Notices by Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) (emilymbender@dair-community.social)

New from @timnitGebru and me:

"It is high time for us to regulate usage of systems sold as “AI”, not because they are magical machines, but because they are error-prone products that shouldn’t be used in high stakes scenarios."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/01/forget-superintelligence-error-prone-ai-nearly-sparked-world-war-iii-this-month

I want everyone, especially journalists, to notice the silence of the tech execs about this. This includes people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg whose recent blog posts talk about balancing the benefits and harms of "AI", and don't include Doomer scenarios among the harms.

They are complicit in the misinforming of the public. They are complicit in stoking everyone's fear. They reap the benefits of the Doomer narrative because it is their narrative.

/fin

From @timnitGebru and me on what we should take from the 2026 summer of AI hype:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/22/1144867/dont-be-fooled-summer-ai-hype/

This doesn't apply everywhere, and surely oftentimes the solution of tedium/drudgery is systemic change. But where that is not possible either in general or right away, let's not be so quick to agree that there is no value to be found in the experiences.

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And all of that applies 1000x over in the case where the experience involves anyone else, even if indirectly. Being present for human connection is in fact priceless, though often not easy, and not something we should surrender to the AI bros and their marketing.

Thinking about the selling point of "AI" supposedly "freeing up time" to do important things. Beyond devaluing the tasks that we can supposedly offload to software systems, it occurs to me that this is kind of opposite of mindfulness/being in the moment.

A short thread >>

The AI bros would like us to believe that much of what we spend our time on is busywork/drudgery/tedium and we would be so much better off if that could be delegated.

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And yeah, there are parts of my job I really don't enjoy (grading homework assignments, for one; reviewing piles of applications for another).

But what if, instead of saying we should be free of such things, we asked: What do we gain by being present in this moment?

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The rhetoric around so-called "AI" is rife with little turns of phrase like this and I hope more people can be sensitized to them, clock the unearned presuppositions they smuggle in, and learn more precise language.

For some specific suggestions (though "unleashed" didn't come up), see:
https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/how-to-talk-about-ai-without-adding-to-the/

/fin

The word of the day is: "unleash"

I've been seeing a lot of "unleashing AI", "unleashing expertimentation (with AI)", and even ostensibly critical "OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT on the world with no one's consent".

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But please pause for a moment and think about what metaphors "unleash" rests on. What do we put leashes on? (Mostly dogs) Why do we keep dogs on leashes? (To keep them from running off and hurting themselves, other animals, or people.)

So when you talk about "unleashing" a software system, what properties does that framing attribute to the system?

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RE: https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/110906329010147244

Every time I decide to post a thread to Mastodon, I'm hit with a new wave of mansplaining. What is it with the culture here? Why do all of these guys think it's so important to share their deep insights in my mentions when they can just post on their own feed? FFS.

RE: https://beige.party/@adub/117294676728827281

And every day there is more Fresh AI Hell. What's worse than polluting the information ecosystem with synthetic text dressed up to look like news? Dressing it up further as the work of fake Indigenous journalists.

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I want accountability up and down the chain here: Starting with the people who are running the site with these fake journalists, but also including everyone who suggested that synthetic text has ANY place in news, the tech firms that have dragged their feet for YEARS on watermarking their output (so the rest of us can filter it), and hell, anyone who writes about using synthetic text extruding machines to create "personas". This is what you wrought.

Nadella, Pichai, Huang, Zuckerberg, Huang, Dean --- you all own this unhinged narrative just as much as the Doomers do.

* * *

Of course, they're happy to own this, because they benefit as much as Altman, Amodei, and Musk from keeping the policymakers focused on fantasies.
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As I was walking home yesterday, I got flagged down by my neighbor who had heard a panic-inducing story about rogue AI from a friend over lunch and hoped I could talk her down.

I could and I did! But I am recognizing her distress (likely repeated across many many ordinary people) as yet another harm perpetuated by the people selling "AI" narratives.
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AI Doomerism has been in the news lately, especially with the loud, viral resignation of Jacob Coxon from Anthropic.

Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't seen any statements from CEOs and other execs who are more on the AI Booster side of the ledger.

🧵>>

Where are Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, XD Huang, Jeff Dean on this? Why aren't they out there calling out the Doomer narrative for the nonsense that it is?

I have an hypothesis:
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They can't, because the Doomer narrative *is* the Booster narrative. To debunk the Doomer stuff (and it *is* bunk), you have to point out that it's based on pure fantasy that the mathy maths are going to combust into consciousness ...

... or if not consciousness, then some thinking, reasoning, self-improving entity.
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As @alex and I write in The AI Con (see cp 6): even though the Boosters and the Doomers like to portray themselves as holding down opposite extremes of opinions on "AI", they are two sides of the same coin.

https://thecon.ai

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