Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

theshamblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 670 posts

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#341

Post by mattgreenrocks »

sho_hn wrote: post #126
Springtime wrote: post #5

Ars 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.

Also ironic: When the same professionals advocating "don't look at the code anymore" and "it's just the next level of abstraction" respond with outrage to a journalist giving them an unchecked article. Read through the comments here and mentally replace "journalist" with "developer" and wonder about the standards and expectations in play. Food for thought on whether the users who rely on our software might feel simil…

So much projection these days in so many areas of life.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#342

Post by morkalork »

boothby wrote: post #158
sho_hn wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also ironic: When the same professionals advocating "don't look at the code anymore" and "it's just the next level of abstraction" respond with outrage to a journalist giving them an unchecked article. Read through the comments here and mentally replace "journalist" with "developer" and wonder about the standards and expectations in play. Food for thought on whether the users who rely on our software might feel simil…

I look forward to a day when the internet is so uniformly fraudulent that we can set it aside and return to the physical plane.

Well, I can tell you I've been reading a lot more books now. Ones published before the 2020s, or if recent, written by authors who were well established before then.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#343

Post by JohnnyMarcone »

raddan wrote: post #296
kethinov wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 depress…

lobste.rs is smaller but can have good discussion.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#344

Post by morkalork »

christkv wrote: post #240
Kwpolska wrote: post #235

The story is credited to Benj Edwards and Kyle Orland. I've filtered out Edwards from my RSS reader a long time ago, his writing is terrible and extremely AI-enthusiastic. No surprise he's behind an AI-generated story.

Is he even a real person I wonder

He was murdered on a Condé Nast corporate retreat and they have been using an AI in his likeness to write articles ever since!

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#345

Post by the8472 »

coldpie wrote: post #274

I would like to give a small defense of Benj Edwards. While his coverage on Ars definitely has a positive spin on AI, his comments on social media are much less fawning. Ars is a tech-forward publication, and it is owned by a major corporation. Major corporations have declared LLMs to be the best thing since breathable air, and anyone who pushes back on this view is explicitly threatened with economic destitution via…

Looks they're gonna investigate and perhaps post something next week. https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/journalistic-standards...

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#346

Post by [deleted] »

crims0n wrote: post #292

I 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.

[deleted]

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#347

Post by dotancohen »

rfc2324 wrote: post #259
embedding-shape wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ars writers used to be actual experts, sometimes even phd level, on technical fields. And they used to write fantastical and very informative articles. Who is left now? What places on the internet remains where articles are written by actual experts? I know only of a few, and they get fewer every year.

https://theconversation.com/us/who-we-are is one of my favorites. Global academics writing about their research when something happens in the world or when they are published in a journal.

That may be for the technology and science sections. But the politics section is clearly pushing an agenda with regard to the current US administration - even though it is an agenda many people online might agree with. That section is not global, it is US-centric, and it heavily favours the popular side of the issue.

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#348

Post by mcphage »

kaibee wrote: post #115
zahlman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a weird inconsistency among the more pro-AI people that they expect this output to pass as human, but then don't give it the review that an outsourced human would get.

> but then don't give it the review that an outsourced human would get. Its like seeing a dog play basketball badly. You're too stunned to be like "no don't sign him to ".

Surely the rules would stop such a thing from happening!

Re: An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened

#350

Post by dotancohen »

mikkupikku wrote: post #316
kethinov wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Try reading Slashdot these days and it's the same story. I stopped reading regularly when cmdrtaco left but still check in occasionally out of misplaced nostalgia or something.. The comment section is like a time capsule from the 00s, the same ideas and arguments have been echoing back and forth there for years, seemingly losing soul and nuance with each echo. Bizarre, and sad.

I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter, you insensitive clod.
Post reply on HN