Emily M. Bender
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emilymbender.bsky.social
Emily M. Bender
@emilymbender.bsky.social
37K followers 570 following 2.3K posts
Book: https://thecon.ai

Web: https://faculty.washington.edu/ebender
Posts Replies Media Videos
emilymbender.bsky.social
Okay, I hestitate to even share this link, because while I like NYMag I do not want to send this journalist in particular clicks, b ut:

If your framing is that an academic is the "dominant voice" and the underdogs are OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, maybe a fact check in is order??

>>
Is ChatGPT Conscious?
Many users feel they’re talking to a real person. Scientists say it’s time to consider whether they’re onto something.
nymag.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:40 PM
emilymbender.bsky.social
I think there's an interesting study of media to be done looking at who gets labeled an "expert" and who gets labeled a "skeptic". Certainly for coverage of "AI", but I wonder if there are other topics that would make interesting comparisons.
November 25, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
cliu.bsky.social
Northeastern University is hiring an Assistant Professor in AI Policy and Media. The tenure home would be either Communication Studies or Journalism, with a joint appointment with the policy school. Please apply and be my colleague :)

northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...
Assistant Professor in AI Policy and Media
About the Opportunity About the Opportunity The College of Arts, Media and Design (CAMD) at Northeastern University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in AI Policy and Media, ...
northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
November 24, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
dairinstitute.bsky.social
Catch up on the latest episode of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000!

🎃 🔥 In which @emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social tackle another “All Hell” episode! Join them as they work their way through the horrors... 🔥🎃

Listen here: www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis...
November 24, 2025 at 6:10 PM
emilymbender.bsky.social
This is awful, and it's really important that it's being reported on.

At the same time, it's almost impossible to get to the actual journalism because USA Today is shoving their own chatbot at you (pic in next post).

>>
hypervisible.blacksky.app Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 21h
“After having extensive conversations with ChatGPT about his depression and suicidal ideation, ChatGPT still provided Joshua with information on how to purchase and use a gun, according to the court complaint reviewed by USA TODAY.”
He told ChatGPT he was suicidal. It helped with his plan, family says.
A lawsuit against OpenAI claims that Joshua Enneking, 26, was coached into suicide by ChatGPT after confiding in the chatbot for months.
www.usatoday.com
November 24, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
kirbyconrod.bsky.social
hey #linguistics peeps! have you ever taken (or taught) a syntax class? we want to hear your opinions (good or bad) about it! We're doing focus group interviews (on zoom, or in person at select conferences) - if you're at all interested, you can fill out our interest form: forms.gle/nhBtz78hQXNA...
SynTeach Focus Group Interest Form
SynTeach is a project researching peoples' experiences teaching and learning syntax in higher education. We have conducted surveys of the field including syntax instructors and students, and we are pl...
forms.gle
November 24, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
emilymbender.bsky.social
Asking a chatbot isn't better than nothing -- it's worse than nothing. Unless the goal isn't learning but rather "turning in assignments".
November 24, 2025 at 2:51 AM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
emilymbender.bsky.social
Yes! This also comes up in my recent contribution to CHE:

www.chronicle.com/article/how-...
Screenshot from linked article: Learning is done best in community. The most important function of educational institutions is providing spaces for building that community. Every time we suggest a student would be well served by “asking a chatbot,” we are cutting off an opportunity for that student to engage with their classmates, instructors, or librarians. Those interactions, however small, are what constitute communities of learners.
November 23, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
emilymbender.bsky.social
I love everything about this, but maybe especially:

"your private, cloistered reveries turn out to be one of the best ways to create that shared, inclusive space that can shelter other people."
November 23, 2025 at 7:43 PM
emilymbender.bsky.social
I love everything about this, but maybe especially:

"your private, cloistered reveries turn out to be one of the best ways to create that shared, inclusive space that can shelter other people."
November 23, 2025 at 7:43 PM
emilymbender.bsky.social
A question for everyone's favorite neighborhood internet linguist @gretchenmcc.bsky.social -- do you have an intel on -pants as a suffix, like "bananapants" or (just spotted in an excellent speech by @charliejane.bsky.social ) "bizarropants"?
November 23, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
schock.cc
At #MozFest, we organized a surprise main stage session titled "Unlearning Cisnormativity: Trans Justice is Tech Justice."

The recording is now live, w/ @vektra.bsky.social, Dia Kayyali, Elijah MacKinnon, @alexhanna.bsky.social, and myself:

www.mozillafestival.org/en/2025-high...

@mozilla.org
Unlearning Cisnormativity - Mozilla Festival 2025
This year at Mozilla Festival, we unlearned the old rules of the internet to imagine new ways to build, connect, and create together. Watch the highlights on-demand.
www.mozillafestival.org
November 22, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
anthonymoser.com
I think the shortest version of why LLMs are an anti education technology is that education is fundamentally about making shared context to understand ourselves, each other, and the world

And by design LLMs destroy shared context
November 23, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
emilymbender.bsky.social
A question for scientists (construed as broadly as you like) of BlueSky: What makes something data?

(Question inspired by a talk I listened to this morning, and of course I have thoughts, but I wanted to throw this out there first.)
November 21, 2025 at 6:00 PM
emilymbender.bsky.social
A question for scientists (construed as broadly as you like) of BlueSky: What makes something data?

(Question inspired by a talk I listened to this morning, and of course I have thoughts, but I wanted to throw this out there first.)
November 21, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
alexhanna.bsky.social
The video from our Unlearning Cisnormativity panel has just been posted:

www.mozillafestival.org/en/2025-high...
November 21, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
farbijan.bsky.social
Whenever this is mentioned, it is obligatory to post xkcd 2381, in which @gretchenmcc.bsky.social shares forbidden linguistic knowledge with the masses.
Black and white comic with stick figures Panel 1: Three stick figures that can only be told apart by their hair. Megan (short dark hair) walks in walks in from the left, looking down at her phone, Cueball (no hair) and Ponytail (light-haired ponytail) are standing next to each other. Megan: Wow - according to the internet, we don't know the true name of the bear. Cueball: What? Panel 2: Gretchen McCulloch, drawn as a stick figure with short, dark, curly hair, comes on-panel from the right. Megan: Apparently there was a superstition that saying its name would summon it. "Bear" and "bruin" mean "the brown one." Its actual name has been lost. Cueball: Wow. Ponytail: Gretchen, is this for real? Panel 3: Zoom-in on Gretchen. Gretchen: Well, sort of Gretchen: The Proto-Indo-European root was *rkto- Gretchen: It was lost in the Germanic languages like English, but survived elsewhere, e.g. Greek "arktos" and Latin "ursus" Panel 4: Back to the second panel, with Megan holding her phone down, Ponytail with her hands in the air, and Gretchen with her hand on her chin. Megan: So could we figure out what the word would have been in English? Gretchen: Hmm. I mean, we'll never know, but given Germanic sound shifts, a reasonable guess might be "arth"? Ponytail: No!! Panel 5: The panel zooms in again to Gretchen. Ponytail (off-panel): Stop! AAAAA! Gretchen: What?? Ponytail (off-panel): Don't say it! Panel 6: Ponytail is holding her palms out. Megan is no longer in the panel. Ponytail: What have you done? Off-panel noise: ROAR (with a wavy speech balloon around it) Gretchen: Oh Gretchen: Oh no
November 21, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
alexhanna.bsky.social
I wrote a bit about my first MozFest, moments of rupture, narratives we don't control, and trans justice

buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...
November 21, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
emmmilygz.bsky.social
Got a mini-op-ed published in the campus newspaper today, in case you're wondering how I feel about generative AI. (With the compulsory shout-out to @emilymbender.bsky.social, of course)

swarthmorephoenix.com/2025/11/20/o...
Office Hours: Faculty on the Implications of Generative AI for Higher Education - The Phoenix
Swarthmore professors share their thoughts on the growing prevalence of generative artificial intelligence and its implications for higher education and the liberal arts.
swarthmorephoenix.com
November 20, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
emilymbender.bsky.social
Hey linguists, check it out! @lingsocam.bsky.social has virtual registration options for the #LSA2026 meeting:

web.cvent.com/event/d45318...

🐦🐦
Registration Info - LSA 2026 Annual Meeting
web.cvent.com
November 19, 2025 at 11:41 PM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
emilymbender.bsky.social
A little belatedly sharing this piece that I published in @chronicle.com 's Opinion Forum (sorry full text is paywalled)

www.chronicle.com/article/how-...
Screenshot of opening paras of my piece: Chatbots Are Antithetical to Learning By Emily M. Bender Across higher education, administrators, faculty, staff, and students are being inundated with claims that large language models (often marketed as “AI”) represent the future of both education and the workplace. They tell us that prompt engineering and so on are essential skills that students must master to be competitive, and that all of this tech will bring us unparalleled efficiency gains, allowing us to focus on “what really matters.” The reason for this messaging isn’t any actual scientific breakthrough but rather the desperation of tech companies to try to recoup their massive investment in so-called AI. Unfortunately, these calls are also frequently coming from inside the house, with university administrators and some faculty jumping on the bandwagon and singing the companies’ advertising jingles for them. But synthetic text-extruding machines are in fact antithetical to the mission of education. Writing is thinking and learning. Pushing a button to generate an essay-shaped object requires little thinking and accomplishes minimal learning. Sharing synthetic text with an instructor means missing out on genuine feedback and help with honing both arguments and authorial voice. When teachers value the polished but anodyne text extruded from these systems over students’ authentic voices, we reinforce harmful linguistic ideologies, including those that associate stigmatized varieties of language with lack of “intelligence.”
November 20, 2025 at 12:46 AM
Reposted by Emily M. Bender
emilymbender.bsky.social
It’s time for another “all hell” episode! @alexhanna.bsky.social and I tried to clear the backlog, but it’s just coming in too fast. Listen in as we struggle through:

www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis...

Thanks to Ozzy Llinas Goodman for production!
November 19, 2025 at 2:36 PM
emilymbender.bsky.social
A little belatedly sharing this piece that I published in @chronicle.com 's Opinion Forum (sorry full text is paywalled)

www.chronicle.com/article/how-...
Screenshot of opening paras of my piece: Chatbots Are Antithetical to Learning By Emily M. Bender Across higher education, administrators, faculty, staff, and students are being inundated with claims that large language models (often marketed as “AI”) represent the future of both education and the workplace. They tell us that prompt engineering and so on are essential skills that students must master to be competitive, and that all of this tech will bring us unparalleled efficiency gains, allowing us to focus on “what really matters.” The reason for this messaging isn’t any actual scientific breakthrough but rather the desperation of tech companies to try to recoup their massive investment in so-called AI. Unfortunately, these calls are also frequently coming from inside the house, with university administrators and some faculty jumping on the bandwagon and singing the companies’ advertising jingles for them. But synthetic text-extruding machines are in fact antithetical to the mission of education. Writing is thinking and learning. Pushing a button to generate an essay-shaped object requires little thinking and accomplishes minimal learning. Sharing synthetic text with an instructor means missing out on genuine feedback and help with honing both arguments and authorial voice. When teachers value the polished but anodyne text extruded from these systems over students’ authentic voices, we reinforce harmful linguistic ideologies, including those that associate stigmatized varieties of language with lack of “intelligence.”
November 20, 2025 at 12:46 AM
emilymbender.bsky.social
And hey @lingsocam.bsky.social -- why aren't you posting about this on your own socials?
November 19, 2025 at 11:44 PM
emilymbender.bsky.social
Hey linguists, check it out! @lingsocam.bsky.social has virtual registration options for the #LSA2026 meeting:

web.cvent.com/event/d45318...

🐦🐦
Registration Info - LSA 2026 Annual Meeting
web.cvent.com
November 19, 2025 at 11:41 PM