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Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

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

#111

Post by jcgrillo »

lynx97 wrote: post #91
petterroea wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that AnonC is upset at Ars not taking the mature approach by allowing this to become a learning moment for the employee and using it to double down and confirm their stance on AI generated content. There's strength in maturity. But I am doing some reading between the lines, and I'm possibly reading a bit too much into "There’s something to be said about the value of owning up to issues" Reminds me…

There is a difference between an error and totally misunderstand your actual task. I have absolutely no sympathy for journalists getting caught producing hallucinated articles. Thats an absolute no go, and should always result in that person being fired.

Same goes for engineers reviewing vibeslop. If you let that shit through code review, and a customer impacting outage results, that should be instant termination. But it won't be, because as an engineer you are supposed to be held "blameless" right?

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

#112

Post by Kwpolska »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #34

The headline says Ars fired the reporter, but AFAICT the article doesn't include any facts that indicate this. All we know is that he no longer works there, and that Ars refused to provide any additional information.

Neither side has issued a statement about what happened, but Benj’s Bluesky post does not read like a post of someone who would have resigned due to this.

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

#113

Post by AceJohnny2 »

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…

> That said, there are a number of Ars Technica contributors that are among the best in their fields

I miss Maggie Koerth & Jon Stokes

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

#114

Post by Gigachad »

jrmg wrote: post #107
SchemaLoad wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the AI overview is most of the time directly summarising the search results rather than synthesizing an answer from internal model knowledge. Which is why it can hyperlink the sources for the facts now. Even a very dumb lightweight model can extract relevant text from articles I just can't see how this is sustainable since they are stealing from the sources who are now getting defunded.

You can see the fall in real time - half the sources are also dubious AI slop now and that number’s only growing :-/

At work the conversation is that simultaneously everyone is using LLMs now, yet we receive virtually no traffic through them. The LLMs scrape our data, provide an answer to the user, and we see nothing from it.

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

#115

Post by 3abiton »

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…

> They’re at this level because the editors have always had low standers.

It's not just Ars Technica. I would go as far as saying the big majority. I work at the biggest alliance of public service media in EU, and my role required me to interact with editors. I often do not like painting with broad brush, but I am yet to meet a humble editor yet. They approach everything with a "I know better than anyone else" attitude. Probably the "public" aspect of the media, but I woupd argue it's editorial aspect too. The rest of the staff are often very nice and down to earth.

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

#116

Post by jrmg »

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…

Is it normal/expected for a news organization to publish that they fired someone? I’m inclined to take the ‘don’t comment on personnel matters’ at face value.

They did report on the article quote sourcing debacle at the time - perhaps not as quickly as some would’ve liked, but within a couple of days.

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

#117

Post by jrmg »

Gigachad wrote: post #114
jrmg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see the fall in real time - half the sources are also dubious AI slop now and that number’s only growing :-/

At work the conversation is that simultaneously everyone is using LLMs now, yet we receive virtually no traffic through them. The LLMs scrape our data, provide an answer to the user, and we see nothing from it.

I have the same worry about LLMs in general - I know that ‘model collapse’ seems to be an unfashionable idea, but when the internet’s just full of garbage (soon?…), what are we going to train these things on?

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

#118

Post by jmward01 »

Gigachad wrote: post #108
jmward01 wrote: post #103

You will never get the internet to agree on how incident x should have been handled. I think the world right now is running to figure out AI and its place. Just when you think you understand, the ground shifts. It is clear that in the future this exact use of AI will be expected and work, on average, way better than a person. I know that a lot of people probably have an emotional 'no it won't!' and disagree with me h…

The problem is accountability. If your name is on the article, this is your work. If you publish an article with fabricated quotes, it’s your fault regardless of if an AI tool was used or not since you hit the button at the end to sign off on it.

I care about the future. I care that actions taken help improve the future. If someone makes a mistake the question shouldn't ever be 'how do we punish them' but instead 'what actions can best improve the future'. Sometimes that does mean firing a person. If the effort to fix their behavior is more than the expected gain then that is an option to consider (not the only thing to consider though). In this case though I think there is likely more to it. What were their policies? Have they been pushing their journalists to accept more AI tools? Even without pushing AI tools, have they been implying that speed is more important than accuracy? Was this truly JUST this journalist's mistake or are their culture elements that are missing in the newsroom? I would expect the head of that news room to have a detailed rational of why firing this person was the right choice. How does it help them move forward and improve? Why this isn't just a decision to try to deflect blame from their internal culture problems. As is this looks like a case of 'the internet got mad. Do something to make them happy'.

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

#119

Post by grantith »

lovich wrote: post #77
aizk wrote: post #26

I have a story with Benji. Last year I went viral, and Benji was the first person to interview me. It was a really cool experience, we chatted via Twitter dms, and he wrote a piece about my work - overall did a decent job. Then, 6 months later a separate project I was adjacent to was starting to pick up steam. I reached out to him asking if he wanted to cover us. No response. Then, tech crunch wrote an article on our…

[flagged]

They have a website, a twitter handle, and a GitHub profile with their real name.

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

#120

Post by watwut »

petterroea wrote: post #78
gertop wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AnonC doesn't seem to be upset that the journalist was fired. The disappointment comes from Ars trying to brush this entire situation away by deleting articles, comments, and making no statement on their website.

My understanding is that AnonC is upset at Ars not taking the mature approach by allowing this to become a learning moment for the employee and using it to double down and confirm their stance on AI generated content. There's strength in maturity. But I am doing some reading between the lines, and I'm possibly reading a bit too much into "There’s something to be said about the value of owning up to issues" Reminds me…

Accidentally taking down production should not lead to firing. It should lead to improved process

Making up quotes for article, with technology or not, should lead to firing.

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