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth FYI: Over the last ...
Feb 01, 2024•56 min•Ep. 25
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 Cent...
Jan 17, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 24
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 'Maths-ticated' data LLMs can’t analyze an SEC filing How GPT-4 can be used to create fake datasets Pap...
Jan 10, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 23
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 . References: TPP tracker for the US Senate 'AI Insight Forum' hearings Balancing Knowledge and Governance: Fo...
Jan 03, 2024•58 min•Ep. 22
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...
Nov 30, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 21
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. This episode was recorder on November 6, 2023. Watch the video version on PeerTube. References: "A Proposal for ...
Nov 21, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 20
