Usually, when I get interviewed for a piece on something like "AI consciousness" I am relegated to the skeptics box --- some short paragraph near the end.

[cstrauber@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender It is *fascinating* how you appear in AI-related media. Smart reporters and tech people know they have to mention you, but they can't engage with your arguments without turning off the hype machine. Thanks for sharing this.

[spdrnl@sigmoid.social]

@emilymbender Ah, that thread was not visible to me. On my account it just showed that post.

I took the effort to click via your profile and then I can see the thread.

[chpietsch@fedifreu.de]

@emilymbender I did not know what a Magic 8 Ball is, so I looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_8_Ball

[pattykimura@beige.party]

@emilymbender

@spdrnl

Don't ever mansplain to a an internationally known subject material expert whose consulting fee schedule for tech bros starts at $2000 per hour.

[zombiecide@polyglot.city]

@emilymbender @dngrs

in a similar vein, what is it that makes people expect that MT between two languages that don't have much useful translated corpus between them should be any good? I mean, what's the conceptual ground for such beliefs about how language is supposed to work?

[gbargoud@masto.nyc]

@emilymbender

> a message specifically included for tech bros with startups who want to download all her knowledge about LLMs: “My consulting fee is $2,000/hour. I do not ‘grab coffee’ or ‘jump on the phone’.”

Nice, how many of them took you up on that?

[hzulla@infosec.exchange]

@emilymbender When I explain my qualms about GenAI chatbots to others, I usually refer to Clever Hans as a historic example of a situation where an observer falsely attributes "intelligence" to a non-intelligent process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

[hzulla@infosec.exchange]

@emilymbender Oh, TIL that there is an AI-related use of the term Clever Hans effect, unrelated to what I meant here. My reason to refer to Clever Hans is how the intelligence (or consciousness?) attributed to the chatbot isn't in the chatbot, but only in the mind of the observer.

[thalia@discuss.systems]

@emilymbender You mention a $2,000/hr consulting fee. Are you also getting a flood of prospective students you have to turn away?

[jrdepriest@infosec.exchange]

@emilymbender

When I read that headline, it gave me the impression that "AI" was going to be declared as more than conscious in some way. I suppose that's just "how you write a headline".

I was pleasantly surprised at how sober Holly Baxter's take on "AI" was. She does not blindly buy in to the hype and she hasn't fallen down the rabbit hole of installing Claude and getting bamboozled by its magical cold reading skills.

I was further surprised to see just how much space was given over to your interview.

Thank you for even taking the time to continue talking to reporters when, as you said, you are often a checkbox just so they can say they did a "both sides".

[robinadams@mathstodon.xyz]

@emilymbender This company is selling a magic 8-ball as "Offline ChatGPT":

https://www.spellingmistakescostlives.com/single-post/chatgpt-magic-8-ball

[gcvsa@mstdn.plus]

@emilymbender If you ever wanted to know how religion got started in human civilization, here it is, playing out in real time. Make it spooky, make it hype.

[emilymbender@dair-community.social]

I am happy to say my request for a correction was honored.

[bms48@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender Check. Watched Prof. Michael Woolridge's Royal Society Lecture this AM.

[bms48@mastodon.social]

@emilymbender Now we just have to make everyone watch the 1980s Twilight Zone episode "Wordplay". Where "dinner" (oops, Scotticism, I mean "lunch" everywhere else but .scot) slowly mutates into "dinosaur". The protagonist is trapped in an existential nightmare not unlike Phillip K. Dick's "Ubik".