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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

#81

Post by trivialities777 »

lapcat wrote: post #68
danaris wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 offic…

> (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.

They normally aren't, they probably write the stories on the weekdays and prepare them to automatically publish over the weekend, with only a skeletal staff to moderate and repair the website. Legal, HR, and other office staff probably only work weekdays, or are contracted out to external firms.

Their CEO posted a quick note on their forums the other day about this which implied they don't normally work on holidays and it would take until Tuesday for a response.

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

#82

Post by morninglight »

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…

This is not a retraction. It is just CYA - Cover your Arse Technica.

They need to enumerate the specific details they fudged.

They need to correct any inaccuracies.

Otherwise, there is little reason to trust Arse Technica in the future.

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

#83

Post by water-data-dude »

Benj Edwards, one of the authors, accepted responsibility in a bluesky post[0]. He lists some extenuating circumstances[1], but takes full responsibility. Time will tell if it's a one-off thing or not I guess.

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

[1] your mileage may vary on how much you believe it and how much slack you want to cut him if you do

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

#84

Post by lapcat »

trivialities777 wrote: post #81
lapcat wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 offic…

> (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. They normally aren't, they probably write the stories on the weekdays and prepare them to automatically publish over the weekend, with only a skeletal staff to moderate and repair the website. Legal, HR, and other office staff probably only work weekdays, or are contracted out to ex…

> Their CEO posted a quick note on their forums the other day about this which implied they don't normally work on holidays and it would take until Tuesday for a response.

Judging from today's editors note, if things need to happen more quickly, then they do.

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

#86

Post by [deleted] »

delichon wrote: post #64

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 l…

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by trivialities777 »

lapcat wrote: post #84
trivialities777 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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. They normally aren't, they probably write the stories on the weekdays and prepare them to automatically publish over the weekend, with only a skeletal staff to moderate and repair the website. Legal, HR, and other office staff probably only work weekdays, or are contracted out to ex…

> Their CEO posted a quick note on their forums the other day about this which implied they don't normally work on holidays and it would take until Tuesday for a response. Judging from today's editors note, if things need to happen more quickly, then they do.

That's true of every executive position, but not necessarily for HR or legal. Especially if they use an external firm.

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

#89

Post by gdulli »

water-data-dude wrote: post #83

Benj Edwards, one of the authors, accepted responsibility in a bluesky post[0]. He lists some extenuating circumstances[1], but takes full responsibility. Time will tell if it's a one-off thing or not I guess. [0] https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p [1] your mileage may vary on how much you believe it and how much slack you want to cut him if you do

It's not really important whether it's a one-off thing with this one guy, he's not relevant in the big picture. To the extent that he deindividualizes his labor he's just one more fungible operator of AI anyway.

People are making a bigger deal about it than this one article or site warrants because of ongoing discourse about whether LLM tech will regularly and inevitably lead to these mistakes. We're all starting to get sick of hearing about it, but this keeps happening.

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

#90

Post by NedF »

j0057 wrote: post #9

Odd that there's no link to the retracted article. Thread on Arstechnica forum: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/editor%E2%80%99s-note-... The retracted article: https://web.archive.org/web/20260213194851/https://arstechni...

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