Nostr notes by Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)

Anthropic is out with new nonsense about Claude (or the ...

2026-10-09T20:36:39Z

Anthropic is out with new nonsense about Claude (or the collection of models called Claude) deserving moral consideration and/or being able to feel distress, so my inbox is filling up with journos asking me to comment.

I've also got a day job, so here is a brief set of public comments on this:

[Note to the mansplainers of Mastodon: This is a thread, so please read the whole thing before replying. Please also know that I am aware of things beyond what's in this thread...]

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The Boosters say: AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's ...

2026-09-11T03:00:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…a2xh
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The Boosters say: AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's imminent and it's going to solve all of our problems.

The Doomers say: AI is a thing, it's inevitable, it's imminent and it's going to kill us all.

These are obviously the same story, with just different twists at the end. And both are nonsense. There is "moderate" position between them, but there is space outside of that fantasy world where we can see the actual harms happening in the name of "AI".
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