The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want
Finally it has landed in Trondheim!
📚 "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" by Professor Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, Ph.D.
Professor Bender has long been a great inspiration to me in seeking to understand the technology behind generative AI - and from a linguistic perspective 🤔 (perhaps that's why she has such fantastic communication skills 🙌)
I first became aware of her through the important article "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?" together with Timnit Gebru and others. I can also recommend Bender's lecture "When, if ever, is synthetic text safe, appropriate, and desirable?" where she talked about, among other things, Form vs. meaning: Why language models don't "understand".
When, if ever, is synthetic text safe, appropriate, and desirable?
The most valuable hour you can invest to gain a comprehensive understanding of language models, explained in terms that everyone can understand. Watch Professor Emily Bender, a renowned linguist, in this insightful YouTube video: ChatGP-why: When, if ever, is synthetic text safe, appropriate, and desirable?
Alex Hanna, who is director of research at The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), I have followed through the podcast "Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000" which she runs together with Bender - where they humorously and sharply tear apart the AI hype. Gebru is, by the way, founder and CEO of DAIR.
All three women - Bender, Hanna and Gebru - I have had great pleasure following on LinkedIn for a long time. They are tough and dare to speak directly against Big Tech and the Silicon Valley guys.
As the book says: "AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech's drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects."
I have been looking forward to this for a long time - and now it's here. Weekend set aside!
Bonus: came across a video where Bender, Hanna and Gebru talk about the book 😁
Other reviews of the book :
ESCKEY : Do you believe in hope after “AI” hype? Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna make the case