About this Event
150 E San Fernando St, San Jose, CA 95112
#aiJoin us at the SJSU Digital Humanities Center for coffee and the South Bay book launch of The AI Con with Dr. Emily M. Bender and Dr. Alex Hanna in conversation with Rhonda Holberton (Chair, Dept of Art/Art History). Win a copy of the book at the on-site raffle and stay for an author book signing. Grab your copy on sale after the event thanks to the Spartan Bookstore. Free and open to the public.
Conversation: 2-3:30pm PST
Book Signing: 3:30-4:30pm PST
Register for either in-person attendance (70 max) or virtual attendance on Zoom.
What makes this conversation important
In THE AI CON: How To Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper), Dr. Emily M. Bender, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, and Dr. Alex Hanna, Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute, meticulously break down and reconstruct how we think about so-called artificial intelligence and, in doing so, upend the overblown claims of AI hype. With expertise drawn from years of scholarship, Bender and Hanna offer keen perspective and pointed humor as they explain how these technologies actually work. They go on to investigate attempts to use these tools in government, law, healthcare, journalism, art and beyond—and the damage being done amid the broken promises of the technology.
Bender and Hanna’s expertise stands out among the critics of AI and its attendant hype. Bender, a linguist, was among the inaugural Time AI 100 and her explosive Stochastic Parrots paper (ACM 2021), sounded the alarm about the risks and dangers of the gigantic large language models that are the core of chatbots and similar technologies. Hanna, a sociologist by training, looks at how the data that fuels computational technologies exacerbates racial, gender, and class inequality. Her resignation from Google’s Ethical AI team generated widespread attention for its sharp critiques of corporate racism.
About the Book
THE AI CON: How To Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want: A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world.
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?
The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, are “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype”. Hype looks and smells fishy: It twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con, Bender and Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms.
Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account. Together, Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.
Speakers
Dr. Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington where she is also the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master of Science program and affiliate faculty in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. In 2023, she was included in the inaugural Time 100 list of the most influential people in AI. She is frequently consulted by policymakers, from municipal officials to the federal government to the United Nations, for insight into how to understand so-called AI technologies. (photo: Susan Doupé)
Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a Lecturer in the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry, a proponent of community-based uses of technology, and a highly sought-after speaker and expert who has been featured across the media, including articles in the Washington Post, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Time. (photo: Will Toft)
Resources
Partners
This event is an initiative sponsored by H&A in Action at San José State University (a California State University campus) to bring you conversations about the most urgent news of the moment as we launch our new Advanced Institute for Ethical Technologies. Thanks to our partners for supporting this event: Cross-Campus Interdisciplinary Responsible Computing Learning Experience (CIRCLE), Responsible Computing Club, the Department of Humanities, and the Masters of Records and Archive Administration program.
For any questions, please contact Dr. Katherine D. Harris, Director of Public Programming for the College of Humanities & the Arts (katherine.harris@sjsu.edu).
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