Is AI snake oil?

Hi, I’m Charley, and this is Untangled, a newsletter about our sociotechnical world, and how to change it.

• Come work with me! The initiative I lead at Data & Society is hiring for a Community Manager. Learn more here.

• Check out my new course, Sociotechnical Systems Change in Practice. The first cohort will take place on January 11 and 12, and you can sign up here.

• Last week I interviewed Mozilla’s

  Jasmine Sun
  and Nik Marda on the potential of public AI, and the week prior I shared my conversation with AI reporter Karen Hao on OpenAI’s mythology, Meta’s secret, and Microsoft’s hypocrisy.

🚨 This is your last chance to get Untangled 40 percent off. Even better, I partnered with Anya Kamenetz to offer you her great newsletter The Golden Hour for free! Signing up for Untangled right now means you’ll get $140 in value for $54.

On to the show!

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This week I spoke with

Arvind Narayanan

, professor of computer science at Princeton University and director of its Center for Information Technology Policy. I spoke with Arvind about his great new book with

Sayash Kapoor

, AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What it Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference. We discuss:

• The difference between generative AI and predictive AI, and why we’re both more concerned by the latter.

• Whether generative AI systems can ‘understand’ and ‘reason.’

• The difference between intelligence and power and why Arvind isn’t so concerned by the supposed existential threats of AI.

• Why artificial intelligence appeals to broken institutions.

• How Arvind would change AI discourse.

• How technical and social experts misunderstand one another.

• What a Trump second term means for AI regulation.

• What excites Arvind about how his children will experience new technologies, and what makes him nervous.

More soon,

Charley