Some of the quotations come from an edited github comment[0]. But some of them do seem to be hallucinations.
[0] https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31132#issuecom...
An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
291–300 of 670 posts
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#292I used to go to Ars daily, loved them... but at some point during the last 5 years or so they decided to lean into politics and that's when they lost me. I understand a technology journal will naturally have some overlap with politics, but they don't even try to hide the agenda anymore.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#293Take a look at the number of people who think vibe coding without reading the output is fine if it passes the tests who but are absolutely aghast at this.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#294Nothing new, just got caught this time.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a core part of the job and there’s simply no excuse for complacency.
This is a first degree expectation of most businesses. What the OP pointed out is a fact of life. We do many things to ensure that humans don’t get “routine fatigue”- like pointing at each item before a train leaves the station to ensure you don’t eyes glaze over during your safety check list. This isn’t an excuse for the behavior. Its more about what the problem is and what a corresponding fix should address.
I agree. The role of an editor is in part to do this train pointing.
I think it slips because the consequences of sloppy journalism aren’t immediately felt. But as we’re witnessing in the U.S., a long decay of journalistic integrity contributes to tremendous harm.
It used to be that to be a “journalist” was a sacred responsibility. A member of the Fourth Estate, who must endeavour to maintain the confidence of the people.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ars has been going downhill for sometime now. I think it's difficult for a lot of these bigger publishers to be anything other than access journalism and advertising. I'm not saying Ars is fully there yet, but the pull is strong.
The comments section on Ars is particularly depressing. I've been posting there for two decades and watched it slowly devolve from a place where thoughtful discussions happened to now just being one of the worst echo chambers on the internet, like a bad subreddit. I've made suggestions over the years in their public feedback surveys to alter their forum software to discourage mob behavior, but they don't seem to be d…
The switch to their newest forum software seems to discourage any kind of actual conversation. If I recall correctly, the last iteration was also unthreaded, but somehow it was easier for a back-and-forth to develop. Now it is basically just reactions-- like YouTube comments (which, ironically, is actually threaded).
Is HN really the last remaining forum for science and technology conversations? If so... very depressing.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#297I used to go to Ars daily, loved them... but at some point during the last 5 years or so they decided to lean into politics and that's when they lost me. I understand a technology journal will naturally have some overlap with politics, but they don't even try to hide the agenda anymore.
I'm curious as to what their agenda is? I don't read it very often but I've not noticed anything overt. Could you give me any examples? I'd love to know more.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#298Ars Technica being caught using LLMs that hallucinated quotes by the author and then publishing them in their coverage about this is quite ironic here. Even on a forum where I saw the original article by this author posted someone used an LLM to summarize the piece without having read it fully themselves. How many levels of outsourcing thinking is occurring to where it becomes a game of telephone.
Honestly frustrating that Scott chose not to name and shame the authors. Liability is the only thing that's going to stop this kind of ugly shit.
I mean, I'm even more frustrated by this in Scott's original post:
> If you are the person who deployed this agent, please reach out. It’s important for us to understand this failure mode, and to that end we need to know what model this was running on and what was in the soul document. I’m not upset and you can contact me anonymously if you’d like.
I can see where he's coming from, and I suppose he's being the bigger man in the situation, but at some point one of these reckless moltbrain kiddies is going to have to pay. Libel and extortion should carry penalties no matter whether you do it directly, or via code that you wrote, or via code that you deployed without reading it.
The AI's hit piece on Scott was pretty minor, so if we want to wait around for a more serious injury that's fine, just as long as we're standing ready to prosecute when (not 'if') it happens.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard agree. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/06/meta-debuts-playstati... is an example I remember. The subject matter of the is not controversial (just another Game Pass like subscription), but the comment section is full of -- yes you've guessed it -- Meta BAD! There is absolutely no meaningful discussion of the service itself. I mostly stopped paying attention to the comment section after that, and Ars in genera…
You see the same sort of thing around here with people complaining about the death of Google Reader on anything that even vaguely mentions Google.
I don't see that.
Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
#300I am finding less value in reading Ars: * They are often late in reporting a story. This is fine for what Ars is, but that means by the time they publish a story, I have likely read the reporting and analysis elsewhere already, and whatever Ars has to say is stale * There seem to be fewer long stories/deep investigations recently when competitors are doing more (e.g. Verge's brilliant reporting on Supernatural recent…
There are still a few authors worth reading on Ars. Beth Mole has a loyal following for a reason-- her stories are interesting, engaging, and never fail to make me squirm with horror. Jonathan Gitlin has a tendency to drop into the forum to snipe at comments he does not like, and I have no interest in supercars, but by and large his automobile reporting is interesting. And if you like anything rocket related, Eric Berger is clearly passionate about the industry. There are a few other folks who are hit-or-miss like most journalists. I've found that Benj is mostly misses, and although I am always interested in what John Timmer writes about, I cannot seem to interpret his writing style. In general I skip the syndicated articles from Wired, etc, because they are either "nothings" or bad.