The Anti-Bookclub Tackles 'Superagency', 2025.03.03

Emily and Alex read a terrible book so you don't have to! Come for a quick overview of LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman's opus of magical thinking, 'Superagency: What could possibly go right with our AI future' -- stay for the ridicule as praxis. Plus, why even this tortuous read offers a bit of comfort about the desperate state of the AI boosters.
References:
The cursèd book itself (superagency.ai)
AI and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Benchmark (datasets-benchmarks-proceedings.neurips.cc/pap…)
Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (sscc.wisc.edu/soc/faculty/pages/wright/Soc924-…)
Fresh AI Hell:
Parents rationalizing exposing kids to AI (theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/01/parents…)
Underage, sexualized celebrity bots (technologyreview.com/2025/02/27/1112616/an-ai-…)
Bossware a bad look, actually (techcrunch.com/2025/02/25/y-combinator-deletes…)
CalState faculty union opposes AI initiative (msn.com/en-us/news/technology/faculty-union-op…)
The kids are alright (nzherald.co.nz/nz/university-of-auckland-stude…)
Check out future streams on Twitch (twitch.tv/dair_institute). Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see (thecon.ai/submit-fresh-ai-hell).
Find our book The AI Con here (bit.ly/3OZ9PNx), and MAIHT3k merch here (store.dair-institute.org/category/mystery-ai-h…).
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Alex
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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park (naomipleasurepark.com).
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.