It's been 4 months since we've cleared the backlog of Fresh AI Hell and the bullshit is coming in almost too fast to keep up with. But between a page full of awkward unicorns and a seeming slowdown in data center demand, Alex and Emily have more good news than usual to accompany this round of catharsis.

AI Hell:

LLM processing like human language processing (not)

Jack Clark predicting AGI

Sebastian Bubeck says predictions in "sparks" paper have already come true

WIRED puff piece on the Amodeis

Foundation agents & leaning in to the computational metaphor (Fig 1, p14)

Chaser: Trying to recreate the GPT unicorn

The WSJ has an AI bot for all your tax questions

ChatGPT libel

AOL.com uses autogenerated captions about attempted murder

AI coding tools fix bugs by adding bugs

"We teach AGI to think, so you don't have to"

• (from: Turing.com)

MAGA/DOGE paints teachers as glorified babysitters in push for AI

Chaser: How we are NOT using AI in the classroom

AI benchmarks are self-promoting trash — but regulators keep using them

DOGE is pushing AI tool created as "sandbox" for federal testing

"Psychological profiling" based on social media

The tariffs and ChatGPT

"I was not informed that Microsoft would sell my work to the Israeli military and government"

• Microsoft fires engineers who protested Israeli military use of its tools

Pulling back on data centers, Microsoft edition

Abandoned data centers, China edition

Bill Gates: 2 day workweek coming thanks to AI...replacing doctors and teachers??

Chaser: Tesla glue fail schadenfreude

Chaser: Let's talk about the genie trope

Chaser: We finally met!!!

Check out future streams at on Twitch, Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

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

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Emily

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Alex

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

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

After "AI" stopped meaning anything, the hype salesmen moved on to "AI" "agents", those allegedly indefatigable assistants, allegedly capable of operating your software for you -- whether you need to make a restaurant reservation, book a flight, or book a flight to a restaurant reservation. Hugging Face's Margaret Mitchell joins Emily and Alex to help break down what agents actually are, and what to actually worry about.

References:

PwC launches AI agent operating system to revolutionize AI workflows for enterprises
An Open-Source AI Agent for Doing Tasks on the Web
Scale AI announces multimillion-dollar defense deal, a major step in U.S. military automation

Other references:

Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake

Fully Autonomous AI Agents Should Not be Developed

Bender vs. Bubeck: The Great Chatbot Debate: Do LLMs Really Understand?

Democratize art

Fresh AI Hell:

DOGE suggests replacing workers with "AI" (of course)

Vape, or the tamagotchi gets it

• Via @maaikeverbruggen

"AI" for psychotherapy, still bad, still hyped

Biology (not) of LLMs

Mark Cuban's grifty chatbot

• Via @Hypervisible

Palate cleanser: "AI is the letdown"
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-intelligence/index.html

Comic relief: "Fortified with AI"

Check out future streams at on Twitch, Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

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

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

Follow us!

Emily

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

Alex

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

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

Measuring your talk time? Counting your filler words? What about "analyzing" your "emotions"? Companies that push LLM technology to surveil and summarize video meetings are increasingly offering to (purportedly) analyze your participation and assign your speech some metrics, all in the name of "productivity". Sociolinguist Nicole Holliday joins Alex and Emily to take apart claims about these "AI" meeting feedback tools, and reveal them to be just sparkling bossware, with little insight into how we talk.

Nicole Holliday is Acting Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley.

Quick note: Our guest for this episode had some sound equipment issues, which unfortunately affected her audio quality.

Main course:

Read AI Review: This AI Reads Emotions During Video Calls

• Marketing video for Read AI

Zoom rebrands existing and introduces new generative AI features

• Marketing video for Zoom Revenue Accelerator

Speech analysis startup releases AI tool that simulates difficult job interview conversation

Fresh AI Hell:

Amazon Echo will send all recordings to Amazon beginning March 28

Trump’s NIST no longer concerned with “safety” or “fairness”

Reporter Kevin Roose is feeling the bullshit

UW’s eScience institute pushing “AI” for information access

OpenAI whines about data being too expensive, with a side of Sinophobia

Check out future streams at on Twitch, Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

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

Subscribe to our newsletter via Buttondown.

Follow us!

Emily

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

Alex

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

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