Ars Technica has fired senior AI reporter Benj Edwards following an outrage-sparking controversy involving AI-fabricated quotes.
    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      No, the worker was fired and the executive whose job title is making sure that the work submitted is correct was not fired.

      The executives will get a bonus this year.

  • tidderuuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I’m not taking all the credit but I do hope those people who didn’t believe me in the past could rightfully take this comment, print it, pull down their pants and shove it up their ass.

    It’s time to hold journalism with a higher standard and this idea that “well they do alright” and “it was only once” is bullshit sliding into madness.

    Just the facts, folks.

    • Kissaki@feddit.orgEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      and “it was only once” is bullshit

      They checked and then fired the author. I don’t see how this is “it was only once” implying nothing changed and it will happen again. Isn’t firing the author “holding journalism to a higher standard” already, which you ask for?

      • tangeli@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        Maybe they should do more than just fire a person who was caught using AI. Maybe they should establish a process of independent fact checking before publication, regardless of whether AI was known or intended to be used to produce the article. It is a problem that AI was used in a way that introduced factual errors. It’s fair that the person responsible for this was fired. But all processes need quality control. Why hasn’t the person who failed to wrap quality control processes around the author fired?

        • 5gruel@lemmy.worldEnglish
          01·
          4 months ago

          in what world would independent fact checking down to the level of individual quotes be feasible for an online magazine? you can’t be serious.

            • 5gruel@lemmy.worldEnglish
              01·
              4 months ago

              I highly doubt that. how would that even work? a third-party to the publisher would have to check every statement before the issue goes to print. I can’t imagine this happening for anything that is not research papers or official reports.

              but I happy to learn something new.

              • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zipEnglish
                0·
                4 months ago

                This can and should be done internally. Why would it need to be a third party? Any publisher that cares about their reputation anyway. Fact-checkers are a real thing. They routinely follow up on interviews to make sure authors aren’t bullshitting.

  • tangeli@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

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

    • Fedizen@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      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.

          • themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            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

            • dandi8@fedia.io
              01·
              4 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.

    • rodneylives@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      I’ve interacted with Benj Edwards on social media for some time. He’s done lots of good work! He’s on (or maybe used to be on) Mastodon and Bluesky. He runs Vintage Computing and Gaming, and has written good articles for several prominent places. I’ve said as much in multiple forums, I feel like I’ve maybe been going on a crusade.

      I haven’t seen many others defending him. I’m really torn up over this. They had a weak moment. They were sick (I mean, literally.). A few other people, notably Cory Doctorow and Paul Ford, have written LLM-defending places. And the AI hype has been deafening.

      It’s amazing though, that so soon after he used AI, that it immediately hallucinated something job-ending. I knew it was really bad, but I didn’t know it was THAT bad. You get the sense, with so many people talking positively about it, that the hallucinations must be something that happens, what, maybe 5% of the time?

      To me, it seems like the kind of mistake that he should be able to apologize for, promise not to do it again, and move on. But we’ve all had our good will taken advantage of for so long by malicious actors, like how Gamergate was used as a wedge to push loathsome politics onto a legion of young males. It feels like we can’t give anyone the benefit of the doubt any more.

      I don’t know. I know I’m influenced by all the good work he’s done. I feel like that shouldn’t all be thrown away.