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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

#321

Post by Aurornis »

newswasboring wrote: post #320
Aurornis wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> failure akin to - "if a junior dev accidentally This person was not a junior. He chose to use the AI tools knowing that they hallucinate. The comparisons to an untrained junior are illogical. This person was a long time reporter who knew better.

Even a senior dev being able to unilaterally delete your prod entirely should not be possible. But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs, its just a popular shorthand for "your process sucks".

> But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs

Junior was said specifically.

A better analogy would be if one of your staff engineers decided to connect OpenClaw to his workspace and it found a way to delete the production DB.

The author was an AI reporter. You can’t argue that he didn’t know what he was doing when he made these choices. Any comparisons involved junior devs are just dishonest.

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

#322

Post by [deleted] »

lich_king wrote: post #301
madamelic wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I don't understand journalism but this guy being a reporter, shouldn't he have had an editor reviewing his work before they hit publish? I understand trusting a senior reporter but I would think due to libel concerns, they would check people's quotes ESPECIALLY if the reporter was sick. Honestly it seems like journalism has been in their 'vibe code' era for a decade where they just publish whatever typos and al…

It is not a job of the editor to assume that the author is lying to you. > This was an institutional error, not an individual reporter's fault. Ah yes, "the system made me use AI".

[deleted]

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

#323

Post by catlifeonmars »

lich_king wrote: post #301
madamelic wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I don't understand journalism but this guy being a reporter, shouldn't he have had an editor reviewing his work before they hit publish? I understand trusting a senior reporter but I would think due to libel concerns, they would check people's quotes ESPECIALLY if the reporter was sick. Honestly it seems like journalism has been in their 'vibe code' era for a decade where they just publish whatever typos and al…

It is not a job of the editor to assume that the author is lying to you. > This was an institutional error, not an individual reporter's fault. Ah yes, "the system made me use AI".

The “system” should make it difficult to make mistakes.

But more importantly, why can’t both be at fault?

Having fact checkers review every articles you publish is a very low bar (as in you should not be in the business of publishing news if you can’t do it effectively).

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

#324

Post by newswasboring »

Aurornis wrote: post #321
newswasboring wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a senior dev being able to unilaterally delete your prod entirely should not be possible. But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs, its just a popular shorthand for "your process sucks".

> But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs Junior was said specifically. A better analogy would be if one of your staff engineers decided to connect OpenClaw to his workspace and it found a way to delete the production DB. The author was an AI reporter. You can’t argue that he didn’t know what he was doing when he made these choices. Any comparisons involved junior devs are just dishonest.

> Junior was said specifically.

Yes, but I think you are taking this phrase more literally than its meant to be read.

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

#325

Post by Aurornis »

aidenn0 wrote: post #35

I don't know that this is what happened here, but any time there is a push to do more with less, you end up rewarding people who take shortcuts over those who do a proper job, and from the outside, it looks like journalism has a push to do more with less.

> any time there is a push to do more with less, you end up rewarding people who take shortcuts over those who do a proper job

You don’t need an institutional push to make people take shortcuts.

Many people will take shortcuts to work less if they think they won’t get caught. You don’t even need external pressure.

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

#326

Post by Aurornis »

newswasboring wrote: post #324
Aurornis wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs Junior was said specifically. A better analogy would be if one of your staff engineers decided to connect OpenClaw to his workspace and it found a way to delete the production DB. The author was an AI reporter. You can’t argue that he didn’t know what he was doing when he made these choices. Any comparisons involved junior devs are just dishonest.

> Junior was said specifically. Yes, but I think you are taking this phrase more literally than its meant to be read.

I don’t think so. Junior was a key designator in the claim and words have meanings. It would have been easier to leave it out if they didn’t intend for it to contribute meaning.

I think this is turning into a Motte and Bailey argument where the junior dev story is used to push the argument and then it’s backpedaled out when others identify the fallacy.

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

#327

Post by lostmsu »

Revanche1367 wrote: post #9

So the original blogger got slandered by an LLM agent, then got slandered again by a human journalist who used an LLM agent to write the article about him getting slandered by an LLM agent? How ironic. But, does that mean he got slandered twice by an LLM agent or once by an agent and once by a human? Or was he technically slandered 3 times? Twice by agents and a third time by the journalist? New questions for the new…

Wait, in what way the original blogger got slandered by an LLM agent?

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

#328

Post by noboostforyou »

Aurornis wrote: post #321
newswasboring wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a senior dev being able to unilaterally delete your prod entirely should not be possible. But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs, its just a popular shorthand for "your process sucks".

> But I don't think the intention was to compare with junior devs Junior was said specifically. A better analogy would be if one of your staff engineers decided to connect OpenClaw to his workspace and it found a way to delete the production DB. The author was an AI reporter. You can’t argue that he didn’t know what he was doing when he made these choices. Any comparisons involved junior devs are just dishonest.

I was using a common "phrase" that highlights individual human error vs systemic failures

Since you are stuck on the semantics allow me to rephrase - "if a single developer is able to delete your entire production db, that's an org failure"

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

#329

Post by lostmsu »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #146
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen anyone here claim that AI never hallucinates or can't provide incorrect information.

I've absolutely seen commenters who claim that hallucinations are a thing of the past if you use the newest models. They're wrong, but they exist.

It's really easy to prove existence of a thing by showing the thing. Or, maybe, you hallucinated it?

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

#330

Post by mikkupikku »

lukan wrote: post #228
mikkupikku wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berger is a real one. I'm surprised he's lasted so long at Ars Technica. I think eventually his objective reporting of SpaceX will get the Are Technica reader base to demand his firing, Ars readers are very reddit-like. Team minded, not interested I hearing dispassionate takes. Hearing Elon Musk criticized as a person while simultaneously seeing SpaceX described as a real and highly accomplished company gives reddit/…

"Ars readers are very reddit-like" How can you know? I think you mean most reddit commentors are very reddit like (nowdays I tend to agree). I read Ars from time to time, but I never commented there. But still, when I read comments, I don't get the impression that Berger is close of getting fired.

It's a little thing called reading. I read Are comments, I read reddit comments, and I judge them to both be a bunch of morons who are perpetually suspicious of nuance.
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