Episode 51 - Emily M. Bender and 'AI' hype

Show notes for Episode 51 Here are the show notes for Episode 51, in which Dan and (new Lexis team member) Raj talk to Professor Emily M. Bender of the University of Washington about: Why ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is not really the right term at all How Large Language Models work and why we should be sceptical of many of the claims made for them The biases inherent in LLMs and what to do about them Whether ‘neural networks’ and language processing can shed any light on child language development The discourses around ‘AI’: from booster to doomer.  Emily M. Bender’s University of Washington page: https://faculty.washington.edu/ebender/  A great interview from 2023: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html Time Magazine on the ‘machine-learning myth buster’: https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/6308275/emily-m-bender/  Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 podcast: https://www.dair-institute.org/maiht3k/ Emily’s book recommendations:  ‘Babel’, R.F. Kuang: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/babel-or-the-necessity-of-violence-an-arcane-history-of-the-oxford-translators-revolution-r-f-kuang/6627642?ean=9780008501853  ‘A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine: https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/a-memory-called-empire-winner-of-the-hugo-award-for-best-novel-arkady-martine/219166?ean=9781529001594  Other links from the interview Jess Dodge’s work: https://jessedodge.github.io/  Batya Friedman & Helen Nissenbaum, Bias in Computer Systems (1996): https://nyuscholars.nyu.edu/en/publications/bias-in-computer-systems  Some further reading:  Police worried 101 call bot would struggle with 'Brummie' accents https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68466369 BBC News - 'Journalists are feeding the AI hype machine' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68488924  Bias against African American English  Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00742  Register article: https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/11/ai_models_exhibit_racism_based/  An Al-Jazeera opinion piece about AI and borders:  https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/4/20/ban-racist-and-lethal-ai-from-europes-borders  Contributors Lisa Casey  blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates) Dan Clayton  blog: EngLangBlog & Twitter: EngLangBlog (@EngLangBlog) Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social  Jacky Glancey  Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey Raj Rana Matthew Butler  Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA  Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys  Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys