The AI Con may as well be the answer to the question: what happens when a linguist and a sociologist come together to write a book? Co-written by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, The AI Con isn’t just a book, it’s an instruction manual to guide readers through this era of AI hype. In short, this book does what academic scholarship does best: close read texts, historical patterns, marketing schemes, statistics, politics, and more—and find a way to connect these granular details and examples to broader trends in our society. The AI Con sits along this continuum between close reading and abstraction. It’s a book about “AI” technology, yes, but it’s also about the demands of an economy that values human labor and intelligence less and less. It’s a book about the ideals of democracy conflicting with economic pressures; the mutually determining relationship between worldviews and technology, or technology and institutional priorities; the power of technology if people have autonomy over it; and the problems with western epistemological orientations when they are imposed via technology onto populations and individuals who never consented for this technology to be imposed on them. This book is about a lot. But it’s also funny, and witty, and accessible, and written with the best intentions. Throughout this episode, Emily and Alex discuss their writing process, the pernicious economic undercurrents that paved the way for this AI hype era, contrasting epistemological orientations, how technology perpetuates societal biases, and much more. The AI ConAlex HannaEmily M. Bender Sébastien Bubeck, et al, Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4Ruha Benjamin, Race After Technology Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality The Less People Know About AI, the More They Like ItArs technica: “Most Americans think AI won’t improve their lives, survey says”Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass Tomayto Tomahto is produced, written, and edited by Talia Sherman. Artwork by Maja Mishevska.
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Philosophy of Language w/ Justin Khoo
Justin Khoo, an associate professor of Philosophy at MIT, begins this episode with the assertion that philosophy asks the most fundamental questions we can possibly articulate—but this assertion is not innocent. Asking the most fundamental questions we can possibly articulate may come at the cost of undermining conceptual, schematic, ideological, and often disciplinary frameworks upon which scientific findings are predicated. Through discussion of code speech, political speech, philosophy of language, aesthetic objects, hypothetical epistemic advantages, and the foundations of our current political (dis)order, this episode draws attention to stubborn frameworks and axioms, not necessarily undermining them, but questioning their validity and utility. This episode at times historicizes, allegorizes, analytically analyzes, narrativizes, and outright complains about the objects we're discussing—be it the referents of language or a film or a quote by Trump or the blind-spots of a discipline. The very fact of our discussion of the so-upheld "distinctions" between various methodologies and ideological orientations demonstrates the apparent need for a division among academic disciplines—but why? If there's a degree of meta-discourse throughout this episode, it's in reference to our frightening political climate. Parts of the world are literally on fire and yet we pontificate about Trump's contradictions and the subversive strategy of code speech. I want to acknowledge this tension, and optimistically suggest that perhaps exposing contradictions or calling out hypocrisy is a small act of resistance, even if it does project the frame of rationality on completely irrational actions. Justin's Website 3am interview Judging for OurselvesPolitical and Coded Speech Willard Van Orman Quine ; Two Dogmas of EmpiricismPeter Van InwagenMichael Lynch: Trump, Truth, and the Power of ContradictionJason Stanley: Democracy and the Demagogue‘You Can’t Pin Him Down’: Trump’s Contradictions Are His Ultimate Cover Jennifer Lackey: Acting on KnowledgeJustin's podcast: Cows in the Field Minority Report The Shining Artwork: Maja Mishevska, Brown '27
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Neurolinguistics, Phonetics, and Language Change w/ Chiara Repetti-Ludlow
Throughout this episode, Chiara Repetti-Ludlow, a postdoctoral research fellow at Carnegie Mellon's Neuroscience Institute, asks us to consider the essentials of speech processing and its constraints. We hear phonetics, but we understand phonology. How and why? To answer those questions, Chiara takes a highly interdisciplinary approach. We know that linguistics is an interdisciplinary field—it has to be. We can't divorce language from its cognitive, physical, and social apparatuses, nor can language be extricated from human interaction. But academic inquiry has a way of siloing different subfields. And, frankly, it's easier to stick to a rigid set of questions and methodologies. Chiara Repetti-Ludlow's research is exactly what we often hope for in linguistics: interdisciplinary, multi-textured, and conscious of the strengths of different subfields. By bringing together methods and insights from neurolinguistics, phonetics-phonology, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics, Chiara's research attempts to answer granular questions about speech processing. Chiara is a current postdoctoral research fellow in the Carnegie Mellon University Neuroscience Institute. She earned her PhD in Linguistics at NYU. Chiara’s Website Continuous Perception and Graded Categorization: Electrophysiological Evidence for a Linear Relationship Between the Acoustic Signal and Perceptual Encoding of SpeechRegularization in the face of variable input: Children's acquisition of stem-final fricative plurals in American EnglishVariable stem-final fricative voicing in American English plurals: Different pa[ð ~ θ]s of changeSahil Lutha
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Education, Anthropology, and Schoolishness with Susan Blum
In early 2023, Susan Blum came on Tomayto Tomahto to discuss linguistic anthropology. 2 years later, she's back to discuss her work on schoolishness, ungrading, and linguistic ideology. From plagiarism to authentic learning, imperialist language ideologies to biased methods and metrics of Western science, this episode looks critically at what we "know," how we know it, and where the perpetuation of knowledge might hinder new discoveries. Science promises objectivity, but does it deliver? How might anthropology promise subjectivity, deliver complexity, but ultimately nudge our cultural, psychology, and linguistic understandings toward objectivity?
We can be angry with students for cheating and we can lament the existence of AI for aiding and abetting—or we can ask: why are students cheating in the first place? Surely there’s something amiss with our education system that a substantial portion of students feel no intrinsic motivation to learn and therefore happily outsource their essays and projects, right? Combining questions of methods, results, epistemological orientations, and the political ramifications of research, this episode highlights the merits of an anthropological approach to learning, language, and inquiry.
Susan Blum's personal website; Notre Dame profile
Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful
Unseen WEIRD Assumptions: The So-Called Language Gap Discourse and Ideologies of Language, Childhood, and Learning
John Warner: More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI
Asao Inoue: Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom, 2nd Edition
Contract Cheating
Émile Durkheim: Collective Effervescence
Charles Briggs
William Labov
A defining quirk of fields like English, Linguistics, Comparative Literature, etc is that the the objects of study mirror the medium through which the objects of study are explicated. Literary scholars produce literature to explain literature. We explain language through language, not always the same language, but a linguistic medium matches a linguistic medium nonetheless. Climate change is not the same as language, not at all. So why is it that we make sense of our climate through language? Josh Willis, a Principle Research Scientist at NASA joins Tomayto Tomahto to discuss the communications war of global warming (or is it climate change?). We discuss why the explanatory language of global warming can be exclusionary or inaccessible and weigh the benefits of using plain-er language. Ultimately, it’s on hegemonic systems and power structures, not individuals, to reduce our global emissions, so why is it that individuals feel such pressure to make consequentially sustainable consumer choices?
Josh Willis studies ocean warming and rising sea levels at NASA. He also teaches improv. His research profile can be found here
Frank Luntz
Jihad vs. McWorld
I say tomayto, but you say tomahto. Why? What cognitive, economic, racial, or social factors led you to say tomahto and I tomayto? How did you acquire the ability to produce and perceive coherent sentences? These are some questions that linguists attempt to answer scientifically. Led by Talia Sherman, a Brown University undergrad, this podcast explores language: what it is, how it works (both cognitively and in practice), and its relationship to politics, history, law, pedagogy, AI, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, critical theory, and more!
Ireland