MozFest 2025: Rupture, Narrative, and Trans Justice
I had the opportunity to attend MozFest -- Mozilla's annual festival -- the weekend of November 7 to 9 in Barcelona, Spain. Taking place in the absolutely...
OpenAI Tries to Shift Responsibility to Users
OpenAI is trying to shift the blame for bad legal and medical advice from its chatbot away from the company and onto users. We agree that no chatbot should be used for medical or legal advice.
Fuck Waymo, Long Live KitKat
A self-driving car killed a beloved SF cat. It’s part of a long history of tech companies using the Bay as a testing ground at our expense. People have had enough.
How Amazon Is Laying Off Some Workers While Spying on Others
As the company lays off thousands workers, a new DAIR report reveals how Amazon surveills and punishes its delivery drivers
Reflecting on "AI" in the Himalayan foothills
By Emily The Himalayan foothills, as seen from the kora walk around the Dalai Lama’s temple complex Last week, I had the immense good fortune to participate...
Sora 2 Serves up More Slop
What we think about OpenAI's new "video-audio generation system," Sora 2
If Your Favorite Company Jumped for AI, Would You Jump Too?
New reporting shows companies are pursuing “AI” because they have FOMO, not because it’s good for business.
Meta to Mine Media for More “AI” Training Data
We read this week in the Wall Street Journal that Meta is on the prowl for more content to train its ever-hungry AI tools and chatbot.
Back to School is Better Without "AI"
It’s that time of year again, when fall is in the air and “AI” is back and worse than ever, creepy-crawling into every corner of our education system.
AI Doomerist Fandoms and Why We Call it Fan Fiction
By Emily We've taken a part a few AI doomer artifacts on the podcast, including most recently the "AI 2027" web page in Episode 56 but also a Google DeepMind...
Are We Supposed to Celebrate Lethal Technology?
By: Decca Muldowney and Emily M. Bender [This post contains discussion of suicide and eating disorders. Please take care. See the end of the newsletter for...
“AI” skepticism went mainstream this week
After years of non-stop hype and bloviation, a flood of recent news stories suggest the tide may be turning on “AI”. Headlines this week announced AI is a...
Friends Don't Let Friends Prompt
By Emily Alex and I were at WorldCon (the World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention) last week, talking about The AI Con with people whose livelihood...
OpenAI Does a Sinophobia
By Emily The book tour and other summer travel have been keeping us busy recently, hence the low frequency of posting on this newsletter, but I wanted to...
THE AI CON Publicity Tour
It has been a wild few weeks with non-stop media work as we do our best to get the word about about The AI Con. It's been super interesting, too, to...
The AI Con Book Release
It's book release week and we couldn't be more excited. The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want officially drops Tuesday, May...
I Hate Wasting Time on Identifying AI Slop
I Hate Wasting Time on Identifying AI Slop By Alex I hate spending time trying to decipher if something is AI slop or not. I do not enjoy that I need to...
Calling All Mad Scientists: Reject "AI" as a Framing of Your Work
By Emily tl;dr: Every time you describe your work that involves statistical modeling as "AI" you are lending your power and credibility to Musk and DOGE. Mad...
Upcoming talks & events
We are really looking forward to our book launch events in May and June, and also want to let you know about some earlier events where we are each speaking:...
Pushback and accountability
By Emily In the midst of all of the political chaos these past few weeks have brought, the drumbeat of AI hype continues unabated, and indeed, it is often...