Notices by Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) (emilymbender@dair-community.social), page 2

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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The Boosters say: AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's imminent and it's going to solve all of our problems.

The Doomers say: AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's imminent and it's going to kill us all.

These are obviously the same story, with just different twists at the end. And both are nonsense. There is "moderate" position between them, but there is space outside of that fantasy world where we can see the actual harms happening in the name of "AI".
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Created this for a reply on LinkedIn, but it applies pretty generally, so posting it here, too:

Very proud that The AI Con is a finalist for the 2026 Washington State Book Award (General Nonfiction/Biography)

https://washingtoncenterforthebook.org/2026-washington-state-book-award-finalists-announced/

w/ @alex

This sign is a great example for helping to explain why chatbots present such a potent illusion.

A probably not short thread 🧵>>

('Splainers of Mastodon -- thread means please read what I've written before jumping in here to share your ideas.)

A point I frequently make when talking about chatbots is that their output only seems to make sense because we are making sense of it. And worse, we can only do that sense-making by projecting a mind behind the text, something we do reflexively.

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While you might think that understanding something someone wrote is simply a matter of unpacking the meaning (or message) they packed into the words, in fact what we do is much cooler and more involved:

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We keep in mind everything we know or believe about the authors knowledge and beliefs, about our common ground with the author, and about what the author believes about their intended audience, which might not be us.

(For more details and with citations, see the "... is a parlor trick" section of my recent encyclopedia entry on "AI"
https://faculty.washington.edu/ebender/papers/Bender-AI-2026.pdf )

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So, coming back to the sign, there are two mini-conversations here, with two diffferent authors, and with two overlapping intended audiences:

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The first author is a person or group of people speaking for the institution, giving instructions to people who wish to enter Guggenheim Hall but don't have a Husky card that is registered for the building.

It's the second author I'm particularly interested in here. The one behind the hand-written note.

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I am a bystander to both of these conversations. (My Husky card works here.) But the hand-written note immediately evokes for me someone who works in the building, likely has responsibility for reacting to the doorbell rings, and has an office not immediately next to this door.

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Meanwhile, I also see them modeling the state of mind of the impatient delivery person, who has pushed the button, but hasn't heard the ring (since the bell is close to the person's office, not this door), and then is doubting whether they pushed hard enough.

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The sign caught my attention because of the juxtaposition of the institutional language (fairly static information, stated by people who don't expect to actually interact with most readers directly) and the much more conversational hand-written note.

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The author of the note was a little flashy with their ability to model the state of mind of doorbell-pushers: The note was likely written in the wake of several noisy experiences on their end, with the solid expectation that similar circumstances would arise again, but it's addressed to someone(s) they haven't interacted with (yet).

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And I think it's exactly this flaunting of the ability to perform intersubjectivity across space and time that makes this such a lovely example for helping to understand the illusion of chatbots.

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Finally got my author copies of the UK paperback of The AI Con, and they're even prettier in person!

w/ @alex

https://thecon.ai

RE: https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/117016420622784045

Join us tomorrow!

From Altman proclaiming the “singularity”, to the Guardian publishing blather about possible AI consciousness, to OpenAI and Anthropic blaming their cybercrimes on “rogue models” the nonsense is coming fast and thick these days and much of the media is lapping it up. Time for another Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 livestream with me and @alex:

Monday, August 3, noon PT
https://twitch.tv/dair_institute

Happy UK paperback release day to our book!

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/468070/the-ai-con-by-hanna-emily-m-bender-and-alex/9781529949902

w/ @alex

Large language models, used these days primarily to produce synthetic text, are a scourge on our information ecosystem. The role of the ACM and other scholarly organizations is to curate and produce and archive scholarly work. This should extend to being good stewards of the information ecosystem and not colluding with the powers actively polluting it.

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