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Podcast: The Leap
Episode:

Beyond the AI Hype Machine
Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2025-10-15 10:00:53
Description:

View the full episode transcript.

When ChatGPT launched in 2022, it kicked off what some have called the “AI hype machine” — a frenzy of promotion and investment that has sent some tech companies’ valuations soaring to record heights. Meanwhile, computational linguist Emily M. Bender and AI researcher and sociologist Alex Hanna have proudly worn the titles of “AI hype busters,” critiquing the industry’s loftiest claims and pointing out the real-world harms behind this wave of excitement. What began as a satirical podcast is now a book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. In this episode, Alex and Emily explain why the very term “AI” is misleading, how AI boosters and doomers are really flip sides of the same coin, and why we should question the AI inevitability narrative. 


Guests: 

  • Emily Bender, professor of linguistics the University of Washington
  • Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute

Further reading/listening: 

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Episode Transcript

A full transcript will be available 1–2 workdays after the episode’s publication.

 
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