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ArsTechnica's response to the AI generated "quotations" (arstechnica.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Backstory here: https://www.404media.co/ars-technica-pulls-article-with-ai-fabricated-quotes-about-ai-generated-article/

Personally I think this is a good response. I hope they stay true to it in the future.

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[–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

i dont think any journalist, especially a technology journalist, should be using AI summaries in any capacity as part of their research. i'm glad he owned up to it but this should be a career damning event.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago*

    Yeah, you should lose your entire career for one mistake! Fucking up an article on the internet, can you imagine a worse sin???

    He caused a massive shitshow, it’s already a mark on his career.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    He was using the AI to help him extract quotes; it makes sense that, as the head AI writer, he would be experimenting with new AI tools to become more familiar with them. It sounds like he just got confused at some point at mixed up a paraphrasing of the AI tool with an original quote, and it sounds like he was not in the best shape when writing this article so he made a dumb mistake. Regardless, arguably the use of AI here is a red herring, because if he had double-checked his quotes and fixed them then it would not have mattered whether he used AI or not.

    I think that damning his entire career over this would be too extreme. I suspect that his will be a very good learning experience for him, but that unfortunately he will need to apply his lessons at another place of employment.

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