#1563: Deconstructing AI Hype with “The AI Con” Authors Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna

We are in the middle of a hype cycle peak around AI as there are a lot of hyperbolic claims being made about the capabilities and performance of large-language models (LLMs). Computational Linguist Emily M. Bender and Sociologist Alex Hanna have been writing academic papers about the limitations of LLMs, as well as some of the more pernicious aspects of benchmark culture in machine learning, as well as documenting some of the many environmental, labor, and human rights harms from both the creation and deployment of these LLMs. Their book The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want comprehensively deconstructs the many of the false promises of AI, the playbook for AI Hype, and the underlying dynamics of how AI is an automation technology designed to consolidate power. Their book unpacks so many vital parts of the Science and Technology Studies narrative around AI including: How big technology companies have been using AI as a marketing term to describe disparate technologies that have many limitations How we anthropomorphize AI tech from our concepts of intelligence How AI Boosting companies are devaluing what it means to be human in order to promote AI technology How AI Boosters and AI Doomers are two sides of the same coin of assuming that AI is all-powerful and completely inevitable How many of the harms and costs associated with the technology are often out-of-sight and out-of-mind. This book takes a critical look at these so-called AI technologies, deconstructs the language that we use as we talk about these automating technologies, breaks down the hype playbook of Big Tech, restores the relational quality of human intelligence that is often collapsed by AI. It also provides some really helpful questions to ask in order to interrogate the hyperbolic claims that we're hearing from AI boosters. We talk about all of this and more on today's episode, and I have a feeling that this is an episode that I'll be referring back to often. This is also the 100th Voices of VR podcast episode that explores the intersection of AI within the context of XR, and I expect to continue to cover how folks in the XR industry are using AI. Being in right relationship to every aspect of the economic, ethical & moral, social, labor, legal, and property rights dimensions of AI technologies is still an aspirational position. It's not impossible, but it is also not easy. But this conversation helps to frame a lot of the deeper questions that I will continue to have about AI. And Bender and Hanna also provide a lot of clues to the red flags of AI Hype, but also some of the core questions to ask that help to orient around these deeper ethical questions around AI. I've also been editing unpublished and vaulted episodes of the Voices of AI that I did with AI researchers at the International Joint Conference of Artificial Intelligence that I did back in 2016 and 2018 (as well as a couple of other conferences), and I'm hoping to relaunch the Voices of AI later this summer to look back at what researchers were saying about AI 7-9 years ago to give some important historical context that's often collapsed within the current days of AI Hype (SPOILER ALERT: this is not the first nor the last hype cycle that AI will have). I'll also be engaging within a Socratic Style Debate (see update below and recording of it here) where I'll be mostly arguing critically against AI on the last day of AWE (Thursday, June 12th, 2:45p) after the Expo has closed down, and before the final session. So come check out a live debate with a couple of AI Boosters and an AI Doomer. Also look for an interview that I just recorded with Process Philosopher Matt Segall diving more into a Process-Relational Philosophy perspective on AI, intelligence, and consciousness coming here soon. Segall and I are going to explore an elemental approach to intelligence, which is based upon concepts that I explore in my elemental theory of presence talk. Intelligence, privacy, and identity are also very contextual, and so if you'd like to hear more of my thoughts on the overlap between the Ethics of AI and XR, then be sure to check out my paper on Privacy Pitfalls of Contextually-Aware AI: Sensemaking Frameworks for Context and XR Data Qualities published as a part of the proceedings of the Existing Law and Extended Reality Symposium, and also my 20-minute talk on The Landscape of XR Ethics and my SXSW talk on both the Ultimate Potential of XR including both the promises and perils -- many of the same contextual domains I covered about XR are also concerning AI. I know that I'll be referring back to this conversation with Bender and Hanna often as they're taking a needed critical look and deconstructing the AI Hype. They have rigorous scholarship on this issue with lots of detailed footnotes that can send you off down many rabbit holes (one of my favorite ones was with Dr. Jonnie Penn's Ph.D. thesis on Inventing Intelligence looking at the early history of AI). Even though it covers lots of the darker aspects of AI, their ridicule-as-praxis tone is playful and light-hearted as they skewered the more hyperbolic and ridiculous claims of AI Boosters. If you're interested in moving beyond the marketing hype of AI, then I can't recommend The AI Con book highly enough as it is an excellent primer that will also provide many new avenues of research into other scholars and journalists who have been providing comprehensive critical takes on AI. UPDATE: August 2, 2025. I just published my coverage from AWE 2025, and the Socratic Debate on AI panel discussion that I was ended up catalyzing me to do a number of interviews -- including this one with Bender and Hanna -- with a number of different technologists and philosophers. Here's a list of other podcasts that I'd recommend following up in order to track to see how the conversation continued to unfold. I will certainly be pointing back to this conversation as a canonical critique on large-language models, and I think it's critical for anyone in the tech industry to understand the affordances of what is being called AI, but also the limitations. #1611: Socratic Debate on Future of AI & XR from AWE 2025 Panel #1563: Deconstructing AI Hype with “The AI Con” Authors Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna #1568: A Process-Relational Philosophy View on AI, Intelligence, & Consciousness with Matt Segall #1585: Debating AI Project and a Curating Taiwanese LBE VR Exhibition at Museum of Moving Image #1609: Framework for Personalized, Responsive XR Stories with Narrative Futurist Joshua Rubin #1610: Scouting XR & AI Infrastructure Trends with Nokia’s Leslie Shannon #1629: Niantic Spatial is Building an AI-Powered Map with Snap for AR Glasses & AI Agents #1630: Keiichi Matsuda on Metaphors for AI Agents in XR User Experience: From Omniscient Gods to Animistic Familiars This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality