I will just add that it probably wasn't a good idea to read this right after Hayek's Bastards (unfortunately both have a ton of holds on them, so I feel under pressure to get them back to the library). There's only so much endurance I have for reading about so many awful people...
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pdotb finished reading The AI Con by Alex Hanna

The AI Con by Alex Hanna, Emily M. Bender
A smart, incisive take-down of the bogus claims being made about so-called ‘artificial intelligence’, exposing the real harm these technologies …
pdotb commented on The AI Con by Alex Hanna
I'm not really sure I want to write a review, per se. There's bits I really like, especially the explanation of how LLMs work, and the analogy with T9 I found particularly helpful. I also really liked the description of the groups "AI Doomers" and "AI Boosters", and why it's all bullshit. I think the problem I have is that I'm not really the ideal target audience for the book -- I read "Weapons of Math Destruction" some years ago, and that overlaps pretty heavily chapter 4 of this book, and I even read Weizenbaum's book (a lot of years ago), so I'm familiar with the debates about what (artificial) intelligence is. I think there really is lots of good stuff here, but it's best as a first introduction to the topics of the current AI hype, and I'm not really well suited to judging that.
For anyone interested in knowing more about the book, I was inspired to request it from the library by an episode of the Politics Theory Other podcast, e.g., soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/hayeks
pdotb replied to reading tofu's status
@tofuwabohu Yes! Degussa is definitely there, though it's a pretty lengthy section with a whole cast of horrors, most of whom I (fortunately) wasn't familiar with.
pdotb started reading The AI Con by Alex Hanna

The AI Con by Alex Hanna, Emily M. Bender
A smart, incisive take-down of the bogus claims being made about so-called ‘artificial intelligence’, exposing the real harm these technologies …
pdotb finished reading Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian

Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian
Neoliberals should have seen the end of the Cold War as a total victory—but they didn’t. Instead, they saw the …
pdotb reviewed Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian
Alarming stuff
4 stars
Interesting book that draws the connections between portions of the neoliberal right and the alt-right/far-right, arguing for connections between many members of the MPS and anti-immigration, race science, and gold-hoarding survivalism. I was going to quote more but the first two were just so grim I felt like I needed a shower. The chapter on gold took an interesting turn into the origins of the AfD that I wasn't aware of.
pdotb quoted Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian
As one person involved wrote, "the mid-1970s witnessed a tremendous increase in 'hard money' books, newsletters, seminars, coin companies, survival retreats, food storage, and related businesses. The mixture of topices is captured in an issue of Libertarian Review from 1976. It included selections from German neoliberal economist Wilhelm Röpke alongside advertisements for a cassette program on "basic relaxation and ego-strengthening" by Ayn Rand's designated heir Nathaniel Branden and fine print offerings of "survival information" from Inflation Survival Letter.
— Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian (Page 133)
pdotb quoted Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian
Content warning racism, ukpol
The topic of immigration arose intermittently at Mont Pelerin Society meetings. The leading opponent of nonwhite immigration, British Conservative MP Enoch Powell was a member and spoke at several of its meetings. In Hong Kong in 1978, the same year Hayek wrote to the editor, Margaret Thatcher's speechwriter (and later editor of the National Review) John O'Sullivan gave a talk called "Migration to Utopia", reflecting on the recent episodes of settlement in Britain.
— Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian (Page 77)
Powell is best know today for being very racist, but it's worth remembering that he was an early neoliberal and, in many ways, Thatcher's intellectual predecessor.
pdotb finished reading Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Born to a petty thief in London’s notorious Newgate prison and determined to make her way in a rapacious and …
pdotb started reading Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian

Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian
Neoliberals should have seen the end of the Cold War as a total victory—but they didn’t. Instead, they saw the …
pdotb finished reading When Genocide Wasn’t News by Martin Lukacs
pdotb reviewed When Genocide Wasn’t News by Martin Lukacs
Illuminating
5 stars
Content warning Gaza, genocide, canpol
Starts with a quantitative analysis of Canadian media, illustrating both the quantity of reporting on Palestinian and Israeli deaths, as well as the emotiveness of the words chosen. Not a huge surprise that the National Post is the worst, followed by the Globe and Mail, but even the supposedly 'progressive' Toronto Star fares poorly. Much of the rest of the book is accounts of individual journalists' experiences inside newsrooms, facing pushback and stalling when trying to propose stories or changes of emphasis. There's a powerful account of the effects of HRC, including quotes from the major journalists' unions, and also illustrative stories of how the truth can be distorted to create conspiracies. The first chapter mentions Herman's and Chomsky's 'Manufacturing Consent', and it's hard to feel that's not what's going on in Canada.
pdotb quoted When Genocide Wasn’t News by Martin Lukacs
Content warning Gaza, genocide, canpol
In the fall of 2021, I found myself the target of an orchestrated harassment campaign.
It was the first time I had ever heard of HonestReporting Canada (HRC)—a pro-Israel media watchdog. The campaign, which called on its members to “condemn” me, came in response to a TV report I produced for CTV News Montreal on the Wet’suwet’en protests. The weird part is that my coverage had nothing to do with the Middle East.
Montrealers gathered in support of the hereditary chiefs who were in a stand-off with the RCMP and the Coastal GasLink company in British Columbia. It was a strong and straightforward story. The night it aired, colleagues congratulated me. One anchor and senior producer wrote: “Your story was excellent. Well worth the energy you obviously put into it. Your expertise shone through.”
However, the next morning I woke up to an onslaught of emails and DMs from HRC members who took issue with a visual detail: one of the people I interviewed was wearing a keffiyeh and holding a Palestinian flag. HRC labeled this man an “anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protester,” and what followed was weeks of relentless harassment flooding my inboxes, demanding that I be fired, claiming that “people like me should not exist.”
Some said they knew where I lived.
I forwarded every message to my managers, every time requesting four things: advice and support for how to deal with the harassment, that CTV issue a cease-and-desist letter to HRC, clarification on whether there were any rules against showing a keffiyeh or Palestinian flag on TV, and clarification on whether leadership stood behind my coverage.
Each time, I was met with silence or indifference.
Then, several months after the broadcast, my story had quietly disappeared from CTV’s website. The video report and copy had been unpublished without explanation or consultation and replaced with a short copy rewritten by a young, white male colleague. My name had been removed from the byline along with the quote from the protester.
— When Genocide Wasn’t News by Martin Lukacs, Dania Majid, Jason Toney (30%)









