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

291–300 of 409 posts

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

#291

Post by danso »

skygazer wrote: post #61
danso wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would apologizing for plagiarism and fabrication preclude you from facing sanctions for plagiarism and fabrication?

Is it “plagiarism” to misattribute hallucinated quotes? Not that a whole lot of sloppy, unprofessional shortcuts weren’t taken, but plagiarism doesn’t seem like the right word, as quotes are almost definitionally not plagiarism. But maybe these were paraphrasings masquerading as quotes, so maybe that’s the difference.

Plagiarism hurts not only the original author (in this case, I don't think we have to worry about the LLM), but also the reporter's audience, who has an expectation that the writer's reporting and analysis are original and based on the writer's own research and observations. At the very least it's a theft of the reader's time, if I wanted an LLM's perspective on a topic, I'd generate it myself

One of the things left unsaid in Edwards's apology [0] was whether he read the blog post that is the entire raison d'etre of his story. It's not like the story purported to do anything other than incorporate publish blog posts. So in his overworked and sickened state, how did trying out an "experimental Claude Code-based AI tool" substantially save him time versus jotting notes while ostensibly reading the source material himself

[0] https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p

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

#292

Post by WarmWash »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #198
b112 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Editorial staff? There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared. Purely online entities have no way to pay for real editorial staff. News has no money, compared to news of old. It's part of the reason 99% of modern news is just reporting other people's tweets or whatever. I can't imagine many news companies having much money for court battles…

Agreed. Modern news is beyond lazy, and is not journalism by any means. Too many talking heads do nothing but sit behind a screen watching others for what to say next. Granted, a few of the remaining newspapers I'm aware of run business awards (Best restaurant, etc), and the way to win is via wining and dining them, even though the paper claims it's based on people's votes. That style of thinking - of entitlement - p…

How many ars readers do you think don't use ad block?

Tech audiences are the worst to be advertisement dependent on.

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

#293

Post by calyth2018 »

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…

Conde Nasty corrupts eveything.

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

#294

Post by troyvit »

b112 wrote: post #152
beloch wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Editorial staff? There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared. Purely online entities have no way to pay for real editorial staff. News has no money, compared to news of old. It's part of the reason 99% of modern news is just reporting other people's tweets or whatever. I can't imagine many news companies having much money for court battles…

> Editorial staff?

> There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared.

In a lot of ways you're right, but our public radio station (cpr.org) has the largest newsroom in the state, and that newsroom makes up over a third of our staff. So yeah "news companies" don't have news rooms but that's because their business isn't news. It's funneling user data to their parent companies and getting people to click ads.

However, thanks to "listeners [and viewers, and surfers] like you" public media is still working its ass off to make a difference despite being cut lose from the government. It won't work unless you switch your perspective to local news (where most of the real information is anyway) and unless you donate.

Apologies for turning a comment into a mini fund-drive :)

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

#295

Post by danso »

smallerize wrote: post #279
skygazer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it “plagiarism” to misattribute hallucinated quotes? Not that a whole lot of sloppy, unprofessional shortcuts weren’t taken, but plagiarism doesn’t seem like the right word, as quotes are almost definitionally not plagiarism. But maybe these were paraphrasings masquerading as quotes, so maybe that’s the difference.

Maybe it's plagiarism because he did not attribute the LLM output to the LLM.

Yeah, it's the lack of attribution that is key, even if it sounds like a trivial and ceremonial step. If a New York Times reporter writes "'Our investigation has completely stalled,' Kings County Sheriff Bob Jones told the Springfield Observer", I can infer that the NYT is reliant on local reporting for this story and may not have done original on-the-ground work themselves.

Imagine how flimsy Ars' story about a blog post would look like if the story had correctly attributed the quotes (fabricated or not) to, "according to Claude AI's analysis of the blog post". The reader would have the right to wonder if the reporter had even read the blog post.

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

#296

Post by WarmWash »

vintagedave wrote: post #160
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'm sad to see them fire him. I've seen far worse: I have always approached issues by asking for accountability and improvement. Frankly, he already did: he openly apologised. I was very happy with that, it demonstrated integrity and I remained respecting him. Even worse, > I have been sick in bed with a high fever and unable to reliably address it (still am sick) [0] In an earlier HN thread, I saw someone ask why Ar…

Ars has probably the most rabid anti-AI audience of all the tech publications

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

#298

Post by ambicapter »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #256
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

You're coming off as clearly not understanding the other side here. Obviously "putting your best foot forward" is not simultaneously "annoy other people by excessive self-promotion" in the mind of a single person.

There are two different types of people, and they think of the same action in two different ways.

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

#299

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#300

Post by crazygringo »

bayindirh wrote: post #277
crazygringo wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you're basing that on. It seems entirely normal and standard to retract articles and publish a note elsewhere that it was retracted. In fact, it's common because if an article had one fabrication it might have others which you haven't discovered yet, so you don't want to keep it up. Whether they want to announce that the journalist was fired is up to their discretion. But it's not necessary or even…

First, I didn't want him to be fired, frankly. I have a comment telling exactly that when this thing happened. Second, as a reader following Ars for more than 10 (15?, IDK) years, I never seen them abruptly retract an article like this. Their modus operandi is correct and own the corrections. This is what I always said (this is the third time in a comment train). We all have scars. From a fall, from a cut, physical,…

But retracting an article is more serious than making a correction.

The accountability comes from the editor's note. It's there already. It's owned.

You're acting like this is some attempt to bury a mistake. It doesn't appear to be. It's what happens when you don't even have faith that the rest of the article is correct.

Post reply on HN