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A review by alliej
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna
informative
medium-paced
2.5
I am giving this book an additional half star for content, because some of the new information presented to me. It was informative, but I found the overall voice to be grating, and consistently trying too hard to be funny.
It’s interesting to me that the authors mention their podcast—it is abundantly clear to me that the chapters within this book were not necessarily written in connection with each other. In other words, the chapters feel as if they were written to serve as individual articles, rather than as parts of a whole. This is especially obvious when the same phrases come up, over and over again. I was also frustrated by how often the phrase “in this chapter” or “as we’ll discuss in [chapter number].” It was bizarre. Excluding the table of contents and chapter headers themselves, the word “chapter” was used on 56 different occasions throughout the book. Personally, I don’t need a callback to a topic that was discussed 30 pages ago. Maybe I’m being petty, but I found this contributed to the overall condescending tone of the book.
Although The AI Con had interesting things to say about the AI development field and its outsized capabilities and impact on the world, I found it to be redundant and bloated, despite the relatively short length. The repetition was unnecessary, and borderline insulting. There are much better books on the topic out there, without the insufferable voices of the authors.
It’s interesting to me that the authors mention their podcast—it is abundantly clear to me that the chapters within this book were not necessarily written in connection with each other. In other words, the chapters feel as if they were written to serve as individual articles, rather than as parts of a whole. This is especially obvious when the same phrases come up, over and over again. I was also frustrated by how often the phrase “in this chapter” or “as we’ll discuss in [chapter number].” It was bizarre. Excluding the table of contents and chapter headers themselves, the word “chapter” was used on 56 different occasions throughout the book. Personally, I don’t need a callback to a topic that was discussed 30 pages ago. Maybe I’m being petty, but I found this contributed to the overall condescending tone of the book.
Although The AI Con had interesting things to say about the AI development field and its outsized capabilities and impact on the world, I found it to be redundant and bloated, despite the relatively short length. The repetition was unnecessary, and borderline insulting. There are much better books on the topic out there, without the insufferable voices of the authors.