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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

#141

Post by JumpCrisscross »

slg wrote: post #33
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether this guy has a job next month? That’s a problem. If he really hasn’t apologized, neither he nor Ars have recognized there is a problem, which means it will happen again.

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 of an apology you get a word salad.

> You can say this is a failure by the editorial process

Orland is also an editor. (Senior gaming editor [1].)

[1] https://arstechnica.com/author/kyle-orland/

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

#142

Post by arcadianalpaca »

aidenn0 wrote: post #35

I don't know that this is what happened here, but any time there is a push to do more with less, you end up rewarding people who take shortcuts over those who do a proper job, and from the outside, it looks like journalism has a push to do more with less.

That's basically the problem. If the shortcut produces something passable 95% of the time and nobody is checking, it just looks like you're faster. Journalism just has a more public failure mode than most fields.

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

#143

Post by anakaine »

kergonath wrote: post #140
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…

Ars never commented about firing staff before, and it happened on several occasions. You get the occasional article when someone joins, never when someone leaves. They should have published another article after all this, but I would not expect them to comment about staff.

And I think thats a good thing. People screw up, and journalists are people. This person's punishment for their screw up was losing their job. They do not need to be dragged into a hit piece.

Ars can, and probably should if they have not already, publish a piece about hallucinations and use of AI in journalism, and own up to their own lack of appropriate controls and reflections. They do not need to drag the authors name into the write up. It can be self critical of themselves as a journalistic outlet.

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

#144

Post by ares623 »

If a tool is not fit for purpose then it either gets fixed or gets discarded/replaced.

AI is not a tool and from the way things are going never will be. Humans are more tool-like in that sense. In this case the human was discarded, the AI remains.

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

#145

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

fp64 wrote: post #69

Sad state of things. He did it because he was sick? That's close to claiming his dog ate the original quotes so he had to make some up. Well, Ars Technica is already for quite some time on my ignore list, and this further solidifies its place there.

I think that there's a potential different story with this. He felt that he had no option but to do work, even though he was so sick that he failed at the job. What's up with that? How insecure and pressured is his employment?

If it's not true then the error is on him. But it seems plausibly bad to me as an outside observer of US employment and healthcare customs. And the precarity of journalism nowadays. It is a sad state of things, as in it could be more a systemic than individual failure.

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

#146

Post by bigstrat2003 »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #73
jmyeet wrote: post #28

The crazy part to me is that even here on HN there are people who still insist that LLMs don't fabricate things or otherwise lie. I wonder if these are the same people who 3-4 years ago were insisting putting 20 characters onto a blockchain (ie an NFT, which was just a URL) was the next multi-billion dollar business. Sure there is such a thing as a naysayer but there are also people think all forms of valid criticism…

I've never seen anyone here claim that AI never hallucinates or can't provide incorrect information.

I've absolutely seen commenters who claim that hallucinations are a thing of the past if you use the newest models. They're wrong, but they exist.

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

#147

Post by vasco »

lukan wrote: post #139
vasco wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're a random tech blog, the kind of website that is peak time waste slop, why would they have any standards? Even the new york times and the Washington post put up wrong things all the time without corrections. People need to realize journalists are just ad sellers, not some beacon of truth. They are there to sell ads, the same way a youtube video of a guy eating too much food in front of a camera is. Journalism…

"People need to realize journalists are just ad sellers, not some beacon of truth." You just changed the meaning of journalist. Now sure, the job of some journalists could be better described as ad sellers, but I rather call those like that and restrict the original term to actual journalists who actually care about truth. Because they still exist.

The 3 people that work at Reuters actually doing journalism are not doing in ANY way a similar job to the millions writing blog posts for Ars Technica like publications. The latter is an ad seller indeed. And the majority of publications that are renowned also do little to no journalism.

It's as if we called "web devs" that learned JS on udemy and just vibe code, Computer Scientists and treated them as if they publish compiler research papers. It's just a completely different job

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

#148

Post by lukan »

vasco wrote: post #147
lukan wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People need to realize journalists are just ad sellers, not some beacon of truth." You just changed the meaning of journalist. Now sure, the job of some journalists could be better described as ad sellers, but I rather call those like that and restrict the original term to actual journalists who actually care about truth. Because they still exist.

The 3 people that work at Reuters actually doing journalism are not doing in ANY way a similar job to the millions writing blog posts for Ars Technica like publications. The latter is an ad seller indeed. And the majority of publications that are renowned also do little to no journalism. It's as if we called "web devs" that learned JS on udemy and just vibe code, Computer Scientists and treated them as if they publis…

Eric Berger at Ars for instance is someone I consider a journalist. Have you proof, that he systematically neglects truth in favor of ad selling?

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

#149

Post by beloch »

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…

"I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words,” Edwards continued. He emphasized that the “text of the article was human-written by us, and this incident was isolated and is not representative of Ars‘ editorial standards."

----------

A reporter whose bailiwick is AI should have known that he needed to check any quotes an LLM spat out. The editorial staff should have been checking too, and this absolutely is representative of their standards if they weren't.

It would probably be worth checking to see if any other articles or employees have similarly disappeared.

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

#150

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

3abiton wrote: post #115
Gagarin1917 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" attitu…

My charitable read is that if one has to interact with the public, one naturally develops an understanding of what is wrong with it.
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