Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000

• Linguists Versus 'AI' Speech Analysis (with Nicole Holliday), 2025.03.17

  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 CallsMarketing video for Read AIZoom rebrands existing and introduces new generative AI featuresMarketing video for Zoom Revenue AcceleratorSpeech analysis startup releases AI tool that simulates difficult job interview conversationFresh AI Hell:Amazon Echo will send all recordings to Amazon beginning March 28Trump’s NIST no longer concerned with “safety” or “fairness”Reporter Kevin Roose is feeling the bullshitUW’s eScience institute pushing “AI” for information accessOpenAI whines about data being too expensive, with a side of SinophobiaCheck out future streams at on Twitch, Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order now.Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us!Emily Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender Alex Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex Twitter: @alexhanna Music by Toby Menon.Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. Production by Christie Taylor.

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• The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency', 2025.03.03

  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:The cursèd book itselfAI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World BenchmarkMilitants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto AlegreFresh AI Hell:Parents rationalizing exposing kids to AIUnderage, sexualized celebrity botsBossware a bad look, actuallyCalState faculty union opposes AI initiativeThe kids are alrightCheck out future streams at on Twitch, Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order now.Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us!Emily Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender Alex Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex Twitter: @alexhanna Music by Toby Menon.Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. Production by Christie Taylor.

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• The War on Knowledge (with Raina Bloom), 2025.02.24

  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' ChatGPTElon Musk's DOGE is feeding sensitive federal data into AI to target cutsGuardian Media Group announces strategic partnership with OpenAIElon Musk's AI-fuelled war on human agencyArchive version(Post now deleted) A DOGE intern asks Reddit for help with file conversionWhen 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 creditFrom haircuts to dress design, AI slop is creating unrealistic expectations that hurt small businessesAttorneys still falling for "AI" searchThe latest in uncanny valley body horror roboticsGoogle claims to have developed AI "co-scientist"Is AI 'reasoning' or 'pretending'? It's a false chCheck out future streams at on Twitch, Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order now.Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us!Emily Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender Alex Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex Twitter: @alexhanna Music by Toby Menon.Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. Production by Christie Taylor.

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• Petro-Masculinity Versus the Planet (with Tamara Kneese), 2025.01.27

  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 InstituteDue to some technical issues during our recording, this week's episode is a bit shorter than usual.References:A data center … on the moon??Sam Altman is banking on fusionGreenland is the new Mars“Regenerative finance” in the crypto eraFears of subprime carbon assets stall crypto mission to save rainforestCorporate carbon offset company accidentally starts devastating wildfireThe AI/crypto crossoverAI/crypto crossover no one asked forBlockchains wanted to build a smart city. The state could not sign off on its water rightsOn petro-masculinityPredatory delay and other myths of sustainable AIBook: Digital Energetics, on Bitcoin/AI computing as a larger energy problemFresh AI Hell:Fake books about indigenous languagesSurveillance company harrasses own employees with camerasSchools SWATing kids based on AI outputsCheck out future streams at on Twitch, Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order now.Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us!Emily Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender Alex Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex Twitter: @alexhanna Music by Toby Menon.Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. Production by Christie Taylor.

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• The UK's Misplaced Enthusiasm (with Gina Neff), 2025.01.20

  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 AIGina Neff: Can democracy survive AI?Labour's AI Action Plan - a gift to the far rightFresh AI Hell:"AI" tool for predicting how Parliament will react to policy proposals"AI" detects age based on hand movementsApple Intelligence misleading summaries of newsBook simplification as a serviceCEO doesn't understand why kid turned AI features of toy offCheck out future streams at on Twitch, Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order now.Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown. Follow us!Emily Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender Alex Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex Twitter: @alexhanna Music by Toby Menon.Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. Production by Christie Taylor.

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