Emily Bender

Emily Bender is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington (since 2003) and holds secondary appointments as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. She serves as the Thomas L. and Margo G. Wyckoff Endowed Professor, faculty director of the Computational Linguistics Master's Program (CLMS), and director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory. Her affiliations include the Tech Policy Lab, Value Sensitive Design Lab, RAISE, and the DELPH-IN consortium.

• PhD in Linguistics, Stanford University (2003)
• AB in Linguistics, UC Berkeley
• Studied at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

Her research focuses on Multilingual Grammar Engineering through the open-source LinGO Grammar Matrix, which maps strings to semantic representations using Minimal Recursion Semantics. This work intersects with computational linguistic typology and the DELPH-IN consortium's tools. She also explores Linguistics in NLP, bridging linguistic concepts to NLP practitioners via her books Linguistic Fundamentals for NLP I & II. Her groundbreaking work on Societal Impacts of Language Technology includes the "data statements" project, ethical review committees, and critical analyses of large language models and chatbots. Additional interests in Sociolinguistic Variation are evident through the LiCORICE project and her dissertation's focus on non-categorical constraints in language use.

As a public intellectual, Bender is co-author of the forthcoming book The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (HarperCollins, 2025) and a vocal critic of AI's overhyped narratives. She has served on the Association for Computational Linguistics Executive Board (2022-2025) and as NAACL Chair (2016-2017).

• Awards: AAAS Fellow (2022)

She has mentored 40+ students across PhD and MS programs, with completed theses addressing grammar engineering, semantic documentation, and sociolinguistic analysis. Her leadership extends to collaborative projects like AGGREGATION, Language CoLLAGE, and EL-STEC, alongside foundational roles in the LinGO Grammar Matrix and DELPH-IN consortium. Current research includes AI ethics, environmental impacts of language models, and sociolinguistic approaches to authority and alignment in communication.