The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

In this critical conversation on the New Books Network, host Jeffrey Herley-Gimera and co-host Alex Rivera Cartagena engage with co-authors Alex Hanna and Emily Bender—directors of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and professors at the University of Washington, respectively—about their 2025 book, *The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want*. The discussion centers on the myth of artificial intelligence as an inevitable, benevolent revolution, exposing how the technology is instead a product of corporate hype, historical eugenics, systemic bias, and exploitative labor practices. The guests argue that AI systems reproduce racial, class, and gendered inequalities through biased training data and deployment in under-resourced communities, while undermining the core values of universities: critical thinking, mentorship, and authentic human interaction. They highlight how AI’s imposition—often disguised as philanthropy—threatens democratic participation, linguistic diversity, and intellectual formation, especially in culturally rich, decolonial contexts like Puerto Rico. The conversation calls for universities and communities to resist automation without accountability, using tools like the book’s six critical questions to interrogate AI’s real-world impacts and reclaim agency over technology’s role in education and society.