Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna speak on their book The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

On Monday, April 27, authors Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna gave a book talk to an appreciative audience gathered in the CCT Lounge of the Car Barn.

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender is a book that deconstructs the exaggerated claims surrounding “AI” to reveal how it’s used by big tech for profit, power, and control, often masking issues like data theft, surveillance, and labor exploitation. The authors provide tools to spot and deconstruct this hype, arguing that current systems are not sentient but are text/media generators built on human labor, and they encourage readers to push back against the narrative to create a more equitable future.

Dr. Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington where she is also the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master of Science program and affiliate faculty in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. In 2023, she was included in the inaugural Time 100 list of the most influential people in AI. She is frequently consulted by policymakers, from municipal officials to the federal government to the United Nations, for insight into how to understand so-called AI technologies.

Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a Lecturer in the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry, a proponent of community-based uses of technology, and a highly sought-after speaker and expert who has been featured across the media, including articles in the Washington Post, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Time.