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Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

arstechnica.com

11–20 of 223 posts

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comments are trending towards being more critical as of my posting. A lot more asking what they're going to do about the authors, and what the hell happened.

> Greatly appreciate this direct statement clarifying your standards, and yet another reason that I hope Ars can remain a strong example of quality journalism in a world where that is becoming hard to find > Kudos to ARS for catching this and very publicly stating it. > Thank you for upholding your journalistic standards. And a note to our current administration in DC - this is what transparency looks like. > Thank y…

Yeah, the initial comments are pretty glazey, but go to the second and third pages of comments (ars default sorts by time). I'll pull some quotes:

> If there is a thread for redundant comments, I think this is the one. I, too, will want to see substantially more followup here, ideally this week. My subscription is at stake.

> I know Aurich said that a statement would be coming next week, due to the weekend and a public holiday, so I appreciate that a first statement came earlier. [...] Personally, I would expect Ars to not work with the authors in the future

> (from Jim Salter, a former writer at Ars) That's good to hear. But frankly, this is still the kind of "isolated incident" that should be considered an immediate firing offense.

> Echoing others that I’m waiting to see if Ars properly and publicly reckons with what happened here before I hit the “cancel subscription” button

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#12
People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#13

People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.

Yes. This is being treated as thought it were a mistake, and oh, humans make mistakes! But it was no mistake. Possibly it was a mistake on the part of whoever was responsible for reviewing the article before publication didn't catch it. But plagiariasm and fabrication require malicious intent, and the authors responsible engaged in both.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#15

People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.

There’s no malice if there was no intention of falsifying quotes. Using a flawed tool doesn’t count as intention.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#16

People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.

I don’t see how you could know that without more information. Using an AI tool doesn’t imply that they thought it would make up quotes. It might just be careless.

Assuming malice without investigating is itself careless.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#17
post #15

People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.

There’s no malice if there was no intention of falsifying quotes. Using a flawed tool doesn’t count as intention.

Outsourcing your job as a journalist to a chatbot that you know for a fact falsifies quotes (and everything else it generates) is absolutely intentional.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#18
post #15

People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.

There’s no malice if there was no intention of falsifying quotes. Using a flawed tool doesn’t count as intention.

They're expected by policy to not use AI. Lying about using AI is also malice.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#19

People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.

I don’t see how you could know that without more information. Using an AI tool doesn’t imply that they thought it would make up quotes. It might just be careless. Assuming malice without investigating is itself careless.

we are fucking doomed holy shit

we're really at the point where people are just writing off a journalist passing off their job to a chatgpt prompt as though that's a normal and defensible thing to be doing

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