John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University who is both a professional linguist and a popular linguist. In other words, he writes both for his colleagues and for the general public. He also podcasts for the latter group. He is also one of my favorite linguists, even though (or perhaps because?) his opinions are sometimes controversial. He is sometimes unpopular with those on the left, apparently because he isn’t left-wing enough, and he is sometimes unpopular with the MAGA crowd because he is too left-wing. Oh well, “you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself,” as Ricky Nelson famously sang.

What does all that have to do with AI? Only that some anonymous creep published an AI-written article under McWhorter’s name, thereby attributing to him a variety of views that he doesn’t hold! Although McWhorter is currently taking a break from hosting his podcast Lexicon Valley, he did host last week’s episode because he wanted to explain this particular event. Go listen to it! And be careful about AI: it could happen to you too. (A warning to Brian.)

Categories: Linguistics, Technology