Computational linguist. How does that not qualify them to write on the AI topic du jour, LLMs?

I actually agree with the thesis of the author's argument, but the sensationalist framing and subjective definition of 'harm' makes it difficult for me to fully stand behind their writing. It feels characteristic of a lot of other popular writings on computational linguistics.

On the one hand, it feels like a 'boy who cried wolf' situation in the age of LLMs. On the other hand, reading stuff like this makes me wonder if there's even a populist sentiment against AI in the first place.

I've noticed quite a lot of linguists (including the computational sub-variety) really dislike modern probabilistic approaches to text generation and parsing (https://norvig.com/chomsky.html) and I think Emily is partly opposed to LLMs on that basis. but she also has a running social justice jihad (I can't think of a more accurate way to describe it) in the form of a constant stream of articles and tweets that basically just say the same points over and over. Personally I am skeptical that the approaches she is advocating (heavy regulation) would really achieve her goals, and I certainly don't think they would achieve the goals of the larger society which benefits (or loses) with access to LLM research being fairly unrestricted.

My view, generally speaking, is that the problems ML causes aren't due to ML, ML just scales the problem to larger impact, and these complaints are really just tilting at the current structure of society.

Current problems in society seem important to me.