Emily Bender: the "responsible AI use" middle ground is untenable
moniquejmorrow · x · 2026-09-21
Emily M. Bender and Decca Muldowney argue in their newsletter that the growing stance of acknowledging AI harms while defending its "responsible" use is an uncomfortable, untenable middle ground.
Key points:
- Defensiveness: criticism of AI systems is often misread as accusing users of being bad people; the authors stress their critique targets the systems, the companies behind them, and governments increasingly beholden to those companies—not individual users.
- Righteousness: legitimate unmet needs (health advice access, education) are used to justify AI solutions, but real problems don't make synthetic-text solutions effective or worth their costs (citing Liz Jackson's "disability dongles").
They suggest a sharper question: ask what is actually being sold under the "AI" label—OCR and a generative chatbot are not the same technology, and conflating them lets marketing set the terms of the debate.
Related event: Emily Bender critiques the untenable middle ground of responsible AI use(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Citizens Advice urges 'right to talk to a human' as half of users find service chatbots unhelpful — nordicinst · 2026-09-22
- Every major AI company is converging on the same personal agent stack, with little differentiation — signulll · 2026-09-22
- NYT Essay: AI Slopware Is Everywhere Now — and Nobody Is Using It — round · 2026-09-22
- What happens to Amazon's ad business when AI agents do the comparison shopping? — firstadopter · 2026-09-22
- Dev's Reversal Take: Tickets Will Use Agents to Find Buyers, Not the Other Way — cocktailpeanut · 2026-09-22
- Vacuum tubes weren't built by people trying to make computers — generativist · 2026-09-22