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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
@emilymbender@dair-community.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago

<3 this review of The AI Con, not least for the phrase "Slopholm Syndrome"

https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/opinion/2025-08-17-never-mind-the-botlickers-ai-is-just-normal-technology/

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anotherfami
@anotherfami@openbiblio.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@emilymbender

Nice article. I should use it (for work) :)

"Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we should take great care not to fall into the trap of believing that critical thought [...] is something that can or should be algorithmically optimised."

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Alan Levine
@cogdog@cosocial.ca replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@emilymbender Marginally related but the use of robot metaphors intrigues me, that image in the Mail & Guardian is quite common, but all they provide is “Flickr” no link.

But the file name includes “wikimediacommons” which leads me to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Artificial_Intelligence_%26_AI_%26_Machine_Learning_-_30212411048.jpg The Flickr original is gone but floats in the wayback machine http://web.archive.org/web/20210419113757/https://www.flickr.com/photos/152824664@N07/30212411048/

Attributing sources not just in LLMs is not easy!

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glamcode
@glamcode@openbiblio.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@emilymbender The mentioning of SALAMI as a better name for “AI” made me immediately think of Dieter Roth’s Literature Sausages (Literaturwürste) 🤩
They are sausages made of ground-up text pages mixed with fat, gelatin, water, and spices and stuffed into sausage casings. Fits “AI” perfectly 😅
📕 @dbellingradt posted some pictures a while ago: https://historians.social/@dbellingradt/113202748169725516
📗 Literaturwurst at MOMA: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/141853
📘 SALAMI as better name for “AI”: https://blog.quintarelli.it/2019/11/lets-forget-the-term-ai-lets-call-them-systematic-approaches-to-learning-algorithms-and-machine-inferences-salami/

#AI #DieterRoth#Salami

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Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
@emilymbender@dair-community.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@glamcode @dbellingradt amazing!

cc @quinta

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quinta - Stefano Quintarelli
@quinta@mastodon.uno replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@emilymbender

@glamcode @dbellingradt

thank you!
amazing!!

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Ebauche
@ebauche@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@emilymbender excellent read, thank you for sharing
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Olle Gladsø
@Gladso@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@emilymbender One of the best pieces of critical prose I have ever read.
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GeePawHill
@GeePawHill@mastodon.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago

@emilymbender It really is just an incredibly apt phrase.

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Naomi Heartbreak
@paranoiapen@mas.to replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@emilymbender I think it's interesting that this article talks about universities 'deciding' whether and how to employ AI. I don't know much about universities, but in the UK schools are being pushed by the government to find ways to employ AI, and schools have long been socialised out of the habit of critical thinking. Thus we are mad keen to use LLMs to write pupil reports, create model texts for teaching and lesson plans, inevitably paying private companies for such nonsense.
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Clifton Royston
@CliftonR@wandering.shop replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@emilymbender

"Botlickers" is genius-level inspiration.

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Flipper 🐬
@flipper@mastodonapp.uk replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 months ago
@emilymbender lol at the Sex Pistols reference.
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