Alex Hanna, author of THE AI CON- an in-person Boswell event

Boswell Book Company presents an evening with Alex Hanna, coauthor of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want. This event is cosponsored by Marquette University Center for Data, Ethics, and Society.

Click here to order your copy of The AI Con from Boswell. Signed copies are available on most event preorders. If you have a personalization request, enter it in "order comments" at checkout. Please note: signed copies will ship AFTER the event. Remember to select “In Store Pickup” at check out to avoid unnecessary shipping fees on books you intend to pick up at the event.

The AI Con is a smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world. Authors Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Together, Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.

"With their expansive, interdisciplinary expertise, Bender and Hanna write with absolute authority and unapologetic clarity about all the ways AI companies wield and weaponize language...Despite the depressing nature of their subject, Bender and Hanna narrate it with incredible wit and verve...Come for the piercing observations; leave with the tools to slice your way through the absurdist narratives that prop up the AI industry and to hold it accountable." — Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI

Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a Lecturer in the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry, a proponent of community-based uses of technology, and a highly sought-after speaker and expert who has been featured across the media, including articles in the Washington Post, Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Time.