Notices by Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her) (emilymbender@dair-community.social), page 6

On 9/28, I had the opportunity to speak at a virtual roundtable convened by Congressman Bobby Scott on “AI in the Workplace: New Crisis or Longstanding Challenge?”. The roundtable was a closed meeting, but sharing our opening remarks is allowed. Mine are here:

https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/opening-remarks-on-ai-in-the-workplace-new-crisis-or-longstanding-challenge-eb81d1bee9f

@UlrichJunker Thank you!

@DAIR Oohh -- nice! Just downloaded.

@MisuseCase

As I said in the post you are directly responding to: "It was obvious from the outset that predictive policing was a scam (not to mention a vehicle for accelerating overpolicing)"

This site remains 'splainy AF.

It was obvious from the outset that predictive policing was a scam (not to mention a vehicle for accelerating overpolicing), but it's really valuable to have this careful reporting of just bad it is:

https://themarkup.org/prediction-bias/2023/10/02/predictive-policing-software-terrible-at-predicting-crimes

@Julia You make really good points --- and we need a better metaphor than the apocryphal "tragedy of the commons". On its eugenicist origins, see:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-tragedy-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 Ep 14 in which Prof. Lucy Suchman brings amazing context to the discussion of Kissinger, Schmidt & Huttenlocher's book and op-ed.

w/@alex and production by Christie Taylor

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/13570555-episode-14-henry-kissinger-machines-of-war-and-the-age-of-military-ai-hype-feat-lucy-suchman-july-21-2023

On what scholarship could & should be (and how AI/ML arXiv culture works against that):

https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/scholarship-should-be-open-inclusive-and-slow-15ab6ce1d74c

Another wonderful episode of @techwontsaveus !

I was particularly struck by how much Weizenbaum's work presages the issues we are confronting today and the part towards the end about how judgment requires values which require lived experience.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-criticism-has-a-decades-long-history-w-ben-tarnoff/id1507621076?i=1000625520365

Have you ever wanted to catch Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 live? Already done so and want more?

Our next live stream will be Monday August 28, at noon Pacific, when @roxanadaneshjou will join @alex and I to dissect AI hype in medicine.

https://www.twitch.tv/dair_institute

Fellow educators:

1) Don't do cop shit.
2) Don't pay for a service that does cop shit.
3) Don't trust claims of system performance without documentation.
4) DO educate your students about what ChatGPT is and why they wouldn't want to use it.

Screen caps from some spam I received just now:

One of the ways in which the web is like an ecosystem is that a synthetic text spill in one part of it can leak into others. Here, someone has posted ChatGPT output (unclear to what end) and the Google indexed it.

I learned of this particular #GoogleFail via BlueSky user aviendha69's post:

https://bsky.app/profile/aviendha69.bsky.social/post/3k4yxz2zz7f2v

... and verified that I could find the same results. (For now, anyway. Sometimes things things get patched.)

Now available online!

ChatGPT-Why: When, if ever, is synthetic text safe, appropriate, and desirable?, Sensemaking Lectures, GRAILE AI, August 8, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpE40jwMilU

Mystery AI Hype Theater podcast episode 10 is out today!

"Don't Be A Lawyer, ChatGPT"

Where @alex and I were joined by @kendraserra who shared their brilliance to help us take down AI hype about legal applications.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/13414023-episode-10-don-t-be-a-lawyer-chatgpt-march-3-2023

#MAIHT3k #AIhype

Thanks, as always, to Christie Taylor for production!

Seems like I should maybe post & pin: I don't suffer mansplaining. If you do it, I will call it out. Think twice about whether you are telling me something I could reasonably be expected to already know.

1) Don't ban books
2) Don't waste educators' time with book bans
3) Don't make decisions about books without reading them
4) Don't fall for OpenAI's interface: ChatGPT is not the kind of thing you can sensibly ask for information

https://www.popsci.com/technology/iowa-chatgpt-book-ban/

As I said -- utterly brilliant. Go read the whole thing!

https://karawynn.substack.com/p/language-is-a-poor-heuristic-for

Anyone noticed that when folks get even a little specific about the supposed benefits of "AI" the call outs are frequently "curing disease" (sometimes specifically cancer and/or Alzheimer's) and "addressing climate change"? I'm hearing it enough to wonder where these talking points come from.

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This essay is an utterly brilliant take on #AIhype. I'll put a few excerpts here, but you should definitely go read the whole thing:

https://karawynn.substack.com/p/language-is-a-poor-heuristic-for

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"Advances over the past year in the misnamed field of “artificial intelligence” have activated the inverse form of the heuristic that haunts so many disabled humans: most people see the language fluency exhibited by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and erroneously assume that the computer possesses intelligent comprehension — that the program understands both what users say to it, and what it replies."

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