JS Tan is getting his PhD at MIT and formerly worked in tech, where he spent years organizing across the industry. Clarissa Redwine helped organize the Kickstarter union, and cofounded and runs the annual tech organizing conference Circuit Breakers. Their book, Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry, is available now!

References:

• Amazon finds cases of AI causing runaway spending on tech projects
• Mark Zuckerberg had a bold plan to replace Meta staff with AI. Here’s how it imploded.

Fresh AI Hell:

• ICE x Boston Dynamics
• "OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft"
• Effective Altruists mad about someone "torturing LLMs"
• Former Seattle City Council president launches centrist slop website
• Palate cleanser: "New AI Literacy Program Awards Students Free Pizza If They Don’t Know How to Read Books Anymore"

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Keoni Mahelona is the CTO of Te Hiku Media and a Native Hawaiian from the island of Kaua'i. He's a driving force behind the development of sovereign digital technologies that aim to protect and promote Indigenous languages, knowledge, culture, and now democracy.

References:

• Microsoft/IDB paper: "The Performance of Artificial Intelligence in the Use of Indigenous American Languages"

Also referenced:

• Kaitiakitanga License
• Joanna Radin paper on Indigenous data collection

Fresh AI Hell:

• "Apple Watch's new always-on don't-call-it-transcription feature"
• Nevada County prosecutors use "AI" and insert errors into criminal cases
• UW Grand Rounds: "If AI Can Write the Note, Who Does the Thinking?"
• The "Pro-Human Assembly"

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

References:

• Gates: "The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical."
  • Also referenced: "Impulse Purchase" by OK Go
• Zuckerberg: "The Future is for Everyone"

Fresh AI Hell:

• Tristan Buckmaster's statement on OpenAI trying to take credit for his work
  • Also referenced: Emily's debate with Sébastien Bubeck
• Nature article worrying about impact of LLMs on language change for all the wrong reasons
• Palate cleanser: NYC bans "AI" in schools

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

References:

• Block press release: "From Hierarchy to Intelligence"
• "Lawsuit claims Meta's layoff decisions were made by AI, not humans"

Fresh AI Hell:

• "OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say"
  • Also referenced: Leiden Declaration
• "AI Assisted Autism Screening"
• Weird comparison of "AI" emissions to other data center activity
• Paved paradise and put up a data center
• "What if you just talked to your children"
• Palate cleanser: US judge holds DOGE accountable for output they took from ChatGPT
• Palate cleanser: Data center opposition momentum

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

References:

• Business Insider: "Sam Altman says we are in the singularity: 'This is the moment'"
  • Also referenced: Altman on the Relentless podcast
• Wall Street Journal: "How the Futuristic Hack by Rogue OpenAI Models Unfolded"
  • Also referenced: OpenAI and Anthropic press releases
• MacAskill op ed in the Guardian: "Could AI be conscious?"
  • Also referenced: Emily's Bluesky thread

Fresh AI Hell:

• Google kills AlphaFold
• "Former executive accuses Mayo of cutting corners on AI research"
• Amazon wants to use Twitch streams to train gen AI
• "Meta used AI to target workers with medical conditions for layoffs, lawsuit claims"
• Meta contaminates water in Cheyenne
• "Humanoid robot teaching assistant"
• AI companies buying and destroying antique books
• Palate cleanser: Mathematicians clap back

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

An interdisciplinary scholar and filmmaker, sava is currently working on a research project examining secondary school teachers’ experiences of genAI use, and making a film about the future of AI in education. Her speculative short film series on the harms of surveillance technology is available at screeningsurveillance.com.

References:

• "Harm Reduction: A Strategy to Mitigate the Risks of AI"
  • Also referenced: MAIHT3k newsletter, "How to talk about 'AI' without adding to the anthropomorphization"
• UNESCO "AI competency framework for students"

Fresh AI Hell:

• Hallucination rebranded as "critical confabulation"
• "Pennsylvania Board of Medicine Alleges Unlawful Practice of Medicine by an AI Chatbot"
• "Google's smart home AI will be able to use clothing to identify people"
• "Medicare AI program made them suffer in pain. Now they want answers"
• "Why do these Castro gay bars have TSA-style face scanners?"
• "County With 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'"
• Palate cleanser: "Florida AG sues OpenAI, seeks to hold CEO Altman personally liable"
• Palate cleanser: "Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school"

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

References:

• "The role of large language models in emergency care: a comprehensive benchmarking study"
• "Seattle uses AI to help triage, divert 911 medical calls"
  • Also referenced: MAIHT3k newsletter on Seattle's 911 automation
• "FDA approves early warning system for sepsis"
  • Also referenced: Underlying research paper on this system

Fresh AI Hell:

• Family business stops shipping due to automated delivery nonsense
• Google CEO Sundar Pichai says people aren't "evolved" enough to understand AI
• "California judges are testing a new AI clerk, and you won't know if it’s looking at your case"
• Nonconsensual "AI monitors" for memory care
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the goal is Star Trek computer and/or R2D2
• "A little surveillance break, as a treat"
• "Virtual child" chatbot company
• Chaser: Festus, MO residents vote out council members who approved data center

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Matt Scherer is a fellow at the anti-monopoly think tank Open Markets Institute. He previously led the workers' rights project at the Center for Democracy & Technology.

References:

• Forbes: "AI Can Change The World And Still Be A Bubble"
  • Also referenced: Is AI Profitable Yet?
• CNBC: "Altman says some investors will be left 'very burnt'"
• CNBC: "Bezos brushes off concerns of an AI bubble: 'You shouldn’t worry about it'

Fresh AI Hell:

• Empty Waymos create self-driving traffic jam
• "AA digital sponsor"
• Stanford researchers claim "AI agents...embrace Marxist ideologies"
• "Chatbots at the drive-thru"
• YouGov polling on automated juries
• Chaser: Erin Brockovich is on the case!
• AI Startup Says It Will Pay People $2,000 a Month to Masturbate
• Chaser: You used which brush!?

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

References:

• Yale Budget Lab report: "What Might AI Adoption Mean for the Fiscal and Economic Outlook?"
  • Also referenced: Karger et al. paper funded by Open Philanthropy
• Garry Tan’s gstack
• "Karpathy-Inspired Claude Code Guidelines"

Previous MAIHT3k episodes referenced:

• Episode 60: Vibe Coding: Four Security Nightmares in a Trenchcoat (with Susanna Cox)
• Episode 53: Linguists Versus 'AI' Speech Analysis (with Nicole Holliday)

Fresh AI Hell:

• Emotional surveillance at work
• DARPA call for proposals on "Decentralized Artificial Intelligence"
• CircleCI claims "the promised AI productivity boom isn’t all hype"
• Andreessen is at it again
• "A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed"
• Retraction of pro-edtech paper
• Chaser: "Minnesota passes the nation’s first ban on ‘nudification’ apps"

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Nathalie Maréchal is a writer, researcher and advocate fighting for democracy and human rights in the age of technofascism. Her latest article, "Tech Policy Is on the Front Line of Fascism vs. Democracy. Pick a Side," is available in Tech Policy Press. She is currently the managing policy director at Northeastern University’s Institute for Information, the Internet, and Democracy.

References:

• "LIVE: The Existential Threat of AI and the Need for International Cooperation"

Fresh AI Hell:

• "The AI Pledge for Humanity" petition
• Richard Dawkins force-femmes a chatbot
• Anthropic claims LLMs have "emotion concepts"
• Palantir wants us all to stop being mean to data centers
• "Optimizing LLM costs by inventing employees again"
• Luxury surveillance cat

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

AI bubble + data centers:

• "Amazon is determined to use AI for everything – even when it slows down work"
• "AI Isn’t Lightening Workloads. It’s Making Them More Intense."
• Starbucks launches ChatGPT drink recommendations
• "Struggling shoe retailer Allbirds makes bizarre pivot to AI"
• "AI’s New Training Data: Your Old Work Slacks And Emails"
• "How the tech lobby made secrecy part of EU law on data centers"
• "In its push to become Big Tech’s data center hub, India is overlooking local resistance"
• Chaser: Seattle mayor explores data center moratorium

Fake people:

• Fake relationship influencers reproduce misogyny
• "New course on generative AI for behavioral science"
• Zoom x World collab to "verify humans in meetings"
• "The Billion-Dollar AI Startup That Was Founded by Teenagers"
• Chaser: "Faculty, staff and students push back against university-controlled AI rollout"

Medicine:

• "The New York Times Got Played By A Telehealth Scam And Called It The Future Of AI"
• "Google scraps AI search feature that crowdsourced amateur medical advice"
• Dr. Oz says AI "nihilism" is a barrier to health care
• "Californians sue over AI tool that records doctor visits"
• Chaser: Nurses resist "AI" to protect patients

This is your brain on ChatGPT:

• "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence"
• "Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning"
• "Anthropic gives Claude 20 hours of psychiatry"
• Anthropic meets with "Christian leaders"
• Existential risk influencers
• Chaser: "Terms of (Ab)Use: An Analysis of GenAI Services"

Policy + privacy:

• "Anthropic is Becoming the Backbone of Rwanda’s Government"
• LA County pilots "AI" for judges
• Using AI to verify AI
• "Meta Is Warned That Facial Recognition Glasses Will Arm Sexual Predators"
• "Microsoft’s Copilot Health can connect to your medical records and wearables"
• "ChatGPT Edu feature reveals researchers’ project metadata across universities"
• Chaser: "How public concern stopped facial recognition technology"

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, The Believer, Guernica, and elsewhere.

Find tickets to our April 30th live show here!

References:

• "I wrote a novel using AI. Writers must accept artificial intelligence."
• AFT shares tips for "Harnessing the Best of AI"

Fresh AI Hell:

• "With Teens Comfortable Confiding in AI, Should Schools Embrace It for Mental Health Care?"
• Longread on the use of automation by the British government
• "OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters"
• UN brief on "AI Deception"
• Reader's Digest cover on "Making Friends with AI"
• The only good "AI acceptance" policy

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Niamh McIntyre is a senior reporter at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) in London, covering AI, labor, and surveillance tech. She was 2023 AI Accountability Fellow at the Pulitzer Center, and prior to joining TBIJ, spent four years as a data journalist at The Guardian.

Find tickets to our April 30th live show here!

References:

• Appen blog post on "Why AI Must be Ethical and Responsible"

Also referenced:

• "Gig workers in Africa have been helping the US military. They had no idea"
• DAIR's Data Workers' Inquiry

Fresh AI Hell:

• Marc Andreessen says "there is no inner self"
• Rest of World call for stories on labor and tech
• Detrans.AI wants you to talk to fake detransitioners
• Melania proposes catwalking robot as replacement for teachers
• Microsoft sidelines Mustafa Suleyman
• Andrej Karpathy cooked by LLM usage
• "Sorry AI, you can’t call yourself a nurse"
• Volunteer fire department rejects $250,000 Google donation

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Maia Woluchem and Livia Garofalo are with the Trustworthy Infrastructures program at Data & Society. Their latest article, "Pennsylvania is perfect," is part of the New Internationalist's AI hype–themed issue.

References:

• Three Mile Island press release
• Senator McCormick press release about AI investments in Pennsylvania
• Senator McCormick’s wife Dina Powell McCormick named President at Meta

Fresh AI Hell:

• Amazon's Bahrain data center reportedly targeted by Iran for support of U.S. military
• "Iran war heralds era of AI-powered bombing quicker than 'speed of thought'"
• "Meta's AI glasses reportedly send sensitive footage to human reviewers in Kenya" (See also: original Swedish reporting)
• Bernie features Eliezer Yudkowsky in X video
• Grammarly offers fake advice as if from real writers, both living and dead
• Google publishes data center water estimates
• "AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It"
• High school student questions the normalization of surveillance

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Dr. Adam Becker is the author of More Everything Forever, a book about the terrible plans that tech billionaires have for the future and why they don't work. Keep an eye out for his new podcast, Dreaming Against the Machine, which is launching soon.

References:

• SpaceX press release on "space-based AI"
• "How data centres in space sustainably enable the AI revolution"

Also referenced:

• Nvidia blog post on data centers in space
• Starcloud white paper

Fresh AI Hell:

• Judge rules chatbots can't offer attorney-client privilege
• "RFK Jr's Nutrition Chatbot Recommends Best Foods to Insert Into Your Rectum"
• AI company seeks writer who doesn't use LLMs
• Altman likens AI energy use to human nutritional needs
• SXSW promoting panel with "AI speaker"
• The agent-erati just want servants
• News editor mad that journalism students don't want to use AI
• Simple rules for fighting fascist tech

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

Naomi Klein is a columnist for The Guardian and the international bestselling author of nine books published in over 35 languages. Her new book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World, written with Astra Taylor, will be published in September 2026.

References:

• War Department press release on GenAI.mil
• Old-school racism from Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey
• "How artificial intelligence is reshaping the future of war"

Previous MAIHT3k episodes referenced:

• Episode 61: Winning the Race to Hell (with Sarah Myers West and Kate Brennan)
• Episode 50: Petro-Masculinity Versus the Planet (with Tamara Kneese)

Fresh AI Hell:

• "Cops Forced to Explain Why AI Generated Police Report Claimed Officer Transformed Into Frog"
• "Amazon outbids WA utility for one of nation's largest solar projects"
• "AI data centers are forcing dirty 'peaker' power plants back into service"
• "Mamdani Targets 'Unusable' AI Chatbot for Termination"

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Our merch store is now live on the DAIR website!

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

References:

• "Stop Worrying, and Let A.I. Help Save Your Life"
• "Introducing ChatGPT Health"

Also referenced:

• "No, I don't want an AI scribe to write my pulmonologist’s note"
• "The Danger of Intimate Algorithms"
• MAIHT3k Episode 62: The Robo-Therapist Will See You Now (with Maggie Harrison Dupré)

Fresh AI Hell:

• Waymo files vague NHTSA report on crash that killed KitKat (See also: NHTSA Standing General Order on Crash Reporting)
• "Medical Schools Use AI Patients to Help With Clinical Training"
• "What If Your Coffee Mug Knew Your Next Move? AI Researchers Made It Happen"
• "Monkeys are on the loose in St. Louis and AI is complicating efforts to capture them"
• Using LLMs to "infer race, ethnicity"
• Tech CEOs hate ridicule as praxis!

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Our merch store is now live on the DAIR website!

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

References:

• "The Architects of AI Are TIME's 2025 Person of the Year"
• Stanford AI Index Report

Also referenced:

• Original "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" photo
• "The Number of People Using AI at Work Is Suddenly Falling"

Fresh AI Hell:

• Fresh AI Hell, Wrapped
• Adobe for Education outputs sexualized images
• "'Low Tech ChatGPT' on physical paper"
• "Springer Nature retracts, removes nearly 40 publications that trained neural networks on 'bonkers' dataset"
• Hologram lecturers and robot sandwich-makers
• "'ChatGPT for Doctors' Startup Doubles Valuation to $12 Billion as Revenue Surges"
• No more ideas. Need AIdeas!
• "For the First Time, AI Analyzes Language as Well as a Human Expert"
• "Woman Hailed as Hero for Smashing Man’s Meta Smart Glasses on Subway"

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

References:

• "A Definition of AGI" landing page and paper-shaped object

Fresh AI Hell:

• "What If Sea Monkeys Constantly, Sometimes Dangerously, Bullshitted People"
• Doctronic, the "AI doctor"
• NIST reports companies cheat on "AI" evaluations
• "Microsoft Lowers Sales Staff's Growth Targets For Newer AI Software"
• "PEN Guild wins landmark arbitration on AI protections"
• "AI" assistant pop-up whack-a-mole

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.

References:

• "This Is No Way to Rule a Country"
• "Four ways AI is being used to strengthen democracies worldwide"

Also referenced:

• Collective Intelligence Project surveys
• Interview with CalMatters CEO

Fresh AI Hell:

• Amazon introduces AI translation for Kindle authors
• Nature op ed recommends AI versions of Einstein, Bohr, and Feynman
• "An AI Podcasting Machine Is Churning Out 3,000 Episodes a Week"
• AI dating café to open in New York
• Recipe slop flooding social media
• AI slop about Autism published in Nature
• Upwork ad for fixing LLM editorial
• "Hundreds of Chicago residents sign petition to pause robot delivery pilot program over safety concerns"

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park.
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.