Don’t believe the hype about AI, scientists say; chatbots are just plagiarism machines – SAI KUNG BUZZ
Graphic: SciTechDaily.com
Most of us are wondering and worrying about AI, so it is refreshing to learn of a scientist who says chatbots are “plagiarism machines” and “bullshit generators”. This is Emily Bender, co-author of The AI Con quoted in the Financial Times. The AI companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI and DeepSeek, to name a few, are collectively worth $500 billion, and what they are selling Ms Bender says, is a lie. Despite the hype, AI is pretty bad at most tasks and even the best systems available today lack anything that could be called intelligence.
Ms Bender is an Seattle-based expert on how computers model human language. The whizzy chatbots and image-generating tools are “stochastic parrots”, a term she invented. “They are systems for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms they have observed in their vast training data according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning.” Ms Bender sees her role “as being able to speak truth to power based on my academic expertise.”
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, Harper 2025. ISBN-10: 0063418568 ISBN-13: 978-0063418561
The world has been sold on the idea that AI models, with more data and computing power, can extend the boundaries of human understanding and cognitive ability. With a twinkling eye and wry grin, Ms Bender says it’s just “a fancy wrapper around some spreadsheets”. She wrote a paper on LLM (large language model) in which she compared such a machine to a super-intelligent octopus listening to human conversation: it might be able to pick up statistical patterns, but it would have little hope of understanding meaning. Big Tech wants us mesmerised, even intimidated, by the models they inflict on us. “It is to their benefit to have everyone believe that it is a thinking entity that is very, very powerful instead of something that is, you know, a glorified Magic 8 Ball.”
Ms Bender admits AI is capable of killing off millions of jobs. “It is simultaneously ineffective and detrimental”. She gives the example of a chatbot that can produce plausible seeming news articles without any actual reporting to the detriment of journalists and the truth-seeking public. She deplores social media tycoons like Mark Zuckerberg, second richest man in the world, who bamboozle us with claims that AI friends can enrich our lives. What Zuckerberg and his ilk are really saying is, “we are going to isolate you from each other and make sure all your connections are mediated through tech.”
Other new books on technology
Karen Hao’s Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, focuses on the history of OpenAI and its culture of secrecy and devotion to the promises of artificial general intelligence. The latter is hyped as a model that can match or surpass human capabilities in almost all cognitive areas.
Penguin Press, 2025. ISBN-10: 0593657500 ISBN-13: 978-0593657508
Keach Hagey’s The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI and the Race to Invent the Future argues that ChatGPT is emerging as one of the most consequential technologies of our time. Sam Altman gave more of his time to Hagey than he did to Hao, but nevertheless the former raises questions about Altman’s trustworthiness.
W. W. Norton & Company, 2025. ISBN-10 : 1324075961 ISBN-13 : 978-1324075967
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