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Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

arstechnica.com

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Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#61

Post by apparent »

mrandish wrote: post #43

When an article is retracted it's standard to at least mention the title and what specific information was incorrect so that anyone who may have read, cited or linked it is informed what information was inaccurate. That's actually the point of a retraction and without it this non-standard retraction has no utility except being a fig leaf for Ars to prevent external reporting becoming a bigger story. In the comments I…

In the case of hallucinated quotes, I think the more important aspect is to describe how this happened, whether the author is a regular contributor, how the editors missed it, and what steps are being taken to prevent it from happening in the future.

It's good to issue a correction, and in this case to retract the article. But it doesn't really give me confidence going forward, especially where this was flagged because the misquoted person raised the issue. It's not like Ars' own processes somehow unearthed this error.

It makes me think I should get in the habit of reading week-old Ars articles, whose errors would likely have been caught by early readers.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#62

Post by maxbond »

andrewflnr wrote: post #57
maxbond wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're reading a lot of intentionality into the situation what may be present, but I have not seen information confirming or really even suggesting that it is. Did someone challenge them, "was AI used in the creation of this article?" and they denied it? I see no evidence of that. Seems like ordinary, everyday corner cutting to me. I don't think that rises to the level of malice. Maybe if we go through their…

> Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it is clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here. By submitting this work they warranted that it was their own. Requiring an explicit false statement to qualify as a lie excludes many of the most harmful cases of deception.

Have you ever gone through a stop sign without coming to a complete stop? Was that dishonesty?

You can absolutely lie through omission, I just don't see evidence that that is a better hypothesis than corner cutting in this particular case. I am open to more evidence coming out. I wouldn't be shocked to hear in a few days that there was other bad behavior from this author. I just don't see those facts in evidence, at this moment. And I think calling it malice departs from the facts in evidence.

Presumably keeping to the facts in evidence is important to us all, right? That's why we all acknowledge this as a significant problem?

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#63

Post by danaris »

lapcat wrote: post #41
throw3e98 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading between the lines, this is corporate-speak for "this is a terminable offense for the employees involved." It's a holiday weekend in the US so they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process.

> It's a holiday weekend in the US so they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process. That's not how it works. It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door. Sometimes they just snail mail the employee's personal possessions from their desk. Moreover, Ars Technica publishes articles every day. Aside from this editor's note, they published one artic…

> That's not how it works.

Some places.

> It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door.

Some places.

You're speaking very authoritatively about what's "standard", in a way that strongly implies you think this is either the way absolutely everyone does it, or the way it should be done.

It's standard op nowadays to acknowledge that your experiences are not universal, and that different organizations operate differently.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#64

Post by delichon »

Imagine a future news environment where oodles of different models are applied to fact check most stories from most major sources. The markup from each one is aggregated and viewable.

A lot of the results would be predictable partisan takes and add no value. But in a case like this where the whole conversation is public, the inclusion of fabricated quotes would become evident. Certain classes of errors would become lucid.

Ars Technica blames an over reliance on AI tools and that is obviously true. But there is a potential for this epistemic regression to be an early stage of spiral development, before we learn to leverage AI tools routinely to inspect every published assertion. And then use those results to surface false and controversial ones for human attention.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#66

Post by Ekaros »

andrewflnr wrote: post #12

People put a lot of weight on blame-free post-mortems and not punishing people who make "mistakes", but I believe that has to stop at the level of malice. Falsifying quotes is malice. Fire the malicious party or everything else you say is worthless.

At this point anyone reporting on tech should know the problems with AI. As such even if AI is used for research and articles are written on that output by human there is still absolute unquestionable expectation to do the standard manual verification of facts. Not doing it is pure malice.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#67

Post by maxbond »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #59
maxbond wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article in question appears to me to be written by a human (excluding what's in quotation marks), but of course neither of us has a crystal ball. Are there particular parts of it that you would flag as generated? Honestly I'm just not astounded by that level of incompetence. I'm not saying I'm impressed or that's it's okay. But I've heard much worse stories of journalistic malpractice. It's a topical, disposable…

I don't believe there is any greater journalistic malpractice than fabrication. Sure, there are worse cases of such malpractice in the world given the low importance of the topic, but journalists should be reporting the truth on anything they deem important enough to write about. Cutting corners on the truth, of all things, is the greatest dereliction of their duty, and undermines trust in journalism altogether, whic…

> I don't believe there is any greater journalistic malpractice than fabrication. Sure, there are worse cases of such malpractice...

That's more or less what I mean. It was only a few notches above listicle to begin with. I don't think they intended to fabricate quotes. I think they didn't take the necessary time because it's a low-stakes, low-quality article to begin with. With a short shelf life, so it's only valuable if published quickly.

> I also do not believe this was a genuine result of incompetence.

So your hypothesis is that they intentionally made up quotes that were pretty obviously going to be immediately spotted and damage their career? I don't think you think that, but I don't understand what the alternative you're proposing is.

I also feel compelled to point out you've abandoned your claim that the article was generated. I get that you feel passionately about this, and you're right to be passionate about accuracy, but I think that may be leading you into ad-hoc argumentation rather than more rational appraisal of the facts. I think there's a stronger and more coherent argument for your position that you've not taken the time to flesh out. That isn't really a criticism and it isn't my business, but I do think you ought to be aware of it.

I really want to stress that I don't think you're wrong to feel as you do and the author really did fuck up. I just feel we, as a community in this thread, are imputing things beyond what is in evidence and I'm trying to push back on that.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#68

Post by lapcat »

danaris wrote: post #63
lapcat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a holiday weekend in the US so they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process. That's not how it works. It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door. Sometimes they just snail mail the employee's personal possessions from their desk. Moreover, Ars Technica publishes articles every day. Aside from this editor's note, they published one artic…

> That's not how it works. Some places. > It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door. Some places. You're speaking very authoritatively about what's "standard", in a way that strongly implies you think this is either the way absolutely everyone does it, or the way it should be done. It's standard op nowadays to acknowledge that your experiences are not universal, and…

> You're speaking very authoritatively about what's "standard", in a way that strongly implies you think this is either the way absolutely everyone does it, or the way it should be done.

Neither. I just meant it's common.

The comment I replied to said, "they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process."

I think the commonality of the practice shows that Ars Technica doesn't need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process, if office staff is even gone in the first place (again, Ars Technica appears to be open for business today). There's certainly no legal reason why they'd need to wait to fire people.

Does Ars Technica have a "policy" to only fire people on weekdays? I doubt it. Imagine reading that in the employee handbook.

Besides, President's Day is not a holiday that businesses necessarily close for. Indeed, many retailers are open and have specific President's Day sales.

Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations

#69

Post by furyofantares »

blactuary wrote: post #49
furyofantares wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's intentionally reckless, not intentionally harmful or intentionally falsifying quotes. I am sure they would have preferred if it hadn't falsified any quotes.

He's on the AI beat, if he is unaware that a chatbot will fabricate quotes and didn't verify them that is a level of reckless incompetence that warrants firing

Yeah! We can call things reckless incompetence without calling them malice!
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