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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

#361

Post by asadotzler »

vintagedave wrote: post #346
mikkupikku wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're taking his fever dream excuse at face value, and I think you probably shouldn't. It reads like a lame excuse to deflect personal responsibility, a cynical face-saving tactic. If the illness was genuine, can he document that he advised management of this fever and they told him to submit an article anyway? It's not his bosses job to stick a thermometer up his ass every morning.

> You're taking his fever dream excuse at face value Being sick with a bad fever is awful, it's a nightmare, and I cannot imagine making good decisions at the time. I do not know if he was ordered to work while sick, but there are often implicit expectations in workplaces and this was a time-sensitive article.

>I do not know if he was ordered to work while sick

You don't know if they were even sick at all. In fact, when someone gets fired for cause, it's quite common for them to lie about the circumstances. That you take their comments at full value seems kinda naive.

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

#362

Post by asadotzler »

sbarre wrote: post #266
infotainment wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say if one has any interest in writing objectively about space technology, one will likely end up being perceived as having a "pro-Musk bias". Elon himself is indeed questionable, but you really can't argue with his space-related achievements. Even other eccentric billionaires like Bezos haven't come close.

Perhaps we should be attributing the "space-related achievements" to Musk's companies and employees, and not to him directly, or at least not solely?

Your comment makes it pretty clear you've not read him much. He regularly credits SpaceX with specific accomplishments and rarely brings Musk into the topic unless it's about setting direction, etc.

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

#363

Post by asadotzler »

dust-jacket wrote: post #313
bell-cot wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but those facts could support "fired", or "resigned", or "short-term contract not renewed", or probably other stuff.

I mean fired and resigned when it became clear you'd be fired are the same thing really. We're not actually entitled to know the exact details of someone's job ending. They worked there. Now they don't. That much is the bit we're entitled to.

For public misconduct like this, we should get to know if he was fired (or asked to resign) as opposed to his making the independent decision to find work elsewhere or retire or whatever. We should get to know if he left because the company wanted him gone or because he wanted to be gone.

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

#364

Post by sparky_z »

lostmsu wrote: post #327
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?

It literally wrote a blog post [supposedly on its own initiative] trying to gin up outrage at open source maintainer after he denied the LLM's pull request.

Here's the original write-up of the incident:

https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on...

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

#365

Post by stuxnet79 »

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…

> Yeah there seems to be a thing where in the US, what's seen as "selling yourself" or "putting your best foot forward" is considered excessive self-promotion / tall poppy behavior in other cultures.

It is a uniquely US thing & is a common struggle for foreigners who are new to US corporate culture.

Can be especially tricky if you are a 3rd culture individual that has to manage relationships spanning different cultures in your daily life. You can't easily turn "hustler" mode off and on.

It is a huge faux pas in almost every non-western culture and can wreak havoc in your personal life.

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

#366

Post by lostmsu »

sparky_z wrote: post #364
lostmsu wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It literally wrote a blog post [supposedly on its own initiative] trying to gin up outrage at open source maintainer after he denied the LLM's pull request. Here's the original write-up of the incident: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on...

And which part of that blog post is slander?

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

#367

Post by mncharity »

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.

> nowadays Google AI Overview's accuracy is so good

I felt similarly yesterday. This morning AIMode fabricated for me a diverse science education publishing and research effort around using generative AI to teach rough-quantitative reasoning. My face-nibbling canary was a linked cite to a book "Orders of Magnitude"... a sci-fi horror novella about space marines. Would be nice if the outlined work actually existed. There we some nice ideas. I look forward to it. The education stuff, not the space marines.

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

#368

Post by madamelic »

starkparker wrote: post #316
lich_king wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

As someone who worked as a newspaper copy editor for the first third of my career, "assume that the author is lying to you" was the entire job. A lapse in that non-hypothetically left me responsible, and legally liable, in situations like this.

> legally liable

I think this is the thing people are missing the most. Libel is an incredibly serious thing to do. Misstating a fact is a faux pas and a bad look but misquoting someone, especially if that article is taken as a hit piece, can cost hundreds of thousands or millions.

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

#369

Post by [deleted] »

starkparker wrote: post #316
lich_king wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

As someone who worked as a newspaper copy editor for the first third of my career, "assume that the author is lying to you" was the entire job. A lapse in that non-hypothetically left me responsible, and legally liable, in situations like this.

[deleted]

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

#370

Post by crazygringo »

vintagedave wrote: post #345
crazygringo wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the editor's responsibility to set processes and standards to try to make sure this doesn't happen. If the rules exist but the reporter breaks them, then it's the reporter's fault and they get fired. As happened -- that's part of the process of maintaining standards. It's not the editor's fault. What exactly do you expect them to do? They can't fact-check and verify every single fact and quote in every article.…

Why not? Copy-paste-google would be a sanity check for 99% of them.

Because they're busy doing the rest of their job? They don't have enough time for it, nor is it a good use of their time.

That's like asking why the CEO of a 20-person startup isn't reading every line of code for bugs. It's not the best use of their valuable time.

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