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

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 6: "I'm Sorry, Dave, I'm Afraid I Can’t Do That: AI Doomers, AI Boosters, and Why None of That Makes Sense".

Looking ahead

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

• 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!