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.
Episodes
54 episodes
"AI" Agents, A Single Point of Failure (with Margaret Mitchell), 2025.03.31
After "AI" stopped meaning anything, the hype salesmen moved on to "AI" "agents", those allegedly indefatigable assistants, allegedly capable of operating your software for you -- whether you need to make a restaurant reservation, book a flight...
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Episode 54
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1:03:02
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 a...
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Episode 53
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1:00:28
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 fo...
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Episode 52
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1:00:00
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 count...
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Episode 51
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1:00:23
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...
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Episode 50
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46:34
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 offeri...
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Episode 49
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1:02:12
Sam Altman's Fever Dream, 2025.01.13
Not only is OpenAI's new o3 model allegedly breaking records for how close an LLM can get to the mythical "human-like thinking" of AGI, but Sam Altman has some, uh, reflections for us as he marks two years since the official launch of ChatGPT. ...
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Episode 48
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1:02:19
Episode 47: Hell is Other People's AI Hype, December 9 2024
It’s been a long year in the AI hype mines. And no matter how many claims Emily and Alex debunk, there's always a backlog of Fresh AI Hell. This week, another whirlwind attempt to clear it, with plenty of palate cleansers along the way....
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Episode 47
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1:00:47
Episode 46: AGI Funny Business (Model), with Brian Merchant, December 2 2024
Once upon a time, artificial general intelligence was the only business plan OpenAI seemed to have. Tech journalist Brian Merchant joins Emily and Alex for a time warp to the beginning of the current wave of AI hype, nearly a decade ago. And it...
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Episode 46
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1:02:35
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
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Episode 40: Elders Need Care, Not 'AI' Surveillance (feat. Clara Berridge), August 19 2024
Dr. Clara Berridge joins Alex and Emily to talk about the many 'uses' for generative AI in elder care -- from "companionship," to "coaching" like medication reminders and other encouragements toward healthier (and, for insurers, cost-saving) be...
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Episode 40
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1:00:43
Episode 39: Newsrooms Pivot to Bullshit (feat. Sam Cole), Aug 5 2024
The Washington Post is going all in on AI -- surely this won't be a repeat of any past, disastrous newsroom pivots! 404 Media journalist Samantha Cole joins to talk journalism, LLMs, a...
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Episode 39
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1:02:04
Episode 38: Deflating Zoom's 'Digital Twin,' July 29 2024
Could this meeting have been an e-mail that you didn't even have to read? Emily and Alex are tearing into the lofty ambitions of Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who claims the future is a LLM-powered 'digital twin' that can attend meetings in your stead, m...
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Episode 38
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1:02:29
Episode 37: Chatbots Aren't Nurses (feat. Michelle Mahon), July 22 2024
We regret to report that companies are still trying to make generative AI that can 'transform' healthcare -- but without investing in the wellbeing of healthcare workers or other aspects of actual patient care. Registered nurse and nursing care...
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Episode 37
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1:00:26
Episode 36: About That 'Dangerous Capabilities' Fanfiction (feat. Ali Alkhatib), June 24 2024
When is a research paper not a research paper? When a big tech company uses a preprint server as a means to dodge peer review -- in this case, of their wild speculations on the 'dangerous capabilities' of large language models. Ali Alkhatib joi...
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Episode 36
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1:02:00
Episode 35: AI Overviews and Google's AdTech Empire (feat. Safiya Noble), June 10 2024
You've already heard about the rock-prescribing, glue pizza-suggesting hazards of Google's AI overviews. But the problems with the internet's most-used search engine go way back. UCLA scholar and "Algorithms of Oppression" author
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Episode 35
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1:01:42
Episode 34: Senate Dot Roadmap Dot Final Dot No Really Dot Docx, June 3 2024
The politicians are at it again: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's series of industry-centric forums last year have birthed a "roadmap" for future legislation. Emily and Alex take a deep dive on this report, and conclude that the time spen...
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Episode 34
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1:03:57
Episode 33: Much Ado About 'AI' 'Deception', May 20 2024
Will the LLMs somehow become so advanced that they learn to lie to us in order to achieve their own ends? It's the stuff of science fiction, and in science fiction these claims should remain. Emily and guest host
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Episode 33
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1:00:30
Episode 32: A Flood of AI Hell, April 29 2024
AI Hell froze over this winter and now a flood of meltwater threatens to drown Alex and Emily. Armed with raincoats and a hastily-written sea shanty*, they tour the realms, from spills of synthetic information, to the special corner reserved fo...
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Episode 32
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57:48
Episode 31: Science Is a Human Endeavor (feat. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri), April 15 2024
Will AI someday do all our scientific research for us? Not likely. Drs. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri join for a takedown of the hype of "self-driving labs" and why such misrepresentations also harm the humans who are vital to scientific rese...
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Episode 31
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1:02:57
Episode 30: Marc's Miserable Manifesto, April 1 2024
Dr. Timnit Gebru guest-hosts with Alex in a deep dive into Marc Andreessen's 2023 manifesto, which argues, loftily, in favor of maximizing the use of 'AI' in all possible spheres of life.Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director...
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Episode 30
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1:00:45