The Environmental Toll of AI Models

Emily  Bender is a computational linguistics professor at the University of Washington. Alex Hanna is the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute. Bender and Hanna join Big Technology to discuss what their new book, “The AI‑Con," which they describe as the layered ways today’s language‑model boom obscures environmental costs, labor harms, and shaky science. Tune in to hear a lively back‑and‑forth on whether chatbots are useful tools or polished parlor tricks. We also cover benchmark gaming, data‑center water use, doomerism, and more. Hit play for a candid debate that will leave you smarter about where generative AI really stands — and what comes next.

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