Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ars Technica fires reporter after AI controversy involving fabricated quotes

futurism.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 409 posts

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

#231

Post by bombcar »

bayindirh wrote: post #184
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…

> I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like 50% of Ars headlines are completely misleading. I believe they are doing A/B testing on these. Ah yes, I remember correctly for once : https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/why-do-front-page-arti... TL;DR: They are doing mandatory A/B testing since 2015 .

A/B headline testing is just scientific clickbait.

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

#232

Post by paxys »

palmotea wrote: post #90
raincole wrote: post #39

I have to admit, nowadays Google AI Overview's accuracy is so good that I often don't check the links. It's scary that it got from 'practically useless' to 'the actual google search' in less than two years. I really don't know where the internet is heading to and how any content site can survive.

> I have to admit, nowadays Google AI Overview's accuracy is so good that I often don't check the links. It's scary that it got from 'practically useless' to 'the actual google search' in less than two years. It says things I know to be false fairly regularly. I don't keep a log or anything, but it's left an impression that it's far from reliable.

It is simply summarizing the top few search results. If they are false then the summary will be false.

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

#233

Post by bombcar »

true_religion wrote: post #168
Barbing wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>his whole job Possibly akin to a roofer taking a shortcut up there, then taking a spill? You knew better but unfortunately let the fact that you could probably get away with it with zero impact decide for you. IIRC hallucinations were essentially kicked off initially by user error, or rather… let’s say at least: a journalist using the best available technologies should have been able to reduce the chance of this big…

Alternatively… there was no AI error, the reporter made up the quotes, and lied when they were challenged.

The chance that the very first time AI was used it screwed up and was caught is pretty low.

It’s likely been used before but nobody got caught.

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

#234

Post by Dumblydorr »

DiskoHexyl wrote: post #199
mikkupikku wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that Are Technica management induced this journalist to use AI, or are you just claiming it's an "open secret" and don't know anything about this specific incident? Because without any kind of details it kind of sounds like the latter, maybe motivated by a reflex to blame management whenever workers blunder? Unless there's evidence that a actually points at Ars Technica management, dismissing th…

I didn't state that Ars Technica specifically mandate LLM use for their authors. What I did state about them is that their editorial standards are lacking, and they tend to produce a lot of clickbait. IMO the industry is in crisis

How is it an open secret? Is there evidence for this? I still see typos in some articles so it feels like humans are in the loop, maybe that’s their AI masking?

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

#235

Post by plufz »

mikkupikku wrote: post #220
katzgrau wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point of the parent comment. The money (from advertising) that used to go to news now goes elsewhere (Google and Meta). It’s left very little in terms of resources for staff. Think about what the quality of commercial software would be like if there wasn’t enough money for QA and testers and top tier devs capped out at $180k with starting roles at 30k and 40k. That’s the news industry right now…

The money used to go to Hearst and co. The golden age of journalism is mostly a mirage.

I can’t talk for the US but here in Sweden most news media have fewer journalists today. Is that not the case in your country or in what way is it a mirage?

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

#236

Post by bayindirh »

bombcar wrote: post #231
bayindirh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t know about you guys, but I feel like 50% of Ars headlines are completely misleading. I believe they are doing A/B testing on these. Ah yes, I remember correctly for once : https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/why-do-front-page-arti... TL;DR: They are doing mandatory A/B testing since 2015 .

A/B headline testing is just scientific clickbait.

I didn't argue that it isn't?

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

#238

Post by zombot »

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…

Yep, Ars Technica is off my reading list. They completely lost my trust.

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

#239

Post by pluc »

> ...he attempted to use an “experimental Claude Code-based AI tool” to help him “extract relevant verbatim source material.” He said the tool wasn’t being used to generate the article, but was instead designed to “help list structured references” to put in an outline. When the tool failed to work, said Edwards, he decided to try and use ChatGPT to help him understand why."

This, right here. Coming from an "AI Expert", this is what we can expect the future to be. One AI isn't working? Let's ask the other AI why. I have no words for that reflex. It's beyond idiotic. It takes everything that's human about your reasoning and tosses it aside. What a dumb idea.

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

#240

Post by latexr »

senko wrote: post #225
latexr wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. But all of those matter, and are not isolated. When the leader of an organisation is distracted by the other organisations they control, it matters. It also matters when they are repeatedly wrong about their predictions, ev…

> But all of those matter, and are not isolated. And have been done to death elsewhere. Meanwhile, Berger produces balanced, informed, interesting, and informative coverage of space tech (in general, not just SpaceX).

Fair. I misunderstood your original post as “not wanting to read/care at all about”, but you did say “yet more”. Thank you for clarifying.
Post reply on HN