Absolutely horrified at this planned study from my own institution: www.404media.co/researchers-... >>
Who's Who of AI
Emily M. Bender
Professor of linguistics at the University of Washington
Book: https://thecon.ai
Web: https://faculty.washington.edu/ebender
What they're sharing
Researchers Wanted Preschool Teachers to Wear Cameras to Train AI 404media.co
Google Search as you know it is over | TechCrunch techcrunch.com
Software Developers Say AI Is Rotting Their Brains 404media.co
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You can no longer Google the word 'disregard' | TechCrunch techcrunch.com
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What Emily Bender Really Meant by "Stochastic Parrots" spectrum.ieee.org
The AI Resist List airesistlist.org
No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious theatlantic.com
How to talk about buttondown.com
Ghost in the Machine review – entertaining AI polemic dives into its dark history in race politics and eugenics theguardian.com
Waiting for AGI | AI & SOCIETY | Springer Nature Link link.springer.com
Stochastic Flocks and the Critical Problem of 'Useful' AI techpolicy.press
doi.org
Articles & links
Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something): techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/g... A short thread 🧵>>
Emily M. Bender reposted
"Predictably, the huge spike in productivity that these companies claim their own AI products have enabled hasn’t resulted in more or better products, shorter work weeks, or better consumer experiences." www.404media.co/software-dev...
Emily M. Bender reposted
“I have been a tech journalist for nearly 15 years, and before today, I cannot think of a single time when a Bing search result was more valuable than the Google equivalent. There really is a first time for everything!” Thanks, AI! techcrunch.com/2026/05/22/y...
Emily M. Bender reposted
“The message that I always bring when I have a chance is that, when the text that comes out of one of these systems makes sense, it’s because we are making sense of it. This is also in the stochastic parrots paper.”
AI Weekly's analysis
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- Bender says the 'stochastic parrots' metaphor was meant to describe large language models specifically, not all AI systems.
- The 2021 paper was co-authored with Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, both later fired by Google before its publication.
- Bender says the paper's biggest omission was the exploitative labor practices underlying large language models.
Read full analysis →
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Emily M. Bender reposted
A new project educators can use to teach the many ways AI resistance takes shape: "Now people around the world are mobilizing to resist the empires of AI and to nourish visions of the future that work for all of us. Amid an onslaught of negative news, this project centers hope."
AI Weekly's analysis
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- Karen Hao launched the AI Resist List on the one-year anniversary of her book Empire of AI as a publicly accessible, community-contributed database.
- The database organizes entries by 'Pillars of Support' sustaining AI empires, a framework adapted from Choose Democracy's authoritarianism resistance model.
- Entries span labor actions, legal challenges, and grassroots campaigns across gig work, healthcare, education, and law enforcement sectors.
Read full analysis →
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"Even if the Microsoft Office team employed a philosopher who said you shouldn’t be so certain, because consciousness is not well understood, that would not be sufficient reason for you to take this idea seriously." www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...
Are you annoyed with the anthropomorphizing language being used in the "AI" discourse, but not sure how to talk about this stuff without it? @nannainie.bsky.social and I have got you covered: buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...
AI Weekly's analysis
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- The guide covers six language categories: cognition, emotion, communication, agency, human-role analogies, and biological metaphors.
- Proposed substitutions include 'probabilistic automation' for 'artificial intelligence' and 'conversation simulator' for 'chatbot.'
- Rephrasing 'ChatGPT assisted students' as 'the students used ChatGPT' is given as an example of restoring human accountability.
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The Guardian reviews @ghostdoc2026.bsky.social : "The roots of AI in rightwing ideology is examined in Valerie Veatch’s enjoyable doc, including an array of colourful, often crazed, figures" -⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ju...
This is beautiful on so many levels. It names clearly and directly one of the insidious tactics that tech uses to evade effective regulation. It exemplifies a way in which humanistic scholarship provides critically important insight. >> link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Returning to this thread after a busy week, now that I've had time to read your "stochastic flocks" piece. Link here, just in case anyone else is following: www.techpolicy.press/stochastic-f... >>
When people ask me what the phrase "artificial intelligence" means, my short answer is, it means "venture capitalists, give me some money". But OUP asked me for a longer answer, given here and summarized in the section headings: doi.org/10.1093/9780...
Their own posts
Recent commentary
A phenomenon I've noticed recently is people trying to occupy some untenable middleground wrt to the use of systems sold as "AI" -- this is a position where people try to recognize the harms of this tech but also hold space for "responsible" or "ethical" use. 🧵>>
So many conversations where otherwise serious people throw around the term "AI" without defining it, despite it being notoriously ill-defined. Thinking about why this might be >>
Just came across (via a citation alert) a new paper that purports to be a thematic synthetisis of the academic literature on ethical issues of LLMs. It doesn't cite Stochastic Parrots. >>
So Anthropic decided that "let's pause now" was tired and is instead talking about *planning* for a "pause" in the future in case of (lol) self-improving "AI". ... and NPR at least is platforming this nonsense credulously. >>
Don't illustrate posts about The AI Con or any of my work with slop (aka synthetic images) challenge: Level impossible, it seems alas. w/ @alexhanna.bsky.social
Should I listen to an hour of Hinton unhinged ("AI is already conscious") or nah?
I am getting so many spam emails about book clubs asking to feature The AI Con -- which of course they could do without asking me, so these are clearly paid promotional "opportunities". But I've got to wonder, do these book clubs have any real members?
Thought upon reading* a review of our book illustrated with an obviously extruded image: (*didn't really read it, because ai;dr -- skimmed down to where the author purported to give their "honest opinion") >>
Heading to #ACL2026 to present at the BATCH workshop. Joint work with Clémentine Bleuze, Fanny Ducel, Aurélie Névéol, and Karën Fort: The Umbrella Coup: Alignment, LLMs, and the Misdirection of Ethics Discourse in NLP See you there? ☂️☂️☂️
The @uwnews.uw.edu daily digest email this morning is a study in AI hype 🧵>>
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In Emily M. Bender's orbit
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