Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes • Hacker News Board

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#331

Post by icegreentea2 » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

DamnableNook wrote: post #155

breput wrote: post #55

As much as I respect the site and gladly financially support it, this is ultimately a failure on Ars Technica and its editors. If there are any. If this were just some random blogger, then yes the blame is totally theirs. But this was published under the Ars Technica masthead and there should have been someone or something double checking the veracity of the contents. That said, there are a number of Ars Technica con…

Eric Berger has a strong pro-Musk bias (having literally written a fawning book about him). To him, Musk can do no wrong, it seems. I also dislike Dan Goodin’s reporting. He tries to talk the talk, but nearly every article he writes has some tell that he doesn’t really understand the thing he’s reporting on. Which is fine if he was relying on third-party expertise and quoting that, but he tries to make it sound like…

Berger is clearly guarded and measured when he talks about Musk and SpaceX. Given the configuration of the space industry and the reality that Berger clearly needs access to make his living, I think Berger has provided generally even handed coverage of SpaceX, Musk and Musk's antics.

For example, his article on the SpaceX/xAI merger ends with a section called "Has SpaceX lost its way?", and framing that clearly indicates "this is what Musk says". https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/spacex-acquires-xai-plans...

In his article on SpaceX's "pivot from Mars to Moon", he describes Musk as "In the last 25 years, Musk has gone from an obscure, modestly wealthy person to the richest human being ever, from a political moderate to chief supporter of Donald Trump; from a respected entrepreneur to, well, to a lot of things to a lot of people: world’s greatest industrialist/supervillain/savant/grifter-fraudster.". https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/02/has-elon-musk-given-up...

You can read a AMA he did on the SpaceX subreddit last year for more of his thoughts: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/1fnq02q/eric_berger...

I think Berger got a lot of flack for not really commenting on Musk and DOGE during his articles last year, and I think it's fair to criticize him for that choice, but I don't think it's really a "Musk can do no wrong" position.

In other words, I think you really need to read between the lines for Berger re Musk.

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#332

Post by ajkjk » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #106

ajkjk wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people love to hate on the AI overviews, and I'm a person who generally hates both google and AI. But--I see them as basically good and ideal. After all most of the time I am googling something like trivial, like a simple fact. And for the last decade when I have to click into sites for the information it's some SEO spam-ridden garbage site. So I am very glad to not have to interact with those anymore. Of cour…

> -I see them as basically good and ideal. After all most of the time I am googling something like trivial, like a simple fact. And for the last decade when I have to click into sites for the information it's some SEO spam-ridden garbage site. What good is it if the overviews lie some percentage of the time (your own guess is 10%) and you have to search to verify that they aren't making shit up anyway. Also, those SE…

a lot of times the thing I'm searching for is something I kinda know and just want to see verified, or which, as soon as I see it, I'll know if it's right or not. So... some good?

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#333

Post by themeiguoren » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #29

geerlingguy wrote: post #20

Context from earlier discussion of the article being pulled: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47009949

Thanks! and indeed - here's the sequence (in the usual reverse order). If there are missing threads we can add them... An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145 - Feb 2026 (501 comments) OpenClaw is dangerous - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064470 - Feb 2026 (93 comments) An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fal…

There’s also “ An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came Forward”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47083145

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#334

Post by plufz » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

mikkupikku wrote: post #286

plufz wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t talk for the US but here in Sweden most news media have fewer journalists today. Is that not the case in your country or in what way is it a mirage?

Maybe it's different in Sweden, but when I read old American newspapers, from a hundred years ago, 90% of it is absurd slop that people would laugh out loud at today.

50 years then?

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#335

Post by mikkupikku » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

noboostforyou wrote: post #328

Aurornis wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs Junior was said specifically. A better analogy would be if one of your staff engineers decided to connect OpenClaw to his workspace and it found a way to delete the production DB. The author was an AI reporter. You can’t argue that he didn’t know what he was doing when he made these choices. Any comparisons involved junior devs are just dishonest.

I was using a common "phrase" that highlights individual human error vs systemic failures Since you are stuck on the semantics allow me to rephrase - "if a single developer is able to delete your entire production db, that's an org failure"

Specifying a junior dev on his first day is a plain deliberate rhetorical ploy to frame systemic blame as more legitimate than individual blame. If not, then why not make it a senior developer? Anybody can fuck something up, but we give special consideration to noobs who make noob mistakes, and that's what is being implicitly appealed to, illegitimately. This journalist wasn't a noob, and using ChatGPT to write his article was an error in judgement but not an actual mistake.

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#336

Post by adornKey » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #104

AnonC wrote: post #50

Journalists and bloggers usually write about others’ mess ups and apologies, dissecting which apologies are authentic and which apologies are non-apologies. In this incident, Aurich Lawson of Ars Technica deleted the original article (which had LLM hallucinated quotes) instead of updating it with the error. He then published a vague non-apology, just like large companies and politicians usually do. And now we learn t…

They’re at this level because the editors have always had low standers. I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like 50% of Ars headlines are completely misleading. They’ve had this problem for years. They will publish anything that gets them clicks. They do not care if a writer makes things up. They do not care if their headlines are misleading - in fact, that’s the point. They clearly got into the job in order to i…

A few years ago I liked Ars Technica, but then somehow I think quality went down the drain. Did something happen to them a few years ago? If they get rid of the crazy reporters and go AI only - maybe the quality will improve again to a readable level.

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#337

Post by slg » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #141

slg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something to the story that I'm missing? Why does Orland need to apologize? Edwards fabricated the quotes via AI and seemingly presented them to Orland as authentic. Orland had no reason to suspect the quotes weren't real until after publishing. When journalists are working on a shared byline, they don't each do the same research in order to fact-check each other. There is inherently a level of trust require…

> Why does Orland need to apologize? Edwards fabricated the quotes He's on the byline and he's an editor. > they don't each do the same research in order to fact-check each other. There is inherently a level of trust If we're going to excuse this, what does the byline mean? He trusted the wrong person. It would be like if a source lied to him. Not the end of the world. But absolutely credibility destroying if instead…

Having a byline on a piece is not an indication he edited the piece, in fact, it's an indication he didn't edit it. That byline is simply an indication that he was one of two people responsible for writing the piece. He obviously didn't write every line or else there wouldn't be a second byline.

There is also a huge difference between trusting a coworker and falling for a lie of a source. Journalists deal with sources with a certain level of skepticism that just isn't productive or conducive to being a good coworker. Have you ever dealt with a coworker who didn't trust people to do their jobs? It's incredibly offputting.

I'll also point out that I said blame the "editorial process", that isn't the same as blaming an individual editor. This type of basic fact checking is either funded by the business or it isn't. This is very unlikely to be a failure of an individual rather than an absence of fact-checking at all and the decision for that is very unlikely to be made by the "senior gaming editor" (and it should be noted this wasn't even a gaming story).

There seems to be a disconnect between the way journalism generally works and your expectations for how it works. I believe Orland got duped by behaving the way most journalists would in a system that is less able to catch issues like this due to general industry cutbacks.

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#338

Post by afavour » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

madamelic wrote: post #290

Aurornis wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author himself fell on his sword in detail on Bluesky. Not exactly. He wrote a long excuse blaming being sick, sidestepping the issue that he was using AI tools to write for him and not making an effort to fact check. Also Bluesky is not Ars Technica. It doesn’t matter what he posts on his own obscure social media page. We’re talking about the journalistic platform where he was given a wide audience. > Your onl…

Maybe I don't understand journalism but this guy being a reporter, shouldn't he have had an editor reviewing his work before they hit publish? I understand trusting a senior reporter but I would think due to libel concerns, they would check people's quotes ESPECIALLY if the reporter was sick. Honestly it seems like journalism has been in their 'vibe code' era for a decade where they just publish whatever typos and al…

Sadly this is a reality of the money disappearing from the journalism industry. You're right, there absolutely should be fact checkers. A reporter absolutely shouldn't be filing while sick. And the big news orgs still do that. But I doubt Ars has the resources.

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#339

Post by mikkupikku » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #314

iepathos wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Ars Technica editorial process requires assuming reporters don't fabricate quotes, then their process is inadequate. That's like a software company letting junior engineers release directly to production with just a spellcheck and no real process to catch errors. Major publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, etc. have a dedicated fact-checking department that is part of the process and needs to give th…

> That's like a software company letting junior engineers release directly to production This person wasn’t a junior. Editorial processes don’t actually check every single line of everything that is written. Journalists are trusted to report accurately. This person demonstrated they could not be trusted. > Why wasn't there any fact checking? Why do programmers ever let any bugs get to production if they have code rev…

I agree completely, the people who are acting like it's Ars' responsibility to assume every sentence from their journalists are lies just aren't being realistic.

And even if Ars editors had caught the fabricated quote, what then? Obviously he should still be fired. Ars could probably benifit from better editors but even so this doesn't absolve the journalist of any of his own blame, for being the one responsible for introducing these fabrications in the first place.

Re: Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

#340

Post by clint » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

Y-bar wrote: post #159

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, there are a number of Ars Technica contributors that are among the best in their fields I miss Maggie Koerth & Jon Stokes

Yes, dearly missed. As is John Siracusa’s Mac OS reviews.

Most of these people left because the Ars readership is insanely toxic as evidenced in this thread.