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