Is the growth of LLMs like the growth of plastic?

From Emily Bender here:

I’ve found myself frequently using the analogy of plastic: To try to live without using plastic now (at least in the US) is an extremely expensive endeavor, both in terms of money and and in terms of time. Plastic is so deeply integrated into so many of our systems that it is very difficult to avoid. But we are at a moment with “AI” where things aren’t so deeply integrated, though corporate interests are pushing for them to be. So I believe that every act of refusal is especially powerful and meaningful now, and we would do well to avail ourselves of that power as we can.

#capitalism #diffusion #EmilyBender #LLMCriticism #LLMs #plastic

"synthetic text extruding machines" Love it.

#LLMs #llmstxt #emilybender

https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/114987968565740315

Financial Times: AI sceptic Emily Bender: ‘The emperor has no clothes’. “Before Emily Bender and I have looked at a menu, she has dismissed artificial intelligence chatbots as ‘plagiarism machines’ and ‘synthetic text extruders’. Soon after the food arrives, the professor of linguistics adds that the vaunted large language models (LLMs) that underpin them are ‘born shitty’.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/22/ai-sceptic-emily-bender-the-emperor-has-no-clothes-financial-times/

Striking contrast between the attitude toward parroting in current AI debates (#EmilyBender, #TimnitGebru et al.) and that of Lawrence #Lessig in relation to Creative Commons.

For Bender & co., parroting signals a lack of creativity and understanding:

‘an LM is a system for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms
it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic
information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning: a stochastic parrot.'

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3442188.3445922

For Lessig, it’s a core feature of creative productivity. Writing about how, from Buster Keaton’s ‘Steamboat Bill, we got Steamboat Willie, and from Steamboat Willie, we got Mickey Mouse, and from Mickey Mouse, the Disney Corporation’, Lessig notes how Walt Disney ‘was always parroting the feature length mainstream films’.

https://scholarworks.umt.edu/mlr/vol65/iss1/1/

#digital #parrot
#tech #ai
#ArtificialIntelligence #disney #creativecommons #creativity

So I didn’t realize that @emilymbender ‘s new book, The AI Con, isn’t out yet. I looked it up on Libby, and this was not what I was expecting to see, lol

#AIEthics #TechEthics #EthicalAI #TheAICon #EmilyBender #AFarewellToArfs #SpencerQuinn