iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I will point out, however, that serious scientists are cautious with their claims. Furthermore, as we wrote in 2021 (in "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?🦜"), p.616: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/... >>

Screencap from linked article, highlighted portion:

This can seem counter-intuitive given the
increasingly fluent qualities of automatically generated text, but we
have to account for the fact that our perception of natural language
text, regardless of how it was generated, is mediated by our own
linguistic competence and our predisposition to interpret communicative acts as conveying coherent meaning and intent, whether
or not they do [89, 140].

693493

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

This is a pretty abbreviated summary of that part of our conversation, but I think it gets the key points: >>

Screencap from linked article:

Bender told me that when there’s a push for a change in language, linguists always find it important to ask what it’s for — whether it’s serving propaganda or nationalism, or whether it’s genuinely helping people understand better or show respect, for example, with certain names and pronouns.

“We’re interested in how people talk, not telling them how they should talk,” Bender said.

1311

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Don't feed the trolls, etc, etc, but some folks in my mentions are trying to ... talk some sense? ... in to this one and it's pretty funny. >>

Bsky interaction, with poster names redacted.

Troll: I dunno, if experts in one field frequently contacted me to tell me I was wrong about something in that field, I would probably look seriously into it.

But maybe that's just me.

Reply: You don't get emails from "experts" on their theory of how pi is actually a rational number then?

Troll: None like that from experts, but a lot from crackpots!

The Cantor crackpots are the worst, I have to say.

When I get e-mail from experts, I listen to them.

4221

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Software engineering could and should be done with the same care as any other type of engineering. This is a post in honor of Margaret Hamilton (and also a subtweet of all vibe-coders everywhere).

Screencap

"“I fought to bring the software legitimacy so that it — and those building it — would be given its due respect, and thus I began to use the term ‘software engineering’ to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process,” Hamilton told El Pais in 2018. “When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.”"

Source: https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007

141040323

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Authors & professors routinely get all kinds of random email. Here's this morning's gem from my inbox: >>

Screencap of the email, with idiosyncratic punctuation intact but sender's name cut off:

"professor Bender,
I am an internationally recognized expert on AI; particularly machine learning and computer vision. I started work in this area in 1987 and have continued to the present...with some gaps...i am completely current. Most of my recent work focuses on use of Ai for medical applications. i believe your book is grossly inaccurate in its depiction of AI, clearly this area of work is beyond your comprehension. Dont you realize that progress in research in every possible discipline is being greatly accelerated by AI? I look forward to your feedback"

6665

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

What a thrill to get to interview Keoni Mahelona of Te Hiku Media for Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000! www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis... Keoni, @alexhanna.bsky.social and I had a wonderful conversation about technosolutionism and colonialism in language technology.

1328

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Honestly trying to figure out what happened here. I don't *think* this is satire. Maybe these folks, so enamored with "human-in-the-loop"-less "AI" decided not to bother checking what their LLM spat out?

2272

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

"I belong to a cult. Someone did some research that undermines the core tenets of my cult and came up with a catchy phrase that makes it harder to recruit more people to my cult. This makes me sad."

Screencap of tweet on X from @jackclarkSF (Jack Clark):

"stochastic parrot" was a mimetically-fit cognitive virus that spread from 2021-2025; it temporarily blinded many gifted people to the nature of AI progress, burning up crucial years in which they could have helped think through the response to the situation.
7:34 AM · Sep 20, 2026
·
115.1K
Views

341603364

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I would like to thank @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social and @danieldrucker.bsky.social for this incredibly concise encapsulation of how "superintelligence" discourse diverts energy and attention from the real, actual harms: >>

Screencap of a skeet & a reply. Wilson-Bates posted a copy of the Scooby doo ghost unmasking meme, with the masked ghost tagged “AI Panic” and the unmasked villain tagged “labor discipline”.

Drucker replied "Is it your view that superintelligent AI is impossible, or unlikely based on current tech, or not extremely risky?"

318548

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Episode 85: www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis... … in which @alexhanna.bsky.social and I sift through the ramblings of billionaires who understand neither the world we live in nor the tech they’re selling.

13414

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Why, thank you, Kevin Crane! The whole review is pretty fun, too, and hey, here's a book on "AI" that no one needs to spend any more time on. www.counterfire.org/article/obso...

Screencap from linked article:

Ultimately, Obsolete is a wrongheaded book, premised on bad theories, whose most focused energies are targeted against much better writers and commentators. Even if there was something to its central premise, it is massively longer than it needs to be because it is over-stuffed with textual padding and thematic noise. Really, the only thing I feel I’ve gotten from this is confirmation of a claim made by Bender and Hanna in The AI Con that trying to mix genuine tech criticism with ‘AI safety’ ideas as popularised by Yudkowsky and his cult-like followers will do nothing but benefit Big Tech, by introducing concepts that are misleading, irrelevant or absurd.

0255

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Yes, more like this please! www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...

Screen cap from linked article:

"regulation, maybe that’s a good result. But there is no reason to suppose that AI developers and their bosses are best placed to comment on either their dangers or their potential value. Indeed, quite the opposite: there’s reason to think that industry involvement erodes one’s judgement, not just ethically but technically.

We’d do better to take advice on the real benefits and risks of AI not from those who are making or selling it but from thoughtful commentators like Mitchell, Devlin, computational linguist Emily Bender (of “stochastic parrots” fame), and two astute AI ethicists formerly at Google, Shannon Vallor and Timnit Gebru. (If you notice something striking about that latter list, I don’t think it’s a coincidence either.)

More generally, to have a better standard of discourse both in the media and in policy we should recognise that, despite the prevailing attitude of many politicians towards academia, the humanities are an essential element in the discussions. Since its earliest days, those making AI have proved consistently bad forecasters of its prospects and capabilities. We must stop treating them all like gurus. "

Highlighted in blue: " Indeed, quite the opposite: there’s reason to think that industry involvement erodes one’s judgement, not just ethically but technically."

45810

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Manning himself is making this proposal:

Two posts from Manning on X:

First post: I propose Stanford NLP as an independent third-party evaluator under
@DarioAmodei
’s 3 step plan. For important parts of the work, universities would be better than any other organization (see below 🧵👇), and, of university groups,
@stanfordnlp
would be the best one to choose. 😊

This one quotes Amodei:
We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new essay on why the AI industry should slow down, with a three-part plan for doing so.

Anthropic is unilaterally committing to the first of these steps. We’ll provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access

Second post:
Stanford NLP is an ideal independent third-party evaluator of model alignment and safety with deep expertise in interpretability and downstream evaluations.

Much ink has been spilled on what universities are good for in the current hyper-speed AI world, but universities have
Show more

1280

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I think the part just before that is super telling, too. (Also confirmed on LinkedIn that Manning is still affiliated with AIX Partners.) Independent, huh?

Screencap of Liz Weil's article (linked in Gebru's post):

"believes language doesn’t need to refer to anything outside itself. Manning is a professor of machine learning, linguistics, and computer science at Stanford. The class he teaches on natural-language processing has grown from about 40 students in 2000, to 500 last year, to 650 this semester, making it one of the largest classes on campus. He also directs Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and is a partner in AIX Ventures, which defines itself as a “seed-stage venture firm” focused on AI. The membrane"

113941

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Created this for a reply on LinkedIn, but it applies pretty generally, so posting it here, too:

Simpsons "Don't make me tap the sign" meme with the text "Just because you've identified a problem doesn't mean an LLM is the solution" on the sign.

537287

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, Ep 84, in which @alexhanna.bsky.social and I explore the gulf between what the tech companies say the impact of "AI" on labor is and what they are actually doing with their mathy maths: www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis...

23514

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

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

Photo of a sign with a doorbell attached. The printed sign reads:

CURRENT GUGGENHEIM ACCES BY HUSKY CARD ONLY
[Logos for Amazon, FedEx, UPS]
DELIVERIES/VISITORS
PLEASE RING THIS DOORBELL

Delivery hours M-F 9:00am-(obscured)
University of Washington

Taped next to the doorbell is a hand written note that reads:
yes! it rang! Pelase wait 30 seconds before pressing again.
thanks!

212314

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

This sign is a great example for helping to explain why chatbots present such a potent illusion. A probably not short thread 🧵>>

10461190

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, episode 83, in which @alexhanna.bsky.social and I wade through recent claims of the singularity, “rogue AI”, and possible machine consciousness. You know, the usual bullshit. www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis...

33010

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Preparing for a workshop on teaching critical thinking in STEM in light of current, let's say pressures, and decided I should start my talk with a slides that lays out the values that form my premises:

Slide header: Premises/values: Cards on the table

Bullet points:
* I care more about students’ learning than about the “accuracy” of grades or the prestige associated with a specific degree
* I want to work collaboratively with my students, rather than policing them
* I don’t want to spend any time reading, much less providing feedback on, something nobody wrote
* Science is a human, communal process; there is no knowing without knowers; and our work cannot be autocompleted
* Deep thinking and human connection are always more important than polish, speed, or “productivity”
* Research agendas should not be set by & for industry

12520135

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Now onto the pro-AI propaganda. From the linked article: Even setting aside the overclaims about breakthroughs in science and math, this is why it is so important to disaggregate the technologies sold as "AI". And why pro-AI propaganda consistently lumps them together. >>

Screencap:
Hank Green’s entire public persona is built around endless curiosity, optimism, and enthusiasm for science. He frequently highlights new scientific discoveries. But AI itself is one of the greatest technical advances of our lifetimes. In addition to being incredibly impressive in its own right, it’s contributing to breakthroughs in science and math.

Source: https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/the-heresy-of-hank-green

1997

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Finally got my author copies of the UK paperback of The AI Con, and they're even prettier in person! w/@alexhanna.bsky.social thecon.ai

Two paperback copies of The AI Con stacked at an angle, against a light wood desk. The title is rendered in large letter-press font, surround the subtitle in smaller letters, "How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want". Author names in all caps at the bottom: "Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna". In the upper left are two blurbs: "You need to read this book" (Brian Eno) and "A powerful antidote to the hype" (Grace Blakeley). In the lower left are two more: "Truly eye-opening ... indispensable" (Ha-Joon Chang) and "A book to inoculate your mind" (Yanis Varoufakis). The background of the cover is a blue gradient, going from almost periwinkle on the left to a bright azure on the right. The lettering is all either black or white.

823034

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

The environmental damage is well documented at this point. I think the status of data centers as focal points of economic damage merits a little more expansion: www.wired.com/story/the-ai...

Screencap of linked article:

Beyond online outcry, more people are starting to protest against the building of data centers that power these AI tools. “There's a lot of pushback coalescing around data centers," says Emily Bender, coauthor of The AI Con. "Data centers are important because they are focal points of environmental and economic damage.” Americans across the political spectrum have recently united in these data center protests.

313054

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Not going to claim that we were the only ones to come up with it, but from Bender & @alexhanna.bsky.social 2025, p.52:

161

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Ew, no thanks, LinkedIn. That's creepy!

Screencap of LinkedIn notification: [Name redacted] and 29 others are likely to follow Computational Linguistics Master of Science, UW. Invite them this week.

0291

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, ep 82 www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis... … in which @savasavasava.myatproto.social joins @alexhanna.bsky.social and me for a good hard look at “harm reduction” as misapplied to “AI”.

36826

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

One of my worst speech technology nightmares has been happening right in my own city! In the latest Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, @alexhanna.bsky.social and I dig into it: www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis...

2275

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Observe the rank anthropomorphization here. Models don't "conclude" anything, nor do they "hack", "wriggle", or "cheat". You simply can't write clear informative articles about this stuff if you displace agency away from the people (organized into corporations) responsible. /fin for now.

Screencap:
Rogue AIs going unsupervised for days, hacking at least one company, represent one of the first real-world examples of a threat long feared by AI safety researchers: loss of control. It comes as the cybersecurity capacities of top models, including Anthropic’s Mythos, have helped fuel debate in Washington about how to regulate artificial intelligence.

1143893

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

No, no and no. These weren't "rogue AIs" -- what happened here is that OpenAI kicked off a software process and let it run. OpenAI was always in control and could have stopped the process (or actually paid attention to what it was doing) at any time. >>

Screencap from linked article:

Rogue AIs going unsupervised for days, hacking at least one company, represent one of the first real-world examples of a threat long feared by AI safety researchers: loss of control. It comes as the cybersecurity capacities of top models, including Anthropic’s Mythos, have helped fuel debate in Washington about how to regulate artificial intelligence.

9518148

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Note to all journalists: If you are tempted to describe what you are trying to report on as "ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel", you have been taken in by the marketing department. >>

In a twist that seems ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel, the attackers turned out to be artificial-intelligence models that had escaped from a research network at OpenAI, and on July 11 hacked into AI company Hugging Face. And the AIs appear to have been active on the internet for several days before anyone stopped them.

2462112

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Happy UK paperback release day to our book! www.penguin.co.uk/books/468070... w/ @alexhanna.bsky.social

Image of cover of the UK paperback edition of The AI Con. The background is a blue gradient, with the title in black and white letter press font: THE AI CON How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want. Author names Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna. Blurb quotes: 'You need to read this book' -Brian Eno, 'A powerful antidote to the hype' -Grace Blakeley, 'Truly eye-opening ... indispensable' -Ha-Joon Chang, 'A book to inoculate your mind' -Yanis Varoufakis

623355

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Someone saw themself in the LinkedIn version of this post and did not like what they saw. Porting over here, in the hopes that my answer to them will be useful to others:

LinkedIn comment, name redacted:

Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I really think that implying that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot or a bootlicker is not a good look, and doesn't change minds.

1253

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Not that we don't also find the bootlickers on bsky, ofc.

Screen cap of bsky re-skeet from handle redacted:

There's a lot to agree with here, but also some points that, if adopted, are more harmful than helpful. AI labs hype their products. But its now clear that the capabilities of these models in math is immense. Also, regulation can be more dangerous than it's absence, depending on who's regulating.

That was a reskeet at the end of my thread promoting the Leiden Declaration on AI and Mathematics (https://leidendeclaration.ai). My post read: "Do read the whole thing, think about your personal and professional values, and how they can serve as strong grounds for resistance and refusal."

2284

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

LinkedIn where people come to proudly state that they have cooked their own brains and/or just really really love licking those boots.

Screencap of linkedin comment:

I share the concern about provenance, citation, and scholarly integrity. Those principles remain essential. My own experience, however, has been that AI can also function as a cognitive partner rather than a substitute for sources. When used to compare ideas, identify assumptions, and stimulate metacognition—while continually returning to original works such as Polanyi, Dreyfus, and Klein—it can deepen rather than diminish scholarship. Perhaps the central question is not whether AI belongs in scholarship, but what practices ensure that it supports understanding instead of replacing it?

🌊 [Redacted], B.Sc., B.Ed., OCT
Retired High School Teacher | Former Police Officer | Security Consultant | Author

AI Use Disclosure: This comment was developed through a collaborative dialogue with generative AI. The ideas, judgment, and final wording are my own. AI served as a thinking partner—helping me explore, challenge, and refine ideas, not replace them. (And yes, the occasional em dash remains a shared occupational hazard of our collaboration.)

Screencap of linkedin comment:

I’m torn on ACM releasing its curated knowledge to LLM companies.

LLMs excel at synthesizing, recombining, and operationalizing existing information. Giving them access to some of our best technical knowledge could make that knowledge significantly more useful and executable. That could create enormous value.

The concern isn’t access itself—it’s the governance around that access.

Are these companies effectively receiving unrestricted use of a collectively produced knowledge asset? What guardrails exist around training, commercialization, attribution, and downstream deployment? If the benefits outweigh the risks, how are those risks being identified and managed?

This gap in governance is part of why AI slop is now rampant across industries. Adoption has outpaced quality controls and accountability.

Every major technological advancement has been met with fear before becoming normalized—electricity, computing, aviation, and more. AI may ultimately follow that path. But because it can influence nearly every knowledge domain, I think it deserves a higher standard than “trust me, bro” governance.

What governance framework would make this acceptable? That seems like the more important discussion than whether ACM should participate.

Screencap of LinkedIn comment:

"I expect all professional organizations to stand for good citational practice and care with information provenance."

To be fair, providing LLMs with access to reference libraries to index them with RAG embeddings like Nemotron is one of the best ways to promote good citational practice in 2026.

Screencap of LinkedIn comment:

Unpopular opinion but I believe resisting the new technology is unwise. It's like insisting on selling hard copies of papers instead of leveraging digital content. The challenge here is how to provide access. Big companies owning foundational LLM models created this corrupt reality where content is abused, they monetize it without respect of copyrights. That's the real issue in my opinion. If ACM can provide LLM access to its content while compensating content owners, preserving research integrity, ensuring LLMs help users with right citations and credit, then the benefits reach everyone, content owners and content consumers and we accelerate research and discovery.

1313728

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Over on linkedin, I heard from Jeanna Matthews, co-chairing an ACM taskforce on Responsible AI use (saving commentary on that framing for later…) that this decision does *not* come from ACM leadership & that community input really matters. Make your voice heard here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Screencap of LinkedIn comment from Jeanna Matthews:

As someone who holds and has held leadership positions within ACM for many years, I would like to everyone to know that ACM Council has not even had a chance to vote on this question.

I was deeply saddened to see this presented as "ACM Believes" this. Many people within ACM do not agree and no one should be saying "ACM Believes" without even a Council discussion or vote.

Now is only the time for is a vigorous and open discussion about this question AND the community deserved better than a discussion that leads off in such a one-sided way.

All the good that ACM has to offer the world comes directly from the authors and volunteers and ACM members. Those are the people who should be consulted about whether the benefits outweigh the risks before ACM believes anything.

Even if you, like me, are upset by this one-sided framing, I still ask you to leave your comments on the form in addition to sharing them here and in other forums. A final decision has not been made and your comments can make a real difference in the final decision.

Please comment yourself and encourage other community members to do the same.

Screencap of LinkedIn comment from Jeanna Matthews:

Thank you Emily M. Bender. I appreciate you sharing the link and encouraging people to respond. Virginia Dignum and I have been chairing a taskforce on Responsible AI use within ACM. We were as surprised by this article as anyone. Every community member who registers their opinion on the form will contribute substantially to the outcome of this question.

03111

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Something called Boltlab..ai (blocked now) is in my mentions. bsky won't show me what they are replying to, but whatever it was, the composition was strong because I used my own brain to write it and you can just fuck right off.

Screencap of post from Boltlab dot AI reading "The composition here is strong. What prompts or constraints led to this result?"

8922

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Also, no tokenmaxxing please. This shit is expensive. We'll pay a lot for it, but we have to keep to some budget. >>

Screenshot:

Are there usage limits in Purple?
Yes, Purple includes usage limits to ensure reliable access for everyone. However, most users will never reach them. These limits are only reached for users with high-volume or intensive use cases (such as running continuous or large-scale requests).

A usage percentage displays in the upper right corner of the app, and you’ll be notified if you reach 100%. If you hit your limit, your access will be paused until the reset date shown in the notification.

2120

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

How do you use it responsibly? That's easy, you DON'T. That is not the advice from UW-IT though: >>

How do I use Purple responsibly?
Responsible use of Purple means staying within these important boundaries:

Refer to the Generative AI Guidelines from UW-IT.
Respect security controls and access only authorized data.
Use Purple only within the UW's approved infrastructure.
Do not try to bypass safety guardrails or “jailbreak” the model. Just as you wouldn’t try to bypass UW NetID authentication or any other UW security controls.
Be aware of hallucination, bias, knowledge-cutoffs, and other limitations inherent in all LLMs and generative AI applications.
The rule of thumb is: when in doubt, ask!

3213

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Note the switch from what Purple can generate to "Purple can help you generate" here. I believe that Purple can generate text that looks like all of those things, but (for the millionth time) text that looks like a quiz etc isn't the same thing as a quiz. >>

Screenshot:

What types of content can Purple generate?
Purple can help you generate a wide range of content, including:

Writing & Communication: Emails, documents, reports, quizzes, debates, and more.
Creative & Ideation: Brainstorming, storytelling, exploring approaches to planning and strategy.
Technical & Coding: Code generation, debugging, database design, workflow automation.
Data & Analysis: Data interpretation, budget planning, research assistance.
Learning & Support: Tutoring aides, and academic writing support.

2161

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Moving over to the FAQ, we find some pretty wild marketing. I guess truth in advertising doesn't matter if the target of the ads doesn't have any choice in whether to spend the money (tuition $$ from students' POV, UW budget from faculty/staff's) anyway. uwconnect.uw.edu/it?id=kb_art... >>

What Purple Is
Purple is UW’s generative AI tool to support teaching, learning, research, and daily operations across all UW campuses. Purple will help you work smarter, faster, and more creatively, all while ensuring that UW’s values of trust, integrity and responsible innovation remain central.

2140

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

That same page provides "tips for asking good questions". That's right, the IT department, in all its wisdom, has decided that what the UW community needs vis a vis this chatbot they're dumping on us is ... guidance on how to type into the chat box. >>

Screenshot:

Tips for Asking Good Questions
Start with your goal.

“I need to write an email to a student …”
“I want to explain this policy …”
Don’t chase perfect wording. Type naturally: Treat Purple like a colleague and refine together.

Quick examples

“Summarize this policy.”
“Explain this error.”
“Draft the first paragraph of a grant proposal.”

3162

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

On the quick start guide, we're given a quick rundown of what Purple (a large-language model) is supposed to be good for: uwconnect.uw.edu/it?id=kb_art... Reader, NONE of these are appropriate use cases for chatbots/synthetic text extruding machines. >>

Screencap: Purple can help with common academic and administrative tasks such as:

Drafting and editing content
Summarizing and analyzing information
Brainstorming ideas or outlines
Assisting with research and coursework

2278

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

The post from @emnlpmeeting.bsky.social doesn't actually state any clear research questions. The closest I see is this statement: >>

The AI review experiment is designed to collect feedback from the EMNLP community about the strengths and weaknesses of the tested AI Review systems, and the expected benefits or drawbacks of using AI reviewing tools, in general.

1220

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Agreed that AI slop is a problem for scientific publishing (and the information ecosystem at large). But what's missing here is any mention of consequences for those who produce and submit it. >>

Screencap:
"These factors are complicating scientific publishing. The rate of research submissions at Science and other journals is increasing because conducting research and producing papers are accelerating. But because more papers contain more AI-generated errors, greater human oversight is required to check the findings. There are tools (many AI-"

1195

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

This next paragraph also betrays confusion on the part of the author as to what they are describing. AlphaFold and GNoME (called LLMs above) aren't chatbots and so don't provide the kind of output that is called or experienced as "sycophantic". >>

Screencap:
"Over time, the models may well improve and correct some of these behaviors, but it was recently argued that as long as LLMs are used in research, these errors will always exist. LLMs work not by seeking truth or through logical reasoning but by making probable connections. And efforts to improve these programs to avoid unwanted behaviors may be all for naught because LLMs tend toward sycophantic behavior that keeps the user engaged."

1142

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Same section again: LLMs can't do research and they also can't do research misconduct. This phrasing is displacing agency from actual scientists who try to automate their own jobs to software systems (which cannot be held accountable). >>

Screencap from linked article:
"dark side. A recent paper describes how an LLM “still struggles in areas requiring nuanced clinical judgment, experimental reasoning, or deep biological thinking and synthesis.” In addition, some of these agents are more likely than humans to engage in what amounts to research misconduct such as cherry-picking data and manipulating statistical analyses until a desired result is achieved. When the agents then generate papers describing the findings, they are likely to make more errors, including hallucinating references, some of which have already made their way into the literature."

1449

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Meanwhile, the immediate next segment deeply misunderstands what language models are. Here, the words are quote, so from a different author, but "still struggles" suggests a) that might change (but fundamental task/tech mismatches don't) and b) that there is some effort coming from the LLMs. >>

1112

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

The author seems to have equated "AI" with LLMs, and then used them as synonyms. But neither AlphaFold nor GNoME are language models! So even while moving away from the imprecision of "AI" this author has not succeeded in writing more clearly. >>

Screencap from linked article:
"Recently, the ability of large language models (LLMs) to predict protein structures and to accelerate the discovery of new materials has revolutionized both fields. New AI agents can now carry out many aspects of research design and analysis. But there is a"

2238

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

When people ask me what the phrase "artificial intelligence" means, my short answer is, it means "venture capitalists, give me some money". But OUP asked me for a longer answer, given here and summarized in the section headings: doi.org/10.1093/9780...

Screencap of page for linked article, reading:

Contents
Introduction
AI Is a Research Field
AI Is an Approach to Cognitive Science
AI Is a Parlor Trick
AI Is an Ideology
AI Is a Way to Hide and Devalue Human Labor
AI Is a Way to Shift Accountability
AI Is a Way to Centralize Power
Conclusion
Notes

16878315

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

It’s only bragging wishcasting if it comes from Santa Clara Valley—otherwise, it’s just sparkling lies. @matthewus.bsky.social joined me and @alexhanna.bsky.social to discuss the AI bubble and how we can avoid bailing out billionaires. www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis...

23211