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

You're invited to a public talk by Alex Hanna. Dr. Alex Hanna is a writer and sociologist of technology, labor, and politics, and the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR).

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? The answer to these questions, we respond: 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 this talk, I discuss The AI Con, (coauthored with Dr. Emily M. Bender), which offers a take-down of AI hype across its many forms. We show how to spot AI hype, deconstruct it, and expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype. Together, we expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech's drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.

This lecture is part of Unprompted: Generative Questions on AI, a new series jointly organized by the John Hope Franklin Humanities institute and the Schiff Family Dean of Humanities and the Arts. The series brings humanists, artists, interpretive social scientists to Duke for public lectures and student engagements, in order to prompt deeper questions on the rapid adoption of AI in higher ed and contemporary society. Dr. Hanna's visit is generously co-sponsored by the Sanford School of Public Policy and DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy.

Dr. Hanna's work centers on the data used in new computational technologies-such as AI and machine learning-and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. She also works in the area of social movements, focusing on the dynamics of anti-racist campus protest in the US and Canada. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics and a BA in Sociology from Purdue University, and an MS and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Hanna is the co-author of The AI Con (Harper, 2025), a book about AI and the hype around it.