  This article is a position paper written in reaction to the now-infamous
paper titled "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too
Big?" by Timnit Gebru, Emily Bender, and others who were, as of the date of
this writing, still unnamed. I find the ethics of the Parrot Paper lacking, and
in that lack, I worry about the direction in which computer science, machine
learning, and artificial intelligence are heading. At best, I would describe
the argumentation and evidentiary practices embodied in the Parrot Paper as
Slodderwetenschap (Dutch for Sloppy Science) -- a word which the academic world
last widely used in conjunction with the Diederik Stapel affair in psychology
[2]. What is missing in the Parrot Paper are three critical elements: 1)
acknowledgment that it is a position paper/advocacy piece rather than research,
2) explicit articulation of the critical presuppositions, and 3) explicit
consideration of cost/benefit trade-offs rather than a mere recitation of
potential "harms" as if benefits did not matter. To leave out these three
elements is not good practice for either science or research.
