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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

#171

Post by ChrisSD »

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…

> Aurich Lawson of Ars Technica deleted the original article

That's a very "shoot the messenger" statement. While Aurich is the community "face" of Ars, I very much doubt he has the power to do anything like that.

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

#172

Post by buran77 »

IshKebab wrote: post #121
jrmg wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The BBC reports on itself quite well (maybe too much even). Here's an example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly51dzw86wo I think they're an outlier, but still I was disappointed by Ars's response. They deleted the article and didn't detail what was wrong with it at all. Felt like a cover-up.

> They deleted the article

This was a big disappointment. I read the original article and the comment from the source highlighting the error, knew what was wrong with it, and still think it was the wrong move to just delete the article and all the original comments, and replace it with an editorial note.

This is a kind of cover-up. It's impossible to hide the issue but they went to great lengths to soften the optics and remove the damning content from the public record. They obscured the magnitude of the error. It looks like another "person uses AI and gets some details wrong".

What they did so far, the decisions that allowed the issue to occur in the first place (e.g. no editorial review before publishing) and the first reaction to deal with the incident (just destroy the content, article and comments) is everything I need to know about the journalistic principles at ArsTechnica. it's a major loss of trust for me.

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

#173

Post by senko »

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 wrote 2 books about SpaceX (not Musk), and he definitely does not have a pro-Musk bias.

He's is careful not to opine on Musk's other dealings, which is fair. As someone who wants to know more about SpaceX, I don't want to read yet more about Tesla, or Twitter, or Trump, or Epstein.

Personally, one of the authors I most like to read on ArsTechnica (though he writes rarely nowadays).

CarTechnica though .. yuck. Also, Oulette reliably picks movies and TV shows I will absolutely hate, so I guess good S/N there?

Mole's coverage is great if you're into Cronenberg-but-in-real-life.

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

#174

Post by Sammi »

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…

This is an experience I've had with reporters multiple times. They don't like to write about the same thing twice.

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

#175

Post by xnx »

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…

My hunch is Ars will copy/reword/repost articles from real news sources (basically free for Ars) or do its own reporting for exclusive stories (costs reporters some time). No reason for Ars to spend reporter time on something they can copy.

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

#176

Post by itvision »

DaanDL wrote: post #166
itvision wrote: post #164

[flagged]

I hope you will too escape from your echo chamber.

I love facts, reasoning, and logic and I'm not known for being biased or opinionated, something that the Ars comments section has become where unpopular points of view are downvoted to hell.

AI is mocked even though the vast majority of Ars commenters have extensively been using chatbots for years. You know how it's called? Hypocrisy.

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

#177

Post by itvision »

hnarn wrote: post #165
itvision wrote: post #164

[flagged]

Calling Ars Technica "woke far left" is crazy, the U.S. really is lost to complete fractionalist brainrot.

I'm not from the US and I'm not bipartisan; in fact, I find the bipartisan US to be extremely backwards, illogical, and detrimental to the whole nation.

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

#179

Post by bell-cot »

gwd wrote: post #169
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.

> the article doesn't include any facts that indicate this. It does include two facts: 1. That the reporter's bio on the webpage changed "...is a reporter at Ars " to "...was a reporter at Ars ". On the one hand, that's pretty thin sauce. On the other hand, that's not exactly the sort of change that gets made randomly. 2. They reached out to the various people involved, and although nobody has confirmed it, it's also…

IANAL, but those facts could support "fired", or "resigned", or "short-term contract not renewed", or probably other stuff.

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

#180

Post by akdor1154 »

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…

Yeah Goodin's stuff is often slop.. Probably human slop but slop nonetheless.
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