191–200 of 223 posts
Feels like nail in the coffin, Ars has already been going downhill for half a decade or more. I unsubscribed (just the free rss) regardless of their retraction.
Unsubscribing from the free RSS feed. If you weren't paying or consuming ads, I'm not sure how much your vote should count.
This is something you don’t see a lot in journalism nowadays. Multiple publications have been caught in multiple provable lies or inaccuracies over the last few years, and this is the first official retraction I’ve seen. I tip my hat to the ars team.
Former technology journalist here. If you want to experiment with reported news using untested tools that have known quality problems, do it in a strictly controlled environment where the output can be carefully vetted. Senior editor(s) need to be in the loop. Start with something easier, not controversial or high-profile articles. One other thing. If the author cut corners because he's too sick to write, but did so…
> One other thing. If the author cut corners because he's too sick to write, but did so anyway because he thought his job would be in jeopardy if he didn't publish, maybe it's time for some self-reflection at Ars regarding the work culture and sick leave/time-off policies. It sounds like you're implying that's what happened here, but I don't see any of that in the article. Was additional info shared elsewhere? Edit:…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that the work culture promoting this is bad, but being sick is still simply not an excuse to fabricate quotes with AI. It's still just journalistic malfeasance, and if Ars actually cares about the quality of their journalism, he should be fired for it.
Should he? Where does that mindset come from? The author has owned up to his mistake. Unless there is a pattern here, why would we not prefer to let him learn and grow from this? We all get to accidentally drop the prod DB once, since that’s what teaches us not to do it again.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One other thing. If the author cut corners because he's too sick to write, but did so anyway because he thought his job would be in jeopardy if he didn't publish, maybe it's time for some self-reflection at Ars regarding the work culture and sick leave/time-off policies. It sounds like you're implying that's what happened here, but I don't see any of that in the article. Was additional info shared elsewhere? Edit:…
Took me a while to find, here's one of the authors Benj Edwards with a statement on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Took me a while to find, here's one of the authors Benj Edwards with a statement on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p
looking at the statement, I find it weird that Benj Edwards is trying very hard to remove the blame from Kyle Orland, Even if he is not directly responsible.
I’d say that some of the onus is on Kyle, anyway, as he should vet anything he slaps his name on (I do), but it sounds like he really didn’t have anything to do with it.
Despite the aspersions against the company for their sick time policy (which might actually be valid), the other corporate pressure might be to force their employees to incorporate AI tools into their work. That’s become quite common, these days.
Former technology journalist here. If you want to experiment with reported news using untested tools that have known quality problems, do it in a strictly controlled environment where the output can be carefully vetted. Senior editor(s) need to be in the loop. Start with something easier, not controversial or high-profile articles. One other thing. If the author cut corners because he's too sick to write, but did so…
In mainstream journalism wasn't the practice to have a junior position research and confirm quotes, dates, proper names, etc?
I see a lot of negative comments on this retraction about how they could have done it better. Things can always be done better but I think the important thing is that they did it at all. Too many 'news' outlets today just ignore their egregious errors, misrepresentations and outright lies and get away with it. I find it refreshing to see not just a correction, but a full retraction of this article. We need to encoura…