• artyom@piefed.social
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    22 hours ago

    On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published an article containing fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them. That is a serious failure of our standards. Direct quotations must always reflect what a source actually said.

    That this happened at Ars is especially distressing. We have covered the risks of overreliance on AI tools for years, and our written policy reflects those concerns. In this case, fabricated quotations were published in a manner inconsistent with that policy. We have reviewed recent work and have not identified additional issues. At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident.

    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.

    We regret this failure and apologize to our readers. We have also apologized to Mr. Scott Shambaugh, who was falsely quoted.

    Nothing about who put it in there or what you’re doing to them?

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      22 hours ago

      We are reinforcing our editorial standards following this incident.

      It sounds like they will be reminding their team not to do that and scrutinizing articles in the near future

      • artyom@piefed.social
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        21 hours ago

        Someone deserves to be fired. Just imagine you’re paying someone to do a job and they just 100% completely outsource it to a machine in 5 seconds and then goes home.

        • Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 hours ago

          So you’re calling for someone to be fired without actually reading the article or understanding the situation? What punishment do you deserve for your laziness?

          • artyom@piefed.social
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            5 hours ago

            I did read the article. What punishment do you deserve for assuming I did not?

            • Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              4 hours ago

              You said that the author 100% completely outsourced his job to AI, which is such an absurd exaggeration of the truth that assuming you didn’t read the article was me being generous. Apparently you read it then just lied. Sorry for the confusion on my part, I assumed that you were just an idiot instead of a malicious idiot.

              • artyom@piefed.social
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                4 hours ago

                The article says nothing to contradict my statement. The only thing that did was the author’s statement themselves, which, if you just took their word for it without asking yourself any questions then you’re the idiot.

        • Totally Human Emdash User@piefed.blahaj.zone
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          19 hours ago

          He wrote the article himself, he just got mixed up when experimenting with using an AI tool to help him extract quotes from a blog entry. (He is the head AI writer, so learning about these tools is his job.) It was nonetheless his failure to check the quotes he was copying from his note to make sure that he got them right… but an important bit of context is that he had COVID while doing all this. Now, arguably he should have taken sick time off instead of trying to work through it (as he admits), but this would have cost him vacation time, and the fact that he even was forced into making this choice is a systemic problem that is not being sufficiently acknowledged.

          • skarn@discuss.tchncs.de
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            13 hours ago

            this would have cost him vacation time

            After all these years my poor European brain is still struggling to understand this.

          • XLE@piefed.social
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            18 hours ago

            If only this could have been prevented by, I don’t know, not experimenting.

          • artyom@piefed.social
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            19 hours ago

            he had COVID while doing all this

            I’ve had COVID before, it sucks but it doesn’t make you stupid.

            he just got mixed up when experimenting

            I don’t believe him.

              • artyom@piefed.social
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                17 hours ago

                Because it’s completely ridiculous. What if we was just phoning it in? He’s just going to come out and say it?

                  • LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                    16 hours ago

                    I mean, I find it hard to believe too.

                    accidentally used a Chat-GPT paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s blog rather than a direct quote.

                    Is quite the umm…. Accident? So the ars writer pulled some junk from ChatGPT, and used it as a direct quote in the article by accident? I suppose maybe depends on how the ars writer takes notes, and maybe should be an opportunity for reflection on how they do that to not have this happen again. Especially since it sounds likely they do ai investigation as part of their main job.

                    I mean, the Covid piece is certainly interesting, and sounds like a failure of ars to offer real sick time or a backup writer or something. I’m not sure.

                    All around, a big mess. Though, the blog in question was a fascinating read.

                  • artyom@piefed.social
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                    17 hours ago

                    In other wrong words, yes. An assumption is not the same thing as a belief.

            • LukeZaz@beehaw.org
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              18 hours ago

              I don’t believe him.

              I know the internet is full of untrustworthy charlatans, so I can’t blame you, but I’m as anti-AI as they come and I do believe him. Mistakes happen, especially in the context of rushed work done while sick. Remember that a lie by a grifter and the truth from an innocent sometimes look exactly the same; effective lies are made off of what was once a truth, after all.