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Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes (futurism.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[+] -20 points 8 months ago (27 children)

AI - damned if you do and damned if you don't. And it's not just journalism affected.

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  • [–] 55 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    In this case it was very much NOT "damned if you do, damned if you don't"--It's just don't.

    As a journalist it's your whole fucking job to do the research and report things accurately and truthfully. There's no reason at all the "journalist" in question here should have had an AI generated anything for his shitty article.

    The fact that this was a story on AI misuse in the first place only adds insult to injury.

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago

    There’s no reason at all the “journalist” in question here should have had an AI generated anything for his shitty article.<

    Except that there is a requirement in Conde Nast to use AI.

    As a journalist it’s your whole fucking job to do the research and report things accurately and truthfully.<

    That is what the AI is supposed to be for.

    They can't have it both ways - either they demand AI and accept the consequences, or they give sufficient resources to staff to complete their work without it.

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  • [+] -16 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    And yet, if you don't, you will be undercut by the grossly subsidized AI and out of a job, either individually if your management leans AI or the whole enterprise if they don't, replaced by the AI slop factories.

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  • [–] 21 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    Yeah. But there's always the risk of being undercut by someone or something cheaper if you're operating in a workplace with zero standards. After all, you could write a lot of articles if you didn't give a rat's ass about the veracity or quality of the information within.

    Good newsrooms are supposed to have standards--that's what makes them good.

    If this the people at Ars had done their jobs to a high standard, the article in question wouldn't have been written like that in the first place, let alone edited and published as is. They want to fire the writer in question, and the writer wants to blame being sick, but the fact remains that the publishing of that article reveals a systemic problem with how Ars are operating, and a total lack of editorial standards.

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  • [–] -1 points 8 months ago

    The elite don't need the masses to be informed, they need them to be placated and oblivious or confused about what is happening, so they support what is contrary to their interests - idolize and support the elite. Good newsrooms don't serve the purposes of those that own them. AI producing slop with embedded propaganda serves them. It has only just begun. Watch young people on TikTok, sopping up the numbing propaganda. It is the future - now controlled by US elites. Like programmers who know their code, accountants that know their books, and so many other professionals who pride themselves on the quality of their work, journalists who do their jobs to a high standard are being replaced. It will be very good for a few - those that can afford quality, free from slop and misinformation. But that's not the audience of Ars.

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  • [–] 15 points 8 months ago (14 children)

    What was the damned if you don't in this scenario? Seems more like damned if do, best if you don't in this situation.

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

    Best if you don't if quality is more important than financial viability, but no one can compete financially with the flood of AI/LLM being given away for free or, at most, far below actual cost. It's not good for anyone but the billionaires, but have you noticed how much wealth they have accumulated in the past few years? It's very, very good for them.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I get where you're coming from, but I think it's important that ars has held this person accountable. They have a journalistic standard they are sticking to, which is that there should be no AI use, and there are repercussions for people who don't abide. There's not an extremely large cohort that is willing to spend more to avoid AI, but I am certainly part of it, and seeing ars hold this person accountable helps me know that I can trust and patronize them ethically. There are businesses out there unwilling to acquiesce to an AI first narrative, and I'm just worried that elements of doomerism are going to make people unwilling to believe those companies when they have every reason to believe them.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    I don't disagree with you. I wish there were more companies refusing to use AI, at least without the necessary quality controls. And customers enough to support them. But did you see Visualising AI spending: How does it compare with history’s mega projects?? I don't think Ars can compete with that kind of funding, spent ruthlessly to eliminate competition. People need to wake up and realize they are the target of the predatory pricing of AI services, not just the companies: ordinary people doing good work can't compete with AI given away for free. Manufacturing didn't survive the competition of lower cost products from China. I don't think Ars and companies like them can survive the competition of AI being given away, practically for free. It's not even that I think AI has no value - it clearly does have enormous value and I expect it will get better. But current AI needs more oversight and control, and those using it should be required to pay the real cost so that those who choose not to use it can compete fairly. Markets that are too free can't, until it is too late, constrain investment on this scale. We need not just a few companies resisting on principle but some regulation of AI companies to preserve some fairness of the markets, so that companies who use less AI and ordinary people can compete and survive on a level playing field. There are laws against unfair practices for good reason. We all need them to be enforced now.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (10 children)

    I don't know but implication the other poster is making is "a human can write 2 articles, a Ai can write 5, I'm being asked for 5 which is impossible. I can use Ai and risk trusting it or not meet my required outputs and also get fired."

    I made up those numbers but that's the accusation. You are damned if you use the Ai to meet your goals. You are damned if you don't meet your goals.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    My wife is an accountant. She went to a seminar today where they were told to start using AI or get out of the way. They were shown an AI that can produce consolidated annual accounts and financial statements in a few minutes, that it takes her and the auditors a month to produce. And they look very good! The company is unlikely to pay her and wait for the quality reports she has been producing for years. She's on notice: start prompting the AI or move on. The AI promoters are going to run her and me and probably you into the ground and walk over us all, as they move on to their glorious future.

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

    Did they actually check if the generated stuff was correct? I’m betting it isn’t

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Nobody ever does. All AI demos are just: look at this mountain of generated text.

    • No checks if the mountain is correct
    • No checks if the mountain is a maintainable design
    • No checks if the mountain was even needed AT ALL
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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    This is a very large part of the problem. This and the fact that, by design, the output of AI is, despite its faults, increasingly difficult to distinguish from good work. Accountants' spreadsheets and traditional software systems can be audited but AI output can't: there's no auditable process. The output doesn't come out of nowhere, but the process is fundamentally resistant to inspection and validation. The only choices then are to run a parallel auditable system, audit it and compare the results, or run without quality control. It's a crazy risk, but how many companies will spend the money to mitigate it? How many can survive the short term consequences of doing so?

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago* (1 child)

    What company does she work for so I can stay clear of that impending hallucinatory clusterfuck?

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Her company has been good, though a recent restructuring is worrying. The advice came to an assembly of CFOs. The problem is much bigger than her company. This was the second professional development guidance she has received in the past month, promoting AI. I give her examples of unreliability and advise caution. At the session, they advised that no one should study programming or accounting any more. My advice was that they should study how to audit and that use of AI would make effective audit much harder than it has been, but also more necessary. The clusterfuck is going to affect everyone, unfortunately. You can't avoid it by avoiding her company.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago

    The AI promoters are going to run her and me and probably you into the ground and walk over us all, as they move on to their glorious future

    LOL there's no "glorious future", they're just going to rat fuck themselves, because those accounts are going to be riddled with errors.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Ouch! Tell her I'm sorry, and I'm sorry for you too. All the accountants I worked with did alot more than just reports. Not to mention that sounds great until the Ai says 2+4 =2*4 and now the company owes 20 billion on taxes...

    Plus in a lot of cases people don't submit records in identical format, the number of excel workbooks I've seen where the data was on "sheet 2" for some unknown reason....

    Maybe its just me, I always provided raw data on sheet 1, analyzed data on sheet 2, and if needed complicated formulas on sheet 3. I would be willing to bet their Ai would break on that format.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    There's an assumption that there has been an increased workload requested of them that I don't have a reason to believe. That person has been a writer for them for years and since they don't use AI as a rule, I don't know why they would have increased expected output from their staff. I'm not saying that never happens, I just don't believe that's what happened in this case as there is no evidence to suggest that. I appreciate you explaining that comment though.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Or, you know, double-check that the quotes given to you by the experimental AI “quote extractor” tool are accurate?

    He is (was) their go-to AI reporter. It’s not like they handed the assignment to an intern and said “go nuts.”

    And the article was about AI fabricating an attack on a developer that rejected its PR.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I have yet to see a field where LLMs are a net positive. At best scammers can dupe people easier and faster than ever but between writing, programming, etc the avg productivity gain is typically negligible at best to achieve work of similar quality with or without LLMs.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    It is useful in some specific fields like protein folding:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03819-2

    The problem is people think it can replace people which is wrong, it is a tool and should be used as such not as a replacement.

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

    Those aren't LLMs.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (1 child)

    Oh your right my mistake. I guess unit testing and debugging are useful. I did use copilot to find a missing slash. Also useful for revising email and paragraphs, of course you have to review it. It also should never be used for scientific research and journalism. Of course it doesn't justify the investments into LLMs, we should focus on more useful things like alpha fold

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  • [–] 0 points 8 months ago

    Unit testing with LLMs is just asking an AI to hallucinate requirements.

    Tests are what documents expected behavior and are therefore the worst candidate for code gen.

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