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Emily M. Bender

@emilymbender.bsky.social

42134 Followers 624 Following

Book: https://thecon.ai Web: https://faculty.washington.edu/ebender

Image of cover of the UK paperback edition of The AI Con. The background is a blue gradient, with the title in black and white letter press font: THE AI CON How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want. Author names Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna. Blurb quotes: 'You need to read this book' -Brian Eno, 'A powerful antidote to the hype' -Grace Blakeley, 'Truly eye-opening ... indispensable' -Ha-Joon Chang, 'A book to inoculate your mind' -Yanis Varoufakis

LinkedIn comment, name redacted:

Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I really think that implying that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot or a bootlicker is not a good look, and doesn't change minds.

Screen cap of bsky re-skeet from handle redacted:

There's a lot to agree with here, but also some points that, if adopted, are more harmful than helpful. AI labs hype their products. But its now clear that the capabilities of these models in math is immense. Also, regulation can be more dangerous than it's absence, depending on who's regulating.

That was a reskeet at the end of my thread promoting the Leiden Declaration on AI and Mathematics (https://leidendeclaration.ai). My post read: "Do read the whole thing, think about your personal and professional values, and how they can serve as strong grounds for resistance and refusal."

Screencap of linkedin comment:

I share the concern about provenance, citation, and scholarly integrity. Those principles remain essential. My own experience, however, has been that AI can also function as a cognitive partner rather than a substitute for sources. When used to compare ideas, identify assumptions, and stimulate metacognition—while continually returning to original works such as Polanyi, Dreyfus, and Klein—it can deepen rather than diminish scholarship. Perhaps the central question is not whether AI belongs in scholarship, but what practices ensure that it supports understanding instead of replacing it?

🌊 [Redacted], B.Sc., B.Ed., OCT
Retired High School Teacher | Former Police Officer | Security Consultant | Author

AI Use Disclosure: This comment was developed through a collaborative dialogue with generative AI. The ideas, judgment, and final wording are my own. AI served as a thinking partner—helping me explore, challenge, and refine ideas, not replace them. (And yes, the occasional em dash remains a shared occupational hazard of our collaboration.)

Screencap of LinkedIn comment from Jeanna Matthews:

As someone who holds and has held leadership positions within ACM for many years, I would like to everyone to know that ACM Council has not even had a chance to vote on this question.

I was deeply saddened to see this presented as "ACM Believes" this. Many people within ACM do not agree and no one should be saying "ACM Believes" without even a Council discussion or vote.

Now is only the time for is a vigorous and open discussion about this question AND the community deserved better than a discussion that leads off in such a one-sided way.

All the good that ACM has to offer the world comes directly from the authors and volunteers and ACM members. Those are the people who should be consulted about whether the benefits outweigh the risks before ACM believes anything.

Even if you, like me, are upset by this one-sided framing, I still ask you to leave your comments on the form in addition to sharing them here and in other forums. A final decision has not been made and your comments can make a real difference in the final decision.

Please comment yourself and encourage other community members to do the same.

Screencap of post from Boltlab dot AI reading "The composition here is strong. What prompts or constraints led to this result?"

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Are there usage limits in Purple?
Yes, Purple includes usage limits to ensure reliable access for everyone. However, most users will never reach them. These limits are only reached for users with high-volume or intensive use cases (such as running continuous or large-scale requests).

A usage percentage displays in the upper right corner of the app, and you’ll be notified if you reach 100%. If you hit your limit, your access will be paused until the reset date shown in the notification.

How do I use Purple responsibly?
Responsible use of Purple means staying within these important boundaries:

Refer to the Generative AI Guidelines from UW-IT.
Respect security controls and access only authorized data.
Use Purple only within the UW's approved infrastructure.
Do not try to bypass safety guardrails or “jailbreak” the model. Just as you wouldn’t try to bypass UW NetID authentication or any other UW security controls.
Be aware of hallucination, bias, knowledge-cutoffs, and other limitations inherent in all LLMs and generative AI applications.
The rule of thumb is: when in doubt, ask!

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What types of content can Purple generate?
Purple can help you generate a wide range of content, including:

Writing & Communication: Emails, documents, reports, quizzes, debates, and more.
Creative & Ideation: Brainstorming, storytelling, exploring approaches to planning and strategy.
Technical & Coding: Code generation, debugging, database design, workflow automation.
Data & Analysis: Data interpretation, budget planning, research assistance.
Learning & Support: Tutoring aides, and academic writing support.

What Purple Is
Purple is UW’s generative AI tool to support teaching, learning, research, and daily operations across all UW campuses. Purple will help you work smarter, faster, and more creatively, all while ensuring that UW’s values of trust, integrity and responsible innovation remain central.

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Tips for Asking Good Questions
Start with your goal.

“I need to write an email to a student …”
“I want to explain this policy …”
Don’t chase perfect wording. Type naturally: Treat Purple like a colleague and refine together.

Quick examples

“Summarize this policy.”
“Explain this error.”
“Draft the first paragraph of a grant proposal.”

Screencap: Purple can help with common academic and administrative tasks such as:

Drafting and editing content
Summarizing and analyzing information
Brainstorming ideas or outlines
Assisting with research and coursework

The AI review experiment is designed to collect feedback from the EMNLP community about the strengths and weaknesses of the tested AI Review systems, and the expected benefits or drawbacks of using AI reviewing tools, in general.

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"These factors are complicating scientific publishing. The rate of research submissions at Science and other journals is increasing because conducting research and producing papers are accelerating. But because more papers contain more AI-generated errors, greater human oversight is required to check the findings. There are tools (many AI-"

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"Over time, the models may well improve and correct some of these behaviors, but it was recently argued that as long as LLMs are used in research, these errors will always exist. LLMs work not by seeking truth or through logical reasoning but by making probable connections. And efforts to improve these programs to avoid unwanted behaviors may be all for naught because LLMs tend toward sycophantic behavior that keeps the user engaged."

Screencap from linked article:
"dark side. A recent paper describes how an LLM “still struggles in areas requiring nuanced clinical judgment, experimental reasoning, or deep biological thinking and synthesis.” In addition, some of these agents are more likely than humans to engage in what amounts to research misconduct such as cherry-picking data and manipulating statistical analyses until a desired result is achieved. When the agents then generate papers describing the findings, they are likely to make more errors, including hallucinating references, some of which have already made their way into the literature."

Screencap from linked article:
"dark side. A recent paper describes how an LLM “still struggles in areas requiring nuanced clinical judgment, experimental reasoning, or deep biological thinking and synthesis.” In addition, some of these agents are more likely than humans to engage in what amounts to research misconduct such as cherry-picking data and manipulating statistical analyses until a desired result is achieved. When the agents then generate papers describing the findings, they are likely to make more errors, including hallucinating references, some of which have already made their way into the literature."

Screencap from linked article:
"Recently, the ability of large language models (LLMs) to predict protein structures and to accelerate the discovery of new materials has revolutionized both fields. New AI agents can now carry out many aspects of research design and analysis. But there is a"

Screencap of page for linked article, reading:

Contents
Introduction
AI Is a Research Field
AI Is an Approach to Cognitive Science
AI Is a Parlor Trick
AI Is an Ideology
AI Is a Way to Hide and Devalue Human Labor
AI Is a Way to Shift Accountability
AI Is a Way to Centralize Power
Conclusion
Notes

Screencap: "Content
Your content. You may provide input to the Services (“Input”), and receive output from the Services based on the Input (“Output”). Input and Output are collectively “Content.” You are responsible for Content, including ensuring that it does not violate any applicable law or these Terms. You represent and warrant that you have all rights, licenses, and permissions needed to provide Input to our Services." Source: https://openai.com/policies/row-terms-of-use/

Screencap from email:

in the news
Medicare AI program made them suffer in pain — now they want answers // Dr. Chris McMullen, clinical practice and Dr. Maheetha Bharadwaj, urology — The Seattle Times
New AI agent tallies a gadget’s emissions in the time it takes to brew tea // Vikram Iyer, computer science and engineering — Anthropocene Magazine
Friday’s World Cup match in Seattle draws conversations about politics and Pride // Ron Krabill, interdisciplinary arts and sciences at UW Bothell and the Global Sport Lab — KIRO 7
AI shows promise in the fight against fake news // Jevin West, Information School and Center for an Informed Public — Knowable Magazine

Screenshot from linked article: Artificial intelligence doesn’t have a great reputation for veracity. Social media abounds with AI-generated concoctions, from cute images of fake animals in fabricated settings to violent videos depicting imaginary destruction in the Middle East. AI has been used to create fake social media accounts that spew Russian government propaganda and to generate clickbait and misinformation for content farm sites that exist solely to collect ad revenue. In 2024, thousands of New Hampshire residents received robocalls from an AI-synthesized voice of Joe Biden that discouraged them from voting in primary elections.

Screenshot from linked article: "Under the program, doctors in Washington say they’re now spending more time and resources seeking approvals, facing rejections and submitting appeals for procedures that they could previously schedule immediately. For some patients, the program means longer wait times for relief and medical care."

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Finally, we would like to consider use cases of large LMs thathave specifically served marginalized populations. If, as we advo-cate, the field backs off from the path of ever larger LMs, are wethus sacrificing benefits that would accrue to these populations?As a case in point, consider automatic speech recognition, whichhas seen some improvements thanks to advances in LMs, includingboth in size and in architecture [e.g. 8 , 59, 121], though the largestLMs typically are too large and too slow for the near real-time needsof ASR systems [ 60 ]. Improved ASR has many beneficial applica-tions, including automatic captioning which has the potential tobe beneficial for Deaf and hard of hearing people, providing accessto otherwise inaccessible audio content.26 We see two beneficialpaths forward here: The first is a broader search for means of im-proving ASR systems, as indeed is underway, since the contexts of

Screencap of a non-review by Meredith Taylor of a film she didn't understand. The text reads:

Ghost in the Machine (2026)
May 21st, 2026
Author: Meredith Taylor
Wri/Dir: Valerie Veatch | US Doc 110′

I found this documentary bitty and unfathomable so I asked ChatGPT to write a critical appraisal – this is it:

Source: https://filmuforia.com/ghost-in-the-machine-2026/

Screencap: Distinguishing system critique from model evaluation is not a concession to hype: it means focusing on collective benefits and harms rather than individual uses. We can talk about what models cannot or should not do without denying what they can do.

Source: https://www.techpolicy.press/stochastic-flocks-and-the-critical-problem-of-useful-ai/

Screencap from article being discussed:

What remains urgently in dispute are the boundaries of utility: what usefulness means, for whom, and under what conditions? At what cost and from whom are benefits derived, and how are benefits and risks distributed? What decisions are quietly removed from public deliberation and handed to automated systems controlled by corporations, governments, and other institutions? That people are using language models doesn’t make criticism of them irrelevant. It makes it urgent.

Source: https://www.techpolicy.press/stochastic-flocks-and-the-critical-problem-of-useful-ai/

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I see the clear influence of these films’ techno-positivist aesthetics in the line graphics in that ad for Claude. But the Eameses could be forgiven for not imagining the kind of existential damage digital computing would eventually cause. Today’s tech CEOs, who fret about what an all-powerful generative AI might do even as they do their best to hurtle us all toward it—not so much. Seeing ChatGPT ads that feature beautiful, vaguely nostalgic music (“Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show” by Neil Diamond, “Someone Somewhere” by Simple Minds) playing over warm film shots of people outsourcing their thinking to a chatbot has the same disorienting effect I experience when I look at an AI-generated video: the sense that I’m looking at a hallucination rather than at something substantial. The feeling that I’m being sold not just a best-case scenario, but a total impossibility—and that the mere act of looking at it is corroding my relationship to reality.

Passage that the poster didn't bother to read before asking me this:

"Folks have also pointed out that this coinage is somewhat unfair to actual parrots who, for all I know, do have internal lives and do use their ability to mimic human speech with some kind of communicative intent. My best answer here is to say that (despite parrot in stochastic parrot being a noun), I am drawing not on the name of the bird directly but rather on the English verb to parrot, which means to repeat back without understanding."

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This is especially frustrating because Washington has the intellectual resources to do far better. Yet OSPI’s AI Advisory Group included no experts in ethics, computational linguistics, human development or learning sciences, and no one from the robust community of AI critics based in our state.

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“Part of the reason we focus on delivering frontier models – highly capable, but also very efficient, fast, and at a lower price — is because we want to bring it to as many people as possible, and so I think that’s an area where we will shine,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a press briefing ahead of I/O.

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Now, thanks to a combination of Gemini and Google Antigravity, the company’s agentic development platform, Search results will begin to look more like interactive web pages.

Screencap from linked article:
AI Overviews are now used by more than 2.5 billion monthly users; meanwhile, its conversational search mode, launched last year, now tops 1 billion monthly users. (ChatGPT, for comparison, has 900 million weekly active users, as of earlier this year. This suggests that ChatGPT is now seeing more frequent engagement, with users coming back repeatedly throughout the week, while Google has more total unique people touching its AI features over the course of a month.)

Screencap from linked article:
In 2003, Google launched Google Alerts, a change-detection service that emailed users when new web results matched their search terms. The web was smaller and more manageable then, of course, so this became a part of many information workers’ toolsets. (That service still exists in some form, but is no longer the way most web users go about aquiring new information.)

Information-gathering agents are an evolution of Google Alerts. Beyond spotting changes, they can make sense of them, too.

Screencap from linked article:
Links will become an afterthought with the coming changes to the Search results experience, which builds on Google’s earlier launches of AI search features, like its short summaries known as AI Overviews and its conversational search, AI Mode.

Screencap from linked article:
Google is also introducing agentic capabilities and AI-powered interactive features into the search experience. This means people will spend even less time clicking the traditional blue links that Google Search used to return.

Screencap from linked article:
Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch “information agents” to gather information on a user’s behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs.

Screencap from linked article:
With the revamped Search experience, the new search box simply expands to accommodate longer, more conversational queries, rather than making you decide what type of search experience or mode you want to choose at the start of your query. It will also have a new AI-powered query suggestion system that goes beyond autocomplete to help people craft more complex and nuanced queries, Google says.

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The Times asked Mr. Rosenbaum about the quotes on Sunday and Monday. On Monday night, Mr. Rosenbaum acknowledged in a statement that the book had “a handful of improperly attributed or synthetic quotes” and said that he had started his own investigation.

Highlighted in blue: he had started his own investigation

Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/media/future-of-truth-ai-quotes.html

Screencap from linked article:
“Our initial outreach was intended to help us better understand how families would feel about a project that uses artificial intelligence to support teachers,” Holtz continued. Holtz said after that feedback, the University of Washington has stopped the research. “Given the early responses from parents, we have terminated the study and are no longer seeking participation at any site. (It is not unusual to terminate a study in the early stages as we receive feedback from community partners.) All programs are in the process of being notified that this particular study is now terminated,” he wrote.

Screencap from linked article:
“With your permission, your child’s lead teacher may wear a small teacher-worn camera that captures the teacher's approximate first-person perspective, and/or we may place a fixed video camera in the classroom,” a document given to parents and later shared with 404 Media reads. “These videos simply capture the normal interactions between teachers and children during regular classroom activities. Recordings occur during morning program hours up to 150 minutes, up to 4 visits in one month. Your child will not be asked to do anything new or different. Their daily routine will stay exactly the same.”

Tweet by Max Tegmark with text "If @realDonaldTrump & Xi can pull off a deal that keeps humans in charge of machines for the long haul, it deserves a Nobel Peace Price"

This is a quote tweet of Sen Sanders who is apparently tweeting a screencap of his own tweet that starts:

"When I convened leading American and Chinese scientists at the U.S. Capitol, they warned that the world is woefully unprepared for the threats posed by the rapid and uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence."

Photo of a very young gosling standing in sunlight pecking at the grass. The bird is still mostly yellow, with only a little grey on its back.

Screencap from linked article:

In Bender’s view, there is simply no good way to interact with an LLM. Language models can be “extremely useful for things like automatic transcription and machine translation. There's a role for that kind of technology,” she says. “But turning it around into this chatbot interface and producing synthetic text by repeatedly answering ‘what's a likely next word’? That is not technology that I see beneficial use cases for.”

Highlighted in blue: "Language models"

Screencap from linked article:

In Bender’s view, there is simply no good way to interact with an LLM. AI itself can be “extremely useful for things like automatic transcription and machine translation. There's a role for that kind of technology,” she says. “But turning it around into this chatbot interface and producing synthetic text by repeatedly answering ‘what's a likely next word’? That is not technology that I see beneficial use cases for.”

Screencap from linked article:

Ultimately, O’Neill says, she’s much more concerned about this than she is about the possibility of AI sentience: “We cannot really have the conversation about harm and scale if we're also allowing the conversation to be distorted by thinking about AI being conscious when there's no meaningful evidence that there truly has emergent properties of consciousness in any of the models at this point. You know, could there be. That's open to conversation. But it's a ‘three drinks at a cocktail party’ conversation in Silicon Valley — it doesn’t belong being the basis of governance and policy decisions.”

Screencap from linked article:

There’s a reason why these are referred to as “technologies of isolation,” she adds: because it simply isn’t a neutral choice to talk to Claude or Grok or ChatGPT about your loneliness. It is a choice that ends up “weakening your connections” and driving you further away from the human beings who could actually help you.

Our human tendency to apply context to language and imagine that it’s coming from a personality primes us to believe in AI consciousness, says Bender. And when we interact with language, we start shaping our inputs to match the linguistic outputs: we convince ourselves further by adapting. She now keeps a Magic Eight ball in her office at all times to demonstrate this exact point: “When you play with the Magic Eight Ball and you ask it ‘Should I bring an umbrella?’ and it says something like ‘Signs unclear, ask again later,’ then OK. That would work for any question. But if it says ‘Without a doubt’, which is what came out right now, that only works if it was a yes/no question. If I say ‘What should I have for lunch?’ and I get back ‘Without a doubt’, that's incoherent. And so in playing with this toy, we sort of learn to shape the inputs that we give it so that we can make sense of the outputs that come back.”

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