Is AI not all it’s made out to be? A new book punctures the hype and proposes some ways to resist it

Is AI going to take over the world? Have scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to replace all our jobs, even creative ones, like doctors, teachers and care workers? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?

The answers, as Emily M Bender and Alex Hanna, the authors of The AI Con, stress are “no”, “they wish”, “LOL” and “definitely not”.

Artificial intelligence is a marketing term as much as a distinct set of computational architectures and techniques. AI has become a magic word for entrepreneurs to attract startup capital for dubious schemes, an incantation deployed by managers to instantly achieve the status of future-forward leaders.

In a mere two letters, it conjures a vision of automated factories and robotic overlords, a utopia of leisure or a dystopia of servitude, depending on your point of view. It is not just technology, but a powerful vision of how society should function and what our future should look like.

In this sense, AI doesn’t need to work for it to work. The accuracy of a large language model may be doubtful, the productivity of an AI office assistant may be claimed rather than demonstrated, but this bundle...

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