How Companies Sell the Promise of Liberation

Paris Marx is joined by Chris Gilliard to discuss how tech CEOs are pushing a new generation of AI-powered smart glasses by promising they’ll be stylish and indispensable to workers in a desperate attempt to convince us we should want their luxury surveillance gadgets.

Chris Gilliard is the co-director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and is working on a book called Luxury Surveillance.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Harvard students used Meta glasses to dox strangers.

• Apple tinkered with its AI shortly after Trump was inaugurated.

• AI may start answering 911 calls.

• Studies are suggesting that AI may be making doctors worse at diagnosing cancer.

• Rob Horning has written about overreliance on AI.

• Chris mentioned Emily Bender and her analogy comparing LLMs to plastic.