I appreciated this chance to go on Bloomberg Tech, though it's always a bit odd to have a conversation with a reporter who is really interested in what's effectively a fictional story.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-10-06/bender-ai-s-existential-risk-is-fake-video
Oct 6, 2026, 9:53 PM@emilymbender That is very surreal to watch, goodness. Ed's questions are just strange.
@xgranade @emilymbender yes, utterly absurd. you did an excellent job of steering it despite the clear hostility, it speaks to your press experience. you should never have had to though.
Oct 6, 2026, 10:06 PM@emilymbender I think most of the journalist community needs to be chained to a chair watching this until they get it. Thankyou.
@emilymbender That was great, I enjoyed watching you answer the real questions rather than the fiction-based ones he was asking.
@emilymbender shame he didn't pick up on your point that journalists need to do their job and ask the right questions
Oct 6, 2026, 10:42 PM@emilymbender I don't think we necessarily need to make "companies using an LLM" become liable for the LLM output they produce, so much that possibly "all producers of software need to be liable for the behaviour of their software" - no more "AS-IS WHERE-IS" disclaimers.
If you do this naively it impacts on free/open software, so that needs to be balanced ... but ...
@emilymbender "Professor Bender, what benefits and net positives do you see from AI?"
Why are the LLM skeptics so often expected to "see the good" but nobody ever asks the AI bros to describe any of the harms?
My financial advisor did this to me on our last call when I asked him if he was investing me in any "AI" companies. Literally interrupted me mid-sentence and asked me to say some good things about AI. No, my dude. Not my responsibility.
@camertron Totally!
@emilymbender wow that was so artful!
@emilymbender
A little bit distracting that your octopus earrings are likely more intelligent than the guy on the other side of the split screen.
@emilymbender thank you for this. It’s a relief hearing someone push back on this ”AI” nonsense and lifting the actual problems here.
Excellent answers, though the interviewer was barely able to let go of his own carelessness with respect to the list of harms that you provided, and dive into those topics a bit. At least he tried, partially.
Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 PM@emilymbender I mean it's bloomberg tech and they are hiring a lot of ML + AI enginer at the moment.
But really, it's not hard to understand all the reasons behind the push to AI from an economic pov (the bubble). Yesterday I was trying to explain how the skill atrophy is a great way for them to get people hooked on their subscription model, "inteligence on tap" to someone who thought that Ai is Great, It's Amazing, I'm Using It Everyday… when I asked this person if they had the feeling they were becoming lazier, or less good at what they were doing they just shrugged it off and said "no, it just makes me better"… sigh
Oct 7, 2026, 12:55 PMEvery time I try to watch this the Bloomberg channel says "Something went wrong with the connection. Try again" and then shows me an advert for AI services. Again.
And we still don't have an emoji for "irony", let alone "recursion".
@emilymbender Well I’ll give him one thing, he had his prewritten questions and stuck to script like a champ, answers and, I don’t know, “reality”, be damned.
You’re my hero for so calmly and rationally laying out the facts.