Who's Responsible for 'Responsible AI'? (Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 #82)

Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna are joined by education technology scholar sava saheli singh to unpack how the language of harm reduction and responsible use is being used to frame AI adoption in schools as inevitable rather than as a choice institutions are making. The episode examines what gets labelled harm and what does not, why automation narratives in education tend to serve vendors rather than students, and how teachers experiencing generative AI in their classrooms describe the gap between what the tools promise and what they observe.

Task

Teaching AI literacy

Time

60 min

Level

intermediate

Cost

Free — Nothing to pay. A free account at most.

Tools

None in particular

Published

2026-08-04

Voice

Emily M. Bender — A linguist's account of what these models actually do with language, which gives you the vocabulary to say precisely why fluent output is not comprehension.