From predicting criminality to sexual orientation, fake and deeply flawedArtificial Intelligence (AI) is rampant. Amidst this feverishly hypedatmosphere, this book interrogates the rise and fall of AI hype,pseudoscience and snake oil. Bringing together different perspectivesand voices from across disciplines and countries, it drawsconnections between injustices inflicted by inappropriate AI. Eachchapter unpacks lazy and harmful assumptions made by developers whendesigning AI tools and systems, and examines the existentialunderpinnings of the technology itself to ask: why are there so manyuseless, and even dangerously flawed, AI systems?
It was not the stupidest pitch I received that year, nor was it the first time someone had tried to sell me a gadget that claimed to have embedded AI when it very obviously didnt. But the same. it sticks in my memory all There was something so nonsensical, so inadvertently Dada about the phrase, that I remember getting up from my desk and making a cup of coffee to process it in mild wonder. The worlds first toothbrush with artificial intelligence, I reflected, waiting for the kettle to boil. The worlds first toothbrush with artificial intelligence, I pondered, returning the milk to the fridge. 4 2 5 7 . 5 G L Now, I freely confess to occasionally writing tech stories with ridiculous headlines just for the pleasure of lobbing into the world like a can0 8 7 7 E said headline taloupe into 98 HOW NOT TO BLOG ABOUT AN INTELLIGENT TOOTHBRUSH
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HOW NOT TO BLOG ABOUT AN INTELLIGENT the Grand Canyon. Any tech journalist who says they dont do this is either lying or has forgotten how to have fun. People love to dunk on stupid gadgets and tech writers love to help them. (Remember: its not clickbait if you can get the gist of the story from the headline alone. If you read, groan, then click to find out more about this or that stupid gadget out of a sense of morbid curiosity, then thats just a good headline.) 6 7 5 0 . 0 F D L 5 5 0 . 0 R D L
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To write these headlines, most of the time you dont need to do more than state what it is the gadget does. The whole point of this sort of coverageindeed, one suspoint of this sort of pects, the whole self-evident silligadgetis the become more ness. The products superfluous enticing the more Veblen good they are, like a variant of a increases in which demand for an item From as it becomes more expensive. usually a journalists point of view, this means you can avoid adding snark to the headline and let the things idiocy speak for itself. People on social media will quote-tweet you with delight, pointing out the daftness of the product and perhaps adding some comment about late capitalism for good measure. All this as if the Victorians didnt also fill their lives with air-conditioned top hats and mechanical hairbrushes. Kohlers smart toilet promises a fully-immersive experience is one such 5 2 5 2 . 6 G L 0 8 1 6 E HOW NOT TO BLOG ABOUT AN INTELLIGENT TOOTHBRUSH 99
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TOO headline I remember with fondness from CES 2019the silliness of the semi-submerged pun matching, I hoped, the products stupidity. 6 6 7 0 . 0 F D L Its still nalists idiotic be kept coverage. question potentially harmful that covering it in any way is unethical. And second, the degree of credulity with which you write about claims being made about the technology. Is this a silly gadget or is it an actual con? important, of course, for tech jourto write responsibly about even gadgets, and two things should in mind when creating this sort of First, whether the product in is so obviously a scam or so 6 3 0 . 0 R D L
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