A review by cecinator20
The AI Con by Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna

informative medium-paced

3.25

I wanted to like this, I really did, as I think the topic is important and I was hopeful that the linguistics and sociology backgrounds of the authors would enlighten me in a way that my technical background was missing, but alas. The uninitiated might find this book interesting/mind blowing/shocking, but I guess I was already aware enough of the evils of AI hype? My biggest complaint is that the subtitle implies you’ll learn how to fight the hype, but the authors do not deliver, instead maybe instructing the reader how to identify big, bad AI (hype). The tone was also not it - I think other reviewers have correctly identified it as snarky, but also, the authors unfortunately have the unwarranted self-importance of podcast bros 😬