Hello everyone! Welcome to the AI Skeptics Reading Group. We're reading The AI Con by Dr. Alex Hanna & Dr. Emily M. Bender.

We have some exciting developments over the next several weeks, particularly if you're attending the Thursday video chats, so please read on to the "schedule" section to see what's up.

Format(s)

As a reminder, there are a few ways to participate and get involved:

• this newsletter: obviously you'll get emails if you subscribe. I'll send emails on Mondays
• video chats: on Thursdays at 8pm ET we'll recap the reading for that week and chat about it (and readings from that week). You can join the video chat at the appropriate time at https://al2.in/ReadingGroupRoom
• signal group chat for people who would like to chat about the content from this week's readings over text, or who can't participate in video chats. You can join the signal chat here. There are a lot of good conversations in there basically all the time, and I also post reminders, links, and workshop ideas and stuff sometimes.
• social media: I'm on twitter/x, bluesky, mastodon, etc... and I'll post about reading group stuff sometimes.

Schedule

This week I'm reading Chapter 4: "If It Quacks Like a Doc: AI Hype and Social Services".

Special guests

For our video chat (on Thursday, November 6 at 8pm), we're going to have a guest joining us: Dr. Jeremy Milloy (he/him). Jeremy is a historian of work and capitalism and their impacts on human health at Wayne State University; more recently, as a climate and labor organizer, he's been leading a mutual aid circle about reclaiming and redirecting our attention. I really hope you'll join us - I'm looking forward to chatting and hearing his thoughts.

For the final week of The AI Con (on Thursday, December 4), we'll be joined by another special guest: Dr. Alex Hanna (she/her). I'll have more to share about Dr. Hanna joining us, but I'm tremendously excited to talk with her as well.

Looking ahead

If you're looking ahead, our upcoming schedule looks like this:

• November 3: Chapter 4 ("If It Quacks Like a Doc: AI Hype and Social Services") with Jeremy Milloy
• November 10: Chapter 5 ("Artifice or Intelligence? AI Hype in Art, Journalism, and Science")
• November 17: 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")
• November 24: (Take a break!)
• December 1: Chapter 7 ("Do You Believe in Hope After Hype?" & RECAP) with Alex Hanna

Okay, that's all for now; hope to chat on signal, or see you on Thursday!