Lexis

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


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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 



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