Once upon a time, artificial general intelligence was the only business plan OpenAI seemed to have. Tech journalist Brian Merchant joins Emily and Alex for a time warp to the beginning of the current wave of AI hype, nearly a decade ago. And it sure seemed like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and company were luring investor dollars to their newly-formed venture solely on the hand-wavy promise that someday, LLMs themselves would figure out how to turn a profit.

Brian Merchant is an author, journalist in residence at the AI Now Institute, and co-host of the tech news podcast System Crash.

References:

Elon Musk and partners form nonprofit to stop AI from ruining the world

How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers From Taking Over

Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar AI Plan Is About Far More Than Saving the World

Brian’s recent report on the business model of AGI, for the AI Now Institute: AI Generated Business: The rise of AGI and the rush to find a working revenue model

Previously on MAIHT3K: Episode 21: The True Meaning of 'Open Source' (feat. Sarah West and Andreas Liesenfeld)

Fresh AI Hell:

OpenAI explores advertising as it steps up revenue drive

If an AI company ran Campbell's Soup with the same practices they use to handle data

Humans are the new 'luxury item'

Itching to write a book? AI publisher Spines wants to make a deal

A company pitched Emily her own 'verified avatar'

Don't upload your medical images to chatbots

A look at a pilot program in Georgia that uses 'jailbots' to track inmates

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Emily

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Alex

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.

From Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires with no education expertise keep using their big names and big dollars to hype LLMs for classrooms. Promising ‘comprehensive AI tutors', or just ‘educator-informed’ tools to address understaffed classrooms, this hype is just another round of Silicon Valley pointing to real problems -- under-supported school systems -- but then directing attention and resources to their favorite toys. Former educator and DAIR research fellow Adrienne Williams joins to explain the problems this tech-solutionist redirection fails to solve, and the new ones it creates.

Adrienne Williams started organizing in 2018 while working as a junior high teacher for a tech owned charter school. She expanded her organizing in 2020 after her work as an Amazon delivery driver, where many of the same issues she saw in charter schools were also in evidence. Adrienne is a Public Voices Fellow on Technology in the Public Interest with The OpEd Project in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation, as well as a Research Fellow at both (DAIR) and Just Tech.

References:

Funding Helps Teachers Build AI Tools

Sal Khan's 2023 Ted Talk: AI in the classroom can transform education

Bill Gates: My trip to the frontier of AI education

• Background: Cory Booker Hates Public Schools
• Background: Cory Booker's track record on education

Book: Access is Capture: How Edtech Reproduces Racial Inequality
Book: Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of Techno-Idealism

Previously on MAIHT3K: Episode 26, Universities Anxiously Buy Into the Hype (feat. Chris Gilliard)
Episode 17: Back to School with AI Hype in Education (feat. Haley Lepp)

Fresh AI Hell:

"Streamlining" teaching

Google, Microsoft and Perplexity are promoting scientific racism in 'AI overviews'

'Whisper' medical transcription tool used in hospitals is making things up

X's AI bot can't tell the difference between a bad game and vandalism

Prompting is not a substitute for probability measurements in large language models

Yet another 'priestbot'

Self-driving wheelchairs at Seattle-Tacoma International Airpot

You can check out future livestreams on Twitch.

Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order your copy now.

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Emily

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Alex

• Twitter: @alexhanna
• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex
• Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.

The company behind ChatGPT is back with bombastic claim that their new o1 model is capable of so-called "complex reasoning." Ever-faithful, Alex and Emily tear it apart. Plus the flaws in a tech publication's new 'AI hype index,' and some palette-cleansing new regulation against data-scraping worker surveillance.

References:

OpenAI: Learning to reason with LLMs

• How reasoning works
• GPQA, a 'graduate-level' Q&A benchmark system

Fresh AI Hell:

MIT Technology Review's AI 'AI hype index'

CFPB Takes Action to Curb Unchecked Worker Surveillance

You can check out future livestreams on Twitch.

Our book, 'The AI Con,' comes out in May! Pre-order your copy now.

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

Follow us!

Emily

• Twitter: EmilyMBender
• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender
• Bluesky: emilymbender.bsky.social

Alex

• Twitter: @alexhanna
• Mastodon: dair-community.social/@alex
• Bluesky: alexhanna.bsky.social

Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Christie Taylor.