
The AI Con
How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want
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Narrated by:
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Jade Wheeler
About this listen
A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world.
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?
The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype looks and smells fishy: It twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con, Bender and Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms.
Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account. Together, Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.
©2025 Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna (P)2025 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Written by seasoned tech executive Sandy Carter, AI First, Human Always is your guidebook to the seven hottest trends in AI. This book will recalibrate your approach to the exponential curve of emerging AI solutions for business. It will help you transform today's unstoppable currents of change into tailwinds that propel your organization to great heights.
By: Sandy Carter
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More Everything Forever
- AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity
- By: Adam Becker
- Narrated by: Greg Tremblay
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Tech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us. According to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and more, the only good future for humanity is one powered by technology: trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs. In More Everything Forever, science writer Adam Becker investigates these wildly implausible and often profoundly immoral visions of tomorrow—and shows why, in reality, there is no good evidence that they will, or should, come to pass.
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Puts words to thoughts that have been haunting me
- By Ellen L. on 04-24-25
By: Adam Becker
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The AI-Driven Leader
- Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions
- By: Geoff Woods
- Narrated by: Geoff Woods
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The difference between growing your business and going out of business is your ability to think strategically. The problem is, most leaders are stuck in the operational weeds, struggling to find the time to make better strategic decisions. This challenge is only heightened by the rise of AI. While you know AI is the future, current demands leave you with no time to explore its benefits. Meanwhile, your competition is gaining an edge by integrating AI. The time to act is now.
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Incredible!
- By Kaylee Richard on 03-24-25
By: Geoff Woods
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The Thinking Machine
- Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip
- By: Stephen Witt
- Narrated by: Stephen Witt
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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In June of 2024, thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of video game equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer. Essential to Nvidia’s meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI.
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A wonderful book!
- By John K. Clark on 04-13-25
By: Stephen Witt
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Apple in China
- The Capture of the World's Greatest Company
- By: Patrick McGee
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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For listeners of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs and Chris Miller’s Chip War, a riveting look at how Apple helped build China’s dominance in electronics assembly and manufacturing only to find itself trapped in a relationship with an authoritarian state making ever-increasing demands.
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Performance is so robotic it’s distracting.
- By robert Campbell on 05-29-25
By: Patrick McGee
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The Nvidia Way
- Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant
- By: Tae Kim
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial intelligence: the company’s chips are powering the generative-AI revolution, and demand is insatiable. For all the current interest and attention, however, Nvidia is not of our time. Founded more than three decades ago in a Denny’s in East San Jose, for years it was known primarily in the then-niche world of computer gaming. In fact, the company’s leather-jacketed leader, Jensen Huang, is the longest-serving CEO in an industry marked by near constant turmoil and failure.
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Don’t Buy This Book Be Forewarned
- By Susan Hess on 12-25-24
By: Tae Kim
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Agentic Artificial Intelligence
- Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent Business, Work and Life
- By: Pascal Bornet, Jochen Wirtz, Thomas H. Davenport, and others
- Narrated by: Rory Young
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a practical, non-technical guide for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and curious minds. This comprehensive guide on agentic AI cuts through the hype and offers a clear, jargon-free strategic roadmap to understanding and applying this technology. The authors bring a rare perspective, having implemented agentic AI across diverse organizations—from global enterprises to agile startups—witnessing both remarkable successes and sobering failures.
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Agent specific topics were good
- By James Oravec on 05-09-25
By: Pascal Bornet, and others
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Prompt Engineering for Generative AI
- Future-Proof Inputs for Reliable AI Outputs
- By: James Phoenix, Mike Taylor
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion have unprecedented potential. Because they have been trained on all the public text and images on the internet, they can make useful contributions to a wide variety of tasks. And with the barrier to entry greatly reduced today, practically any developer can harness LLMs and diffusion models to tackle problems previously unsuitable for automation. With this book, you'll gain a solid foundation in generative AI, including how to apply these models in practice.
By: James Phoenix, and others
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The AI Conundrum
- Harnessing the Power of AI for Your Organization—Profitably and Safely
- By: Caleb Briggs, Rex Briggs
- Narrated by: Tim Morgan
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Artificial intelligence, or AI, can recognize a pattern from any set of data it is given, which is what makes it such an extraordinarily powerful tool. But because not all patterns are authentic or reliable, AI’s pattern-finding superpower can lead to spurious patterns. Hence the conundrum at the heart of AI: its greatest strength can also be its greatest weakness. Targeting the businessperson who needs to know how to use AI profitably and responsibly, Caleb Briggs and Rex Briggs offer a foundational understanding of AI that is easy to grasp yet thorough enough to be used effectively.
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Great explanations of how AI works, with lots of case illustrations
- By 2107MB on 12-26-24
By: Caleb Briggs, and others
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Everything You Need to Know About ChatGPT
- A Practical Guide to Understanding and Using the World’s Most Popular AI
- By: Julian Vexley
- Narrated by: Michelle Peitz
- Length: 1 hr and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Have you ever chatted with a computer that seemed to really get you? Asked it a question and, seconds later, it gave you an answer that was actually useful—or even surprisingly insightful? If you’ve had that experience recently, there’s a good chance you were talking to ChatGPT. It might feel a bit like science fiction—an artificial intelligence that can hold a conversation, write emails, draft stories, explain complex topics, and even tell you a joke or two. But ChatGPT isn’t a futuristic fantasy anymore.
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Love it
- By Edwardeterson on 06-03-25
By: Julian Vexley
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Putin's Sledgehammer
- The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse into Mercenary Chaos
- By: Candace Rondeaux
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In June 2023, the Wagner Group assembled an armed convoy that included tanks and rocket launchers and set out on what seemed like a journey to take control of Moscow. The last person to attempt such a venture was Adolf Hitler. Wagner’s power began from patronage, then grew from international theft and extortion, until it was so great it exposed the weakness of Russia’s conventional military and became a threat to the Russian state, one that was not demonstrably eliminated until a private jet containing Wagner’s core commanders was blown up in midair.
By: Candace Rondeaux
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The AI Mirror
- How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking
- By: Shannon Vallor
- Narrated by: Kim Niemi
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.
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Timely But Incomplete
- By Amazon Customer on 12-30-24
By: Shannon Vallor
Solid Hype Balance
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A must read, even if you're an AI optimist
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A must read
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I hope everyone checks this out
Important Read
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Whining about technology
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