Jeff and Jason sit down with Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, co-authors of The AI Con, to unpack the myths and real-world harms behind today’s AI hype. They discuss why the term “AI” is so often misused, how Big Tech’s models can fail marginalized communities, and why smaller, community-driven AI projects can better serve local needs. The conversation also explores the pitfalls of generative tools, the challenges of democratizing art, and the urgent need for real accountability in the tech industry

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Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington, renowned for her work in computational linguistics, language technology, and as co-author of the influential "Stochastic Parrots" paper.

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CHAPTERS:

00:00⁠ - Podcast begins

01:44 - Introducing Emily Bender and Alex Hanna

02:23 - Why “AI” Is Misleading: Better Terms for Today’s Tech

04:31 - What Is AI Actually Good For? Real-World Use Cases

06:29 - Hidden Data Opportunities in AI and Language Models

07:20 - Community-Driven AI: Real Benefits Beyond Big Tech

09:45 - The Thai Library Thought Experiment: Why AI Lacks Meaning

14:23 - Inside DAIR: Building Alternative AI Futures

⁠19:13 - AI and Creativity: Remixing, Music, and Fair Compensation

24:00⁠⁠ - Does AI Democratize Creativity or Homogenize Voices?

33:47 - Debunking AI Doomerism and TESCREAL: Media’s Role

40:29 - Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: Podcast Origins and Mission

42:07 - Book Launch Details: The AI Con Release Events

45:07 - Can We Build Effective AI Guardrails?

50:30 - Synthetic Text Extruding Machine... STEM?

50:56 - Oxford Comma y/n?

51:18 - Thank you to Emily Bender and Alex Hanna for joining the AI Inside podcast

Thank you to Emily Bender and Alex Hanna for joining the AI Inside podcast

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Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI, OpenAI adds shopping to ChatGPT in a challenge to Google, researchers secretly experimented on Reddit users with AI-generated comments, and so much more on the AI Inside podcast!

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CHAPTERS:

03:15 - Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI

12:36 - ⁠Duolingo More Than Doubles Courses as ‘AI-First’ Push Draws Heat⁠

15:07 - Google launches AI tools for practicing languages through personalized lessons

16:09 - Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists

22:53 - Prompt engineer: The Hottest AI Job of 2023 Is Already Obsolete

28:10 - Meta’s ChatGPT competitor shows how your friends use AI

37:45 - Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company’s code was written by AI

39:53 - Altman and Nadella, Who Ignited the Modern AI Boom Together, Are Drifting Apart

41:21 - OpenAI Adds Shopping to ChatGPT in a Challenge to Google

42:58 - Researchers secretly experimented on Reddit users with AI-generated comments

47:53 - Clip from our Interview with Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, authors of The AI Con

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Hosts Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis dive into OpenAI’s desire to buy Google Chrome, Perplexity AI’s talks with Samsung and Motorola, Google DeepMind’s claim that AI could cure all disease in a decade, and the Oscars’ decision to allow A.I.—with caveats—and more.

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CHAPTERS:

00:01:58 - OpenAI would buy Google's Chrome, exec testifies at trial

00:13:49 - Perplexity AI in Talks to Integrate Assistant Into Samsung, Motorola Phones

00:23:13 - AI could cure all disease in a decade, says Google DeepMind CEO— Perplexity’s Aravind Srinivas agrees

00:29:27 - Draft executive order outlines plan to integrate AI into K-12 schools

00:36:48 - Google just fired the first shot of the next battle in the AI war

00:49:18 - IEEE: Google Succeeds With LLMs While Meta and OpenAI Stumble

00:50:04 - Columbia student suspended over interview cheating tool raises $5.3M to ‘cheat on everything’

00:58:31 - Oscars OK the Use of A.I., With Caveats

01:01:09 - ChatGPT burns tens of millions of Softbank dollars listening to you thanking it

01:03:12 - To stop scraping, Wikipedia releases Kaggle dataset

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Jeff Jarvis and Jason Howell dive into this week’s AI headlines: OpenAI prototypes a ChatGPT social feed, GPT-4.5 retires as GPT-4.1 arrives, OpenAI boosts memory and chat history features, Nvidia expands US chip production amid export control shakeups, Bill Gates predicts AI’s impact on teaching and medicine, ChatGPT Barbie Box memes challenge creative boundaries, Notion launches AI-powered email, Google’s DolphinGemma tackles dolphin communication, and “vegetative electron microscopy” becomes science’s latest digital artifact.

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CHAPTERS:

0:03:52 - OpenAI is building a social network

0:08:38 - ChatGPT now has a section for your AI-generated images

0:10:34 - OpenAI’s new GPT-4.1 AI models focus on coding

0:13:16 - OpenAI's "agentic software engineer"

0:17:51 - ChatGPT can now remember and reference all your previous chats

0:24:02 - Nvidia says it plans to manufacture some AI chips in the US

0:29:09 - Bill Gates says AI is coming for 2 kinds of jobs that once seemed tech-proof

0:34:31 - ‘She helps cheer me up’: the people forming relationships with AI chatbots

0:41:13 - A.I. Action Figures Flood Social Media (Accessories Included)

0:47:28 - Notion Mail is a minimalist but powerful take on email

0:52:04 - DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

0:54:53 - Thought experiment in the National Library of Thailand

0:59:19 - A weird phrase is plaguing scientific papers – and we traced it back to a glitch in AI training data

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Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief AI scientist and Turing Award winner, joins us to discuss the limits of today’s LLMs, why generative AI may be hitting a wall, what’s missing for true human-level intelligence, the real meaning of AGI, Meta’s open-source strategy with Llama, the future of AI assistants in smart glasses, why diversity in AI models matters, and how open models could shape the next era of innovation

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CHAPTERS:

0:00:00 - Podcast begins

0:01:40 - Introduction to Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta

0:02:11 - The limitations and hype cycles of LLMs, and historical patterns of overestimating new AI paradigms.

0:05:45 - The future of AI research, and the need for machines that understand the physical world, can reason and plan, and are driven by human-defined objectives

0:14:47 - AGI Timeline, human-level AI within a decade, with deep learning as the foundation for advanced machine intelligence

0:21:35 - Why true AI intelligence requires abstract reasoning and hierarchical planning beyond language capabilities, unlike today's neural networks that rely on computational tricks

0:30:24 - Meta's open-source LLAMA strategy, empowering academia and startups, and commercial benefits

0:36:10 - The future of AI assistants, wearable tech, cultural diversity, and open-source models

0:42:52 - The impact of immigration policies on US technological leadership and STEM education

0:44:26 - Does Yann have a cat?

0:45:19 - Thank you to Yann LaCun for joining the AI Inside podcast

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Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis discuss OpenAI's record-breaking $40 billion funding round, ChatGPT's image generation update sparking controversy, Amazon unveils its first agentic AI model, and Elon Musk's xAI takes a bold step toward the 'Everything App'.

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NEWS

0:02:07 - BREAKING: Google Gemini is shaking up its AI leadership ranks

0:06:21 - OpenAI closes $40 billion funding round, largest private tech deal on record

0:13:51 - ChatGPT’s new image generator is really good at faking receipts

0:23:03 - OpenAI plans to release a new ‘open’ AI language model in the coming months

0:28:37 - Amazon unveils Nova Act, an AI agent that can control a web browser

0:33:18 - How Meta’s Upcoming $1,000+ Smart Glasses With a Screen Will Work

0:39:41 - Musk's social media firm X bought by his AI company, valued at $33 billion

0:42:20 - MCP: The new “USB-C for AI” that’s bringing fierce rivals together

0:45:36 - Sinofsky: MCP - It's Hot, But Will It Win?

0:48:28 - AI-made works can’t be copyrightable, says US court… for now, at least.

0:56:24 - The Bluetooth Lady Speaks! ‘Voice-Over Actors Will Be Artisans in the AI Age’

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Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis discuss OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o image generation update, Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro release, the emotional impact of chatbots on users, The Atlantic's LibGen database search tool, and more!

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NEWS

0:02:19 - OpenAI: Introducing 4o Image Generation

0:19:48 - Gemini 2.5: Our most intelligent AI model

0:32:27 - OpenAI has released its first research into how using ChatGPT affects people’s emotional well-being

0:37:18 - The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem

0:48:16 - Open Source devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries

0:52:59 - Perplexity wants to buy TikTok and open-source its algorithm

0:55:50 - "KI ist nur ein Werkzeug. Jedes Werkzeug kann missbraucht werden"

1:03:07 - AMC Theatres will screen a Swedish movie 'visually dubbed' with the help of AI

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Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis discuss NVIDIA's GTC conference with CEO Jensen Huang's keynote on tokens, the Vera Rubin CPU, and the intersection of AI and robotics, plus more!

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NEWS

0:02:23 - Nvidia announces Blackwell Ultra GB300 and Vera Rubin, its next AI ‘superchips’

0:22:37 - Nvidia and Yum! Brands team up to expand AI ordering

0:25:49 - Google brings a ‘canvas’ feature to Gemini, plus Audio Overview

0:31:08 - Gemini 2.0, Google’s newest flagship AI, can generate text, images, and speech

0:34:42 - People are using Google’s new AI model to remove watermarks from images

0:36:06 - Google plans to release new ‘open’ AI models for drug discovery

0:40:36 - EFF: California’s A.B. 412: A Bill That Could Crush Startups and Cement A Big Tech AI Monopoly

0:44:20 - Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo and More Than 400 Hollywood Names Urge Trump to Not Let AI Companies ‘Exploit’ Copyrighted Works

0:49:11 - Anthropic CEO floats idea of giving AI a “quit job” button, sparking skepticism

0:52:19 - People say they prefer stories written by humans over AI-generated works, yet new study suggests that’s not quite true

0:57:36 - AI ring tracks spelled words in American Sign Language

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Jason Howell and Jeff Jarvis examine OpenAI's new agent tools for developers, the Manus AI model, and Apple's AI feature delays, plus insights from Sameer Samat, Head of Android at Google, on Android's AI future.

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NEWS

00:02:52 - OpenAI launches new tools to help businesses build AI agents

00:12:18 - Manus probably isn’t China’s second ‘DeepSeek moment’

00:18:56 - Apple says some AI improvements to Siri delayed to 2026

00:23:14 - Interview with Sameer Samat, Android Head at Google

00:43:51 - Larry Page Has a New AI Startup

00:46:03 - AI Search Has A Citation Problem

00:51:12 - OpenAI says it has trained an AI that’s ‘really good’ at creative writing

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Jason Howell returns from Mobile World Congress with some AI trends to discuss along with Jeff Jarvis. OpenAI has some pricey plans in the works, Amazon announces Alexa Plus, and more!

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NEWS

0:04:11 - Gemini Live ‘Astra’ video and screen sharing rolling out in March

0:13:52 - Deutsche Telekom and Perplexity announce new ‘AI Phone’ priced at under $1K

0:16:56 - OpenAI Plots Charging $20,000 a Month For PhD-Level Agents

0:22:31 - The LA Times published an op-ed warning of AI’s dangers. It also published its AI tool’s reply

0:28:22 - The future of Google Search just rolled out on Labs - and AI Mode changes everything

0:35:41 - Amazon announces AI-powered Alexa Plus

0:38:06 - Judge denies Musk’s attempt to block OpenAI from becoming for-profit entity

0:39:18 - Eerily realistic AI voice demo sparks amazement and discomfort online

0:45:57 - Turing Award winners warn over unsafe deployment of AI models

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