The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want is a scathing, timely, and thoroughly researched dismantling of the narrative surrounding contemporary artificial intelligence. Written by computational linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna, the book takes direct aim at Silicon Valley’s marketing machine, arguing that what we call “AI” is neither intelligent nor autonomous. Instead, the authors expose these tools as clever pattern-matching algorithms, synthetic text generators, and labor-intensive automated systems wrapped in inflated rhetoric to attract venture capital and justify surveillance capitalism.

Rather than painting a sci-fi dystopia governed by sentient super-computers, the authors ground their critique in the present day. They show how the hype cycle surrounding large language models serves to concentrate corporate power, degrade working conditions, and divert attention away from real, immediate social and environmental harms. Written with a mix of academic rigour and biting wit, the book urges readers to stop treating software as a magic box and start demanding transparency, accountability, and democratic control over technology.