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Articles by Emily Bender
Forget 'superintelligence': error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month
Amid a barrage of news stories warning about superintelligent machines rendering humanity extinct, a CNN story describing the opposite scenario – one in which the US military's reliance on brittle chatbots almost brought the US into war with China – went mostly unnoticed by the public. The biggest international AI news of the past three weeks was Anthropic engineer Jacob Coxon's resignation.
Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month
‘As former FTC chair Lina Khan has repeatedly reminded us, there is no exemption to the law when it comes to AI.’ Photograph: US Navy/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock Amid a barrage of news stories warning about superintelligent machines rendering humanity extinct, a CNN story describing the opposite scenario – one in which the US military’s reliance on brittle chatbots almost brought the US into war with China – went mostly unnoticed by the public.
Superintelligenz oder Hype? Warum sich zwei KI-Forscherinnen klar positionieren
Software 1 hour ago Ohne Fremdsoftware: So bringst du deinem Windows-PC bei, sich automatisch zu reparieren t3n.de - Marvin Fuhrmann • 1h Windows bietet zahlreiche Tools, mit denen du Fehler frühzeitig erkennen und aus der Welt schaffen kannst, bevor sie zu einem Problem werden. Welche … China 1 hour ago Und sie brauchen sich doch zeit.de - Von Heike Buchter • 1h KI-Sicherheit, Handelsstreit und Krieg in Nahost: Beim Treffen Trumps mit Xi wäre der Erhalt des Status Quo ein Erfolg.
Don’t be fooled by this summer of AI hype
It’s been a busy few months for AI hype. At the end of April, Anthropic claimed that its model Claude Mythos is better at finding software vulnerabilities than most security experts. Then we had the OpenAI–Hugging Face hacking incident, after which Anthropic (proudly) and Meta (reluctantly) disclosed similar incidents involving their models. This was followed by Anthropic’s claim that one of its models had made a mathematical breakthrough; soon OpenAI claimed a mathematical breakthrough of its own.
Stochastic Parrots š¦: Frequently Unasked Questions
An important related point here is that though all of these systems (Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, etc) have LLMs specifically designed to produce synthetic text as key components, that doesnāt mean there arenāt other components, as Margaret Mitchell also points out. Most things we historically do with computing are not well approximated by extruding synthetic text.
La Estafa de la IA: cómo combatir el espejismo de las grandes tecnológicas que amenaza tu trabajo y tu libertad
Un libro imprescindible para desenmascarar las falsas promesas de la inteligencia artificial y entender cómo las grandes tecnológicas convierten su hype en un negocio a costa de nuestras vidas.¿Va a acabar la inteligencia artificial dominando el mundo? ¿Han creado los científicos una forma de vida artificial capaz de pensar por sí misma? ¿Va a quedarse con nuestros puestos de trabajo? ¿Estamos entrando en una era en la que los ordenadores son mejores que los humanos?Las doctoras Emily M.
There is no connection but human: Why it is vital to value human creativity in the age of AI
Original illustration by Ibrahim Kizza for the Association for Progressive Communications This article is part of the series "Don't Ask AI, Ask A Peer" - a collaboration between GenderIT, APC.org, and Global Voices. You can read about it in the editorial here. We asked the author: "Why is it vital to value human creativity and connection in the age of AI?" The following article is her interpretation of the question.
Imitazione statistica Perché ChatGPT sembra intelligente senza esserlo davvero
In “L’inganno dell’intelligenza artificiale, Emily M. Bender e Alex Hanna spiegono che sistemi linguistici più avanzati producono frasi convincenti grazie a enormi quantità di dati e calcoli probabilistici Unsplash Nel campo delle tecnologie del linguaggio, i modelli linguistici neurali hanno migliorato molte applicazioni, tra cui la trascrizione e la traduzione automatiche.
Let’s Be Evil: Anthropic, OpenAI and the Department of War
By: Alex Hanna, Decca Muldowney and Emily M. Bender Last week, Donald Trump directed federal agencies to immediately cease using tech from Anthropic after the company refused to give the US military unrestricted access to its “AI” tools. The company cited concerns about mass surveillance of Americans and autonomous weapon development. In response, Department of War head Pete Hegseth dubbed Anthropic a “supply chain risk”.
De-anthropomorphizing “AI”: From wishful mnemonics to accurate nomenclature
Abstract Language matters. How we describe “AI” technology influences how it is perceived, deployed, and trusted. Extravagant and persuasive language incites hype. It is the responsibility of journalists, companies, and scholars to characterize technology in ways that inform and empower their readers by using appropriate terminology and avoiding inflated claims. One type of inflated claim comes from using anthropomorphizing language to describe system functionality.
De-anthropomorphizing “AI”: From wishful mnemonics to accurate nomenclature
APA Author BIBTEX Harvard Standard RIS Vancouver
We Need to Talk About How We Talk About 'AI'
New and unprecedented, is it? by Ada Jušić & Eleonora Lima (KCL) / Better Images of AI / CC by 4.0 “AI” is not your friend. Nor is it an intelligent tutor, an empathetic ear, or a helpful assistant. It can not “make up” facts, and it does not make “mistakes”. It does not actually answer your questions. Such anthropomorphizing language, however, permeates the public discussion of so-called artificial intelligence technologies.
How AI Is Changing Higher Education
The release of ChatGPT in 2022 marked a clear inflection point in the history of higher education. The advent of large language models (LLMs) capable of generating relevant, grammatical responses to any prompt within seconds — as well as related technologies like agentic AI, AI tutors, and automated grading tools — has upended higher ed and raised fundamental questions about originality, expertise, cognition, and even the nature and purpose of education itself.
The AI con: How to fight big tech’s hype and create the future we want
The Guardian • Current Issue This September, Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, claimed “a kid born today will never be smarter than AI ever.” A couple of days before, Demis Hassabis, the head of Google’s DeepMind, said, “We’ll have something that we could sort of reasonably call AGI [artificial general intelligence], that exhibits all the cognitive capabilities human have, maybe in the next five to ten years, possibly the lower end of that.” With hype about AI at fever pitch, this new...
Your autumn media list from UW authors and artists
This spring, 18,883 degrees were conferred upon graduates of all three UW campuses. We estimate there are just under 600,000 living alumni of the UW. And the UW supports or sustains 100,520 jobs, making it the fifth-largest employer in the state. No wonder we’re always hearing about new books, music, podcasts and film projects from the UW community. Read on for a few recent accomplishments from Huskies in the media. by Emily M.
AI Hype Is the Product and Everyone’s Buying It
Honest, paywall-free news is rare. Please support our boldly independent journalism with a donation of any size. This article is an excerpt adapted from the book The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna (Copyright © 2025 by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna). Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. As long as there’s been research on AI, there’s been AI hype.
The AI Con book excerpt: The hidden workers who keep things running
In November 2023, the self-driving car company Cruise admitted that its “driverless” robotaxis were monitored and controlled (as needed) by remote workers. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt took to Hacker News, a forum hosted by venture capital incubator Y Combinator, to admit that these cars needed to be remotely driven 2–4 percent of the time in “tricky situations.” Most AI tools require a huge amount of hidden labor to make them work at all.
The AI Con book excerpt: The hidden workers who keep things running
In November 2023, the self-driving car company Cruise admitted that its “driverless” robotaxis were monitored and controlled (as needed) by remote workers. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt took to Hacker News, a forum hosted by venture capital incubator Y Combinator, to admit that these cars needed to be remotely driven 2–4 percent of the time in “tricky situations.” Most AI tools require a huge amount of hidden labor to make them work at all.
US & UK Govt officials are letting AI do their jobs – Badly | Principia Scientific, Intl.
Written by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna on June 12, 2025.
5 AI Books to Read in 2025
The AI landscape is evolving rapidly and it’s important to keep up. No one can afford to stay out of the loop on AI, so here are five new books to fill you in on the latest updates, concerns, and uses of this world-changing technology. Learn something new every day with “Book Bites,” 15-minute audio summaries of the latest and greatest nonfiction.
Forget the Hype, This is What Artificial Intelligence Isn’t
Written by Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna on June 8, 2025. Posted in Current News The hype around artificial intelligence (AI) risks spiraling out of control as claims around the emerging technology escalate into the realm of the absurd. AI is a big-money business, write the authors of the new book, “THE AI CON: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want” (2025), and the marketing fanfare we see is meant to promote the interests of big tech and do one thing: sell AI products.
The Myth of AGI | TechPolicy.Press
Perspective Alex Hanna, Emily Bender / Jun 3, 2025 This piece is part “Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis,” in collaboration with Data & Society. Read more about the series here. "AGI is coming very, very soon. And then after that, that's not the goal. After that, artificial superintelligence. We'll come to solve the issues that mankind would never ever have thought that we could solve.
Beyond the Hype: The Sinister Underbelly of AI Promises
Emily Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington where she is also Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master of Science program, affiliate faculty in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, and affiliate faculty in the Information School. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and a lecturer in the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley.
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want
Celebrate Pride Month with 20% off these select books. Shop here! How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world Description A smart, incisive look at the technologies sold as artificial intelligence, the drawbacks and pitfalls of technology sold under this banner, and why it’s crucial to recognize the many ways in which AI hype covers for a small set of power-hungry actors at work and in the world.
The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want
AI is just a marketing term. Through contemporary case studies, Bender (linguistics, Univ. of Washington) and Hanna (director of research, Distributed AI Research Institute) excellently elucidate the behind-the-scenes of generative artificial intelligence and why it has never been all it’s cracked up to be.
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: Pushback and Accountability
In the midst of all of the political chaos these past few weeks have brought, the drumbeat of AI hype continues unabated, and indeed, it is often interwoven with the havoc that Trump, Musk, their allies in the GOP, and the rest of the tech billionaires are wrecking.
THE AI CON | Kirkus Reviews
A refreshingly contrarian take on AI and the clouds of hyperbole surrounding it. The bots probably aren’t going to kill you, but they’re probably not going to save you, either. Linguist Bender and sociologist Hanna, the founders of a merrily debunking podcast about all things AI, write that there’s hoopla aplenty about how AI will make our lives better—or perhaps worse.
Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: The Newsletter: ChatGPT Has No Place in the Classroom
The guide purports to tell teachers how to use something in their classes, and it even uses some terminology adopted from pedagogy (the guide has learning outcomes stated!). But who are they to tell educators how to teach? What studies have been done on the effectiveness (or not) of the ideas they are proposing? The guide has exactly zero references. There are no studies. Who the hell are they to tell you to rethink your pedagogy? The guide starts with a section presented as a primer on AI.
Advocating for Protections for the Information Ecosystem
Today, I got to participate in a round table organized by Congressman Ro Khanna about how AI will impact the workforce, elections, education and mental health. We each got to do 90 seconds of opening remarks.
Resisting Dehumanization in the Age of “AI”
Get full access to this article View all access and purchase options for this article. Transparency Action Editor: Robert L. Goldstone Editor: Robert L. Goldstone References Alkhatib A. (2021). To live in their utopia: Why algorithmic systems create absurd outcomes. In CHI ’21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1–9). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445740 Baria A. T., Cross K. (2021).
New Crisis or Longstanding Challenge"
On Thursday 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, so I am posting mine here. Below is a lightly edited transcript: Thank you Representative Scott for organizing this and thank you all for your time and attention.
AI causes real harm. Let's focus on that over the end-of-humanity hype
By Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna for Scientific American Wrongful arrests, an expanding surveillance dragnet, defamation and deep-fake pornography are all actually existing dangers of so-called “artificial intelligence” tools currently on the market. That, and not the imagined potential to wipe out humanity, is the real threat from artificial intelligence.
AI Causes Real Harm. Let’s Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype
Wrongful arrests, an expanding surveillance dragnet, defamation and deep-fake pornography are all actually existing dangers of so-called “artificial intelligence” tools currently on the market. That, and not the imagined potential to wipe out humanity, is the real threat from artificial intelligence.
Cleaning up a baby peacock sullied by a non-information spill
And I've said in the past that the token efforts they make to clean up after themselves are like Exxon Mobil or BP bragging about how many poor birds they cleaned off. Yesterday, I encountered a bird sullied by the current non-information spill. Specifically, while scrolling Facebook on my phone, I spotted this very appealing post on Facebook: Screenshot of Facebook post from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.
What those seven companies avoided committing to
On July 21, 2023, in a photo op featuring only men in suits, President Biden announced that seven companies (Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI) had agreed to voluntary commitments regarding "safe, secure and trustworthy AI". The text of the voluntary commitments is available (via a White House " fact sheet " describing this as a step in the Biden-Harris administration's broader efforts around regulating AI).
Talking about a 'schism' is ahistorical
In two recent conversations with very thoughtful journalists, I was asked about the apparent 'schism' between those making a lot of noise about fears inspired by fantasies of all-powerful 'AIs' going rogue and destroying humanity, and those seeking to illuminate and address actual harms being done in the name of 'AI' now and the risks that we see following from increased use of this kind of automation.
Envisioning Information Access Systems: What Makes for Good Tools and a Healthy Web?
[1] . 2021. Persistent anti-Muslim bias in large language models. In Proceedings of the 2021 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society. 298–306.Google ScholarDigital Library [2] . 2022. Do large language models understand us? Daedalus 151, 2 (2022), 183–197. Google ScholarCross Ref [3] . 2010. A review of factors influencing user satisfaction in information retrieval. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 61, 5 (2010), 859–868.Google ScholarCross Ref [4] . 2021.
Thought experiment in the National Library of Thailand
With the advent of ChatGPT, large language models (LLMs) went from a relatively niche topic to something that many, many people have been exposed to. ChatGPT is presented as an entertaining system to chat with, a dialogue partner, and (through Bing) a search interface.* But fundamentally, it is a language model, that is, a system trained to produce likely sequences of words based on the distributions in its training data.
Wirtschaft ohne Feuer, fossile Subventionen, Atomkraftwerke
In den „Fremden Federn“ stellen wir einmal pro Woche in Kooperation mit dem Kuratorendienst piqd eine Auswahl von lesenswerten journalistischen Fundstücken mit wirtschaftspolitischem Bezug zusammen. piqd versteht sich als eine „Programmzeitung für guten Journalismus“ – was relevant ist, bestimmen keine reichweitenoptimierten Algorithmen, sondern ausschließlich ausgewählte Fachjournalisten, Wissenschaftler und andere Experten. Volk und Wirtschaft ohne Feuer?
Google CEO peddles #AIhype on CBS 60 minutes
Another tweet thread turned into a blog post, to keep it all in one place, reacting to this tweet/clip from CBS 60 Minutes (as flagged by Melanie Mitchell): This is so painful to watch. @60Minutes and @sundarpichai working in concert to heap on the #AIHype. Partial transcript (that I just typed up) and reactions from me follow: Reporter: "Of the AI issues we walked about, the most mysterious is called 'emergent properties'.
ChatGPT Is Not Intelligent w/ Emily M. Bender on Apple Podcasts
Paris Marx is joined by Emily M. Bender to discuss what it means to say that ChatGPT is a “stochastic parrot,” why Elon Musk is calling to pause AI development, and how the tech industry uses language to trick us into buying its narratives about technology. Emily M. Bender is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington and the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master’s Program. She’s also the director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory.
Please don't fall for the distractions of #AIhype
Below is a lightly edited version of the tweet/toot thread I put together in the evening of Tuesday March 28, in reaction to the open letter put out by the Future of Life institute that same day. Photo by Pamela licensed under CC BY 2.0 Okay, so that AI letter signed by lots of AI researchers calling for a "Pause [on] Giant AI Experiments"? It's just dripping with #AIhype. Here's a quick rundown.
ChatGPT: the route to loneliness?
From ChatGPT to Replika, AI is being touted as a tool to solve the loneliness epidemic. But is this just a false marketing promise, or perhaps something more sinister. In these habitually lonely times wanting someone to talk to, even if they’re just an AI chat bot, is understandable. But besides the emptiness of a conversation with an AI, author of Nihilism and Technology, Nolen Gertz, argues that even the most optimistic story of connection could lead to danger.
We asked the new AI to do some simple rocket science. It crashed and burned : NPR - How smart Technology changing lives
NPR staff generated imagery using Midjourney Tiera Fletcher carefully read through an artificial intelligence chatbot’s attempt at rocket science. “That’strue, that’s factual,” she said thoughtfully as she scanned the AI-generated description of one of the most fundamental equations, known simply as “the rocket equation.” Then she got to the bot’s attempt to write the rocket equation itself – and stopped. “No … Mmm mmm … it would not work,” she said.
We asked the new AI to do some simple rocket science. It crashed and burned
Then she got to the bot's attempt to write the rocket equation itself – and stopped. "No ... Mmm mmm ... it would not work," she said. "It's just missing too many variables." Fletcher is a professional rocket scientist and co-founder of Rocket With The Fletchers, an outreach organization. She agreed to review text and images about rocketry generated by the latest AI technology, to see whether the computer programs could provide people with the basic concepts behind what makes rockets fly.
We asked the new AI to do some simple rocket science. It crashed and burned : NPR
NPR workers generated imagery utilizing Midjourney Tiera Fletcher fastidiously learn by means of a synthetic intelligence chatbot’s try at rocket science. “That’strue, that is factual,” she mentioned thoughtfully as she scanned the AI-generated description of one of the crucial elementary equations, recognized merely as “the rocket equation.” Then she obtained to the bot’s try to put in writing the rocket equation itself – and stopped. “No … Mmm mmm … it will not work,” she mentioned.
Machine Life
One of the most useful metaphors for driving scientific and engineering progress has been that of the “machine.” But in light of our increased understanding of biology, evolution, intelligence, and engineering we must re-examine the life-as-machine metaphor with fair, up-to- date definitions. Such a process is allowing us to see that living things are in fact remarkable, agential, morally-important machines, writes Michael Levin.
Machine Life | Michael Levin
One of the most useful metaphors for driving scientific and engineering progress has been that of the “machine.” But in light of our increased understanding of biology, evolution, intelligence, and engineering we must re-examine the life-as-machine metaphor with fair, up-to-date definitions. Such a process is allowing us to see that living things are in fact remarkable, agential, morally-important machines, writes Michael Levin. The difference between living beings and machines was once apparent.
All-knowing machines are a fantasy | Emily M. Bender and Chriag Shah
The idea of an all-knowing computer program comes from science fiction and should stay there. Despite the seductive fluency of ChatGPT and other language models, they remain unsuitable as sources of knowledge. We must fight against the instinct to trust a human-sounding machine, argue Emily M. Bender & Chirag Shah.
#AIhype take-downs
On reflecting on how much time I spend working to deflate and counteract AI hype, and how much of that ends up as Twitter threads, I thought it would be useful to have a place to link to all of them. Trying this out as a Medium post rather than just a page on my own website on the theory that this will have greater reach. Links given in reverse-chronological order, to make it easier to find new things when readers check back.
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