Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)My Feb 2026 Katz Lecture for UW's Simpson Center for the Humanities is now available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Lc6QNxolQ
Unfortunately, the recording doesn't include the Q&A. Two things I remember from that:
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YouTube
The first is a student who asked how to resist pressure to use "AI" without being a stick in the mud. I said: Be a stick in the mud! Help create the solid ground that others might stand on too.
I shared this story with Sam Cole on the @404mediaco podcast, too:
The Marketing Tricks of "Artificial Intelligence"
The other was a student who asked if I thought we could get back to a world where people care about art. I turned that back to the audience and asked "Who here cares about art?" Every single hand went up. Not a random sample of the population to be sure, but the question asker was also not alone.
JW@emilymbender
Famously, in1980s or 1990s the Australian Treasurer told an arts lobby group to stop telling him about the economic value of art and start telling him about the social and artistic values.
Famously, in1980s or 1990s the Australian Treasurer told an arts lobby group to stop telling him about the economic value of art and start telling him about the social and artistic values.
Drew@emilymbender I feel like the hard part is feeling that our caring matters in a meaningful way and yet like your earlier comment on being a stick in the mud towards ai is also relevant to that… we should all make our voice heard and make it matter. Especially because despondency is the antithesis of the spirits nature and any other choice is a kind of death.
Violet Madder@dharmadischarge @emilymbender
We live in a world being run by people who don't seem to think human lives or hearts matter in any meaningful way, and they're cultivating despair because it feeds into the system of community-breaking cruelty that upholds their power.
That one student verbalized it as a concern about art but when you get down to it the question is really, how do we stop these technofascist planetwreckers from ruining everything good.
Love and solidarity is the answer.
Alan is @cogdog 🇨🇦@emilymbender I listened online and remember those questions (we could not hear their voices well) and those answers.
On the other hand, on Jeff Young’s podcast he asked a few students at the end for thoughts about a future of work with agentic AI colleagues. They seemed accepting of the inevitably. https://learningcurve.fm/episodes/how-to-prepare-students-for-a-world-of-ai-co-workers
How to Prepare Students For a World of AI Co-Workers | Learning Curve
As companies start to replace employees with AI agents, how are human workers adjusting? For this episode Jeff connected with Evan Ratliff, who created what he calls “the world’s first AI-led startup” to see what happens when AI agents run a company. He’s been documenting the sometimes comic results on his podcast Shell Game. What advice does Ratliff have for educators trying to prepare students for this strange new world of work? As a bonus, three college students with very different majors weigh in on what they think of all this.