Some thoughts on a recently read book — and “AI” in general.

I just “read” The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M Bender and Alex Hanna. I put “read” in quotes because I got it from the library as an audiobook and listened to it as I was making my long annual drive south. It wasn’t a long book — just 8 hours in audio format — and there was some repetition, but it was a good read. I highly recommend it, especially if you believe that true artificial intelligence currently exists and it is making our world better. (Spoiler alert: real AI doesn’t currently exist — at least not at the average user level — and what is being pushed as AI is failing miserably at making most things better.)

The authors take great pains to explain that what a lot of what’s being sold as artificial intelligence (AI) is nothing more than a generative large language model (LLM). Their explanation of exactly what an LLM is and how it works is thorough, clear, and easy to understand. Generative LLMs are designed to create text that seems like it could be right. They don’t think or reason and they’re just as likely to make things up as they are to pull facts from a reliable reference. They just string words together. There’s nothing intelligent about them.

They also talk about the history of machine learning, which is what AI proponents are trying to say today’s AI is:

There are applications of machine learning that are well scoped, well tested, and involve appropriate training data such that they deserve their place among the tools we use on a regular basis. These include such everyday things as spell-checkers (no longer simple dictionary look-ups, but able to flag real words used incorrectly) and other more specialized technologies like image processing used by radiologists to determine which parts of a scan or X-ray require the most scrutiny.

But in the cacophony of marketing and startup pitches, these sensible use cases are swamped by promises of machines that can effectively do magic, leading users to rely on them for information, decision-making, or cost savings—often to their detriment or to the detriment of others.

That’s the AI con of the title — AI “boosters” are trying to sell today’s AI as something it is not.

The authors refer to generative AI as “synthetic media machines” and remind readers that these systems are trained on mostly copyrighted text and images, usually accessed without the permission of the copyright holders or creators. Responding to user prompts, they basically regurgitate source content to create new versions of it. With the right prompts, however, they can be made to spit out exact copies of the source material, thus removing any “fair use” argument the promoters of these systems might try to use to defend their outright theft of material.

As I read through the book, I felt as if they were preaching to the choir. My feelings about AI are pretty much identical to theirs. I’m seeing the reality of what it is, what it can do, and what it can’t do. I’m perpetually annoyed by the spread of AI slop and the way the general public seems so willing to accept it — if not generate it. The hype — and the fact that investors and politicians are buying into it to the detriment of our world — enrages me.

The book has the following chapters, each of which are full of sometimes horrifying examples:

Chapter 1: An Introduction to AI Hype
Chapter 2: It’s Alive! The Hype of Thinking Machines
Chapter 3: Leisure for Me, Gig Work for Thee: AI Hype at Work
Chapter 4: If it Quacks Like a Doc: AI Hype and Social Services
Chapter 5: Artifice of Intelligence? AI Hype in Art, Journalism, and Science
Chapter 6: I’m Sorry, Dave, I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That: AI Doomers, AI Boosters, and Why None of That Makes Sense
Chapter 7: Do You Believe in Hope after Hype?

Again, I recommend the book. If you already feel as I do about AI, you’ll likely come away with more examples of why we should be outraged about its hype. If you, for some reason, have fallen for the hype, it will educate you about the reality of the situation. The only people really benefiting from today’s version of AI are the boosters stuffing their pockets with investor money.