Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000
Artificial Intelligence has too much hype. In this podcast, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna break down the AI hype, separate fact from fiction, and science from bloviation. They're joined by special guests and talk about everything, from machine consciousness to science fiction, to political economy to art made by machines.
Podcasting since 2023 • 45 episodes
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000
Latest Episodes
Episode 45: Billionaires, Influencers, and Ed Tech (feat. Adrienne Williams), November 18 2024
From Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires with no education expertise keep using their big names and big dollars to hype LLMs for classrooms. Promising ‘comprehensive AI tutors', or just ‘educator-informed’ tools to address understaffed ...
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Episode 45
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1:00:33
Episode 44: OpenAI's Ridiculous 'Reasoning', October 28 2024
The company behind ChatGPT is back with bombastic claim that their new o1 model is capable of so-called "complex reasoning." Ever-faithful, Alex and Emily tear it apart. Plus the flaws in a tech publication's new 'AI hype index,' and some palet...
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Episode 44
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1:00:11
Episode 43: AI Companies Gamble with Everyone's Planet (feat. Paris Marx), October 21 2024
Technology journalist Paris Marx joins Alex and Emily for a conversation about the environmental harms of the giant data centers and other water- and energy-hungry infrastructure at the heart of LLMs and other generative tools like ChatGPT -- a...
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Episode 43
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1:01:22
Episode 42: Stop Trying to Make 'AI Scientist' Happen, September 30 2024
Can “AI” do your science for you? Should it be your co-author? Or, as one company asks, boldly and breathlessly, “Can we automate the entire process of research itself?”Major scientific journals have banned the use of tools like ChatGPT ...
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Episode 42
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59:54
Episode 41: Sweating into AI Fall, September 9 2024
Did your summer feel like an unending barrage of terrible ideas for how to use “AI”? You’re not alone. It's time for Emily and Alex to clear out the poison, purge some backlog, and take another journey through AI hell -- from surveillance of em...
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Episode 41
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1:01:28