Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)Mar 21

Veatch: “What was really surprising to me during my initial dive into all of this was how, when you look at the question of superintelligence as a documentarian or journalist, it doesn’t take long before you smack your forehead into the low doorframe of race science, because it’s baked into this technology”

I love this metaphor because of how it speaks to the contortions people (here: AI boosters) go through to ignore/pretend not to notice the race science.

https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/897923/ghost-in-the-machine-valerie-veatch-interview

The gen AI Kool-Aid tastes like eugenics

Ghost in the Machine — out on Kinema March 26th — director Valeria Veatch speaks with The Verge about gen AI’s roots in eugenics.

The Verge
Show threadquixoteMar 21

@emilymbender We really need to start calling it Autocomplete, because that's what it is. (Based on its training, it slots in the likeliest next step. That's autocomplete.)

So it replicates the misogyny, racism, bigotry of the datasets it was trained on.

If the techbros running that nonsense didn't just throw the whole web into the training set, if we had, say, reference librarians suggesting useful works to use, we could have a very different Autocomplete.

Show threadProf. Emily M. Bender(she/her)Mar 21
@quixote are you perhaps unfamiliar with my work?
Show threadquixoteMar 21

@emilymbender A little bit. I read your comments here and sometimes any links. From that smallish sample size, I really like your thinking on AI, um, Autocomplete.

My comment wasn't directed at you so much as shouting at the clouds. At least in my mind, I'm agreeing with you (besides shouting at clouds).

Show threadProf. Emily M. Bender(she/her)
@quixote Hey, if you're shouting at the clouds, then @ the clouds, not me.
Mar 21 at 5:13pmWeb