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

251–260 of 409 posts

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

#251

Post by jmbwell »

vpribish wrote: post #81
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…

This has just happened - i'm giving Ars a bit more time to come out with a piece examining the situation. They're a pretty good operation, I think. but it they don't...

This. The truth is still putting on its shoes and all that

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

#252

Post by pixl97 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #200
3abiton wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> but I am yet to meet a humble editor yet. They approach everything with a "I know better than anyone else" attitude. They're like "UX experts" in software. One does UX for software, the other does UX for text. Same attitude problems, from the way you describe it. If the expert in something so subjectively judged is seen to be conceding anything, that might undermine their perceived expertise. Any push back is inter…

> Any push back is interpreted as somebody challenging their career.

I mean, yes, this happens quite a bit, especially with egotistical people.

But to play devils advocate they do have to deal with a massive fuckload of bullshit asymmetry where people dumber than rocks spew forth a never ending stream of stupid crap with the authority of an LLM.

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

#253

Post by pixl97 »

bombcar wrote: post #241
bayindirh wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't argue that it isn't?

I was agreeing; anyone who admits to using A/B headline testing is just admitting to be a clickbait factory.

You ever ask the question why they would want to be a clickbait factory?

Because it pays the bills, unfortunately. Google has sucked up all the advertising dollars that used to pay for media and the rest of the world is now doing card tricks to earn scraps to pay the bills.

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

#255

Post by pixl97 »

jcgrillo wrote: post #111
lynx97 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Hence why software engineers aren't an actual professional licensed engineers.

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

#256

Post by aleph_minus_one »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #245
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. [...] > I reached to Benji again saying "Hey would you like to chat again, now we have some coverage?" And he finally responded, but said he couldn't report on me because he had a directive that he could only report on things that didn't have any prior or pre-ex…

>The US mentality might be different, but at least having grown up and living in Germany, such an annoying hustler who wants to use some journalist as a marketing influencer for his private project is a huge no-no. In other words: it is a very reasonable decision (perhaps even the only right one) for any journalist to fob off such a hustler. Yeah there seems to be a thing where in the US, what's seen as "selling your…

Slightly off topic:

Why is excessive self-promotion considered "putting your best foot forward"?

I understand that you need the money, so you do self-promotion. But this is clearly not "putting your best foot forward", but a "put a bad foot (annoy other people by excessive self-promotion) forward because you need the money", i.e. what many US-Americans do is by my understanding the opposite of this life advice which they give.

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

#257

Post by donohoe »

bayindirh wrote: post #123
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.

Yes. Normally, and Ars is generally up to that standard, the editorial staff (or Editor in Chief) updates the article, adds a note about the correction, and further adds that the original author of the article is not working with Ars anymore. It stays as a mark, immortalizing the error, but it's a better scar than deleting and acting like it never happened. I also want to note that, this last incident response is not…

No. That can happen but it’s not the only path. An article can be retracted. That said, it’s usually noted somewhere else.

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

#258

Post by donohoe »

g947o wrote: post #212
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.

If a news organization publishes an article welcoming someone onboard, they should also do that when someone is fired because of a scandal. Of course, if someone leaves because of personal reasons or jumping ship, there is no reason to do that. But this is different.

Sorta. Usually they would do a press release or a post on their company blog - not an article.

Aside, posting about a new hire is easy and has no legal livability. Posting on a departure can be a tangled web.

I do agree that some note by Ars would be good here.

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

#259

Post by Hnrobert42 »

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 cannot disagree with you more strongly.

Ars did own up to its mistake both in writing and in firing the author. The author himself fell on his sword in detail on Bluesky.

Your only real complaint is that their published explanation wasn't subjectively good enough for you and that means it's sad to see them at this level?

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

#260

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

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 disagree. You could A/B test two good, accurate, well-written headlines and stay clear of clickbait altogether. Sure, you're still optimising for the most popular, but "clickbait" doesn't just mean "well performing", there's also an implication of duplicity.

I have a modicum of experience here. I write for another online media company and, although we produce our own headlines, we are 'strongly encouraged' to write clickbait headlines, to the extent where we are asked to remove instances of specific product names (etc.) in order to be mysterious and not give the game away too early. (Yes, in case it wasn't clear, I hate this!)

Post reply on HN