Bluesky post by Benj (one of the authors of the article). https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p He admits to using an AI tool, says he was sick and did dumb things. He does clear Kyle (the other author).
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Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
91–100 of 223 posts
Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
They might as well wait till business hours to sort things out before publishing a statement. Nobody needs to see such hollow corpo speak on a Sunday.
No, admitting fault as soon as possible makes a big difference. It's essential to restoring credibility. If they had waited until Monday the thread would be filled with comments criticizing them for waiting that long.
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/um-what-happened-to-th...
> we probably won't have something to report back until next week.
The forum thread is locked.
Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
#93People 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.
That don't actually say it's a blame free post-mortem, nor is it worded as such. They do say it's their policy not to publish AI generated anything unless specifically labelled. So the assumption would be that someone didn't follow policy and there will be repercussions. The problem is people on the Internet, hn included, always howl for maximalist repercussions every time. ie someone should be fired. I don't see tha…
> That don't actually say it's a blame free post-mortem, nor is it worded as such.
Correct, I only mentioned the blame-free post-mortem thing to head off the usual excuses, as a shorthand for the general approach. It has merits in many/most circumstances.
> I don't see that as a healthy or proportionate response,
Again, correct. It's only appropriate in cases of malice.
Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
#94Earlier 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…
You're constructing quite a lot of hypotheticals to justify not waiting 3 more days to condemn Ars Technica for not firing this guy.
Can we not just have a little patience anymore?
Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
#95Benj 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
The bigger problem is that he felt the need to work while ill in bed, with very little sleep and sick with fever.
Makes me wonder about Ars Technica's company culture.
Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
#96Recent and related (in reverse order):
An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47009949 - Feb 2026 (602 comments)
AI Bot crabby-rathbun is still going - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47008617 - Feb 2026 (28 comments)
The "AI agent hit piece" situation clarifies how dumb we are acting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006843 - Feb 2026 (125 comments)
An AI agent published a hit piece on me - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990729 - Feb 2026 (945 comments)
AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46987559 - Feb 2026 (746 comments)
Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one said it was defensible. They drew a distinction between incompetence and malice. Let's not misquote each other here in the comments.
Even if it didn't fabricate quotes wholesale, taking an LLM's output and claiming it as your own writing is textbook plagiarism, which is malicious intent. Then, if you know that LLMs are next-token-prediction-engines that have no concept of "truth" and are programmed solely to generate probabilistically-likely text with no specific mechanism of anchoring to "reality" or "facts", and you use that output in a journal…
This is silly. LLMs are not people; you can’t “plagiarize” an LLM. Either the result is good or it isn’t, but it’s the actual author’s responsibility either way.
Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
#98Earlier 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…
You're constructing quite a lot of hypotheticals to justify not waiting 3 more days to condemn Ars Technica for not firing this guy. Can we not just have a little patience anymore?
You're putting a lot of words in my mouth. I didn't call for anyone to be fired.
throw3e98 is the one who suggested that Ars Technica was going to fire people, but not for a few days. I merely suggested that if anyone was getting fired, they would likely already be fired.
At this point, however, I don't think anyone is getting fired, not this weekend and not Tuesday either: https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p
I don't condemn Ars Technica for not firing the guy, but I do condemn Ars Technica for the terse hand-wave of an editor's note with no explanation, when on the same day we get a fuller story only from someone's personal social media account.
Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
That don't actually say it's a blame free post-mortem, nor is it worded as such. They do say it's their policy not to publish AI generated anything unless specifically labelled. So the assumption would be that someone didn't follow policy and there will be repercussions. The problem is people on the Internet, hn included, always howl for maximalist repercussions every time. ie someone should be fired. I don't see tha…
> That don't actually say it's a blame free post-mortem, nor is it worded as such. Correct, I only mentioned the blame-free post-mortem thing to head off the usual excuses, as a shorthand for the general approach. It has merits in many/most circumstances. > I don't see that as a healthy or proportionate response, Again, correct. It's only appropriate in cases of malice.
Hanlon's razor is a farce. There are no unintentional acts, the drunk driver takes off because he thinks he has to get back as fast as possible, the sick man invokes AI to write his article because he must hit the deadline.
Re: Editor's Note: Retraction of article containing fabricated quotations
#100Bluesky post by Benj (one of the authors of the article). https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p He admits to using an AI tool, says he was sick and did dumb things. He does clear Kyle (the other author).
Really refreshing to see someone owning up to their mistake, that is something rare nowadays.