The tool didn't fail here, the person did. An experienced journalist should know better. Editorial review exists for exactly this reason, if you skip it, this is what happens.
HN is full of people saying ABCD should know better and honestly I thought the same, but when I look at almost all of my friends working in critical domains like as a judge or engineer or lawyer or even doctor, they seem to trust ChatGPT more or less blindly. People get defensive when I point out out to them that ChatGPT will make things up and it is widely know, and some even tell me it is the fault of "tech people" for not fixing it and they can't be expected to double check every chatgpt conversation. So I am very sure this problem is more prevalent than what we see and also that it is going to continue increasing.
It doesn't seem AI generated to me. Are we at the point where you have to write in a particularly outrageous style in order to not be accused of using AI?
I’m tempted to agree, but this is a case where I think there’s more human than AI. Maybe he used LLMs for a bit, and changed parts of it. Maybe he is patient zero for LLM speak?
> I wrongly put words into people’s mouths, when I should have presented them as paraphrases
Journalists were doing this for decades. Stitching and editing words out of context, to put words into peoples mouths! I will take AI halucinations over journalists halucinations anytime, at least machine has no hostile intent, and is making a geunine error!
“Here’s a friendly message that will perfectly convey what you want to say”.
A double PhD friend says she has to talk to chatGPT for all sort of advice and can’t feel safe not doing it, “because you know I’m single and don’t have a companion to spitball my ideas”. She let chatGPT decide which way to take to get to a certain island, and she got stranded because the suggested service didn’t exist.
How is the getting stranded example different than asking on a travel forum how to get somewhere, and an active and well intentioned user that isn't familiar with your area of travel answers, gives you wrong instructions, and you get lost?
> “It is particularly painful that I made precisely the mistake I have repeatedly warned colleagues about: these language models are so good that they produce irresistible quotes you are tempted to use as an author. Of course, I should have verified them. The necessary ‘human oversight’, which I consistently advocate, fell short.”
What? Irresistible quotes? This betrays a terrible way of thinking as a journalist. Basically an admission of wanting to fake news that'd sound good. At that point just write fiction.
Cant you, like, ask or instruct it to create a bibliography with the citations or at least put the source of any quotes next to it for reviewing purposes?
Looking at the media ecosystem at large, gives me a case of gallows humor.
In some sections of the ecosystem, firms still penalize journalists for errors. In other sections, checking reduces the velocity of attention grabbing headlines. The difference in treatment is… farcical.
We need more good journalists, and more good journalism - but we no longer have ways to subsidize such work. Ads / classifieds are dead, and revenue accrues to only a few.
We can't square this circle. It's why they're all A/B flipping headlines (resulting in the most deranged partisan clickbait), killed of their (too expensive) redactions (especially international news), rely solely on (barely) rewriting AP, Reuters and PRNewswire, and fill their site with opinion rather than factual reporting in support of gov handouts to the sector.
"Journalism" over here seems to have died a long time ago. Most if not all of the former "quality newspapers" unfortunately seem to have devolved into what could be more accurately described as "pro regime activist blogs".
They said earlier that they didn't verify the quotes. I understand them to mean that the LLM outputted text that included quotes. They assumed the output was accurate and found it so appealing, on an emotional level, that they just went with it without checking.
The most valuable lesson here, by far, is not about other people but about ourselves. This person is trained, takes it seriously, and advocates for making sure the AI is supervised, and got caught in the emotional manipulation of LLM design [0].
We all are at risk. If we look at the other person and mock them, and think we are better than them, we are only exposing ourselves to more risk. If we think - oh my goodness, look what happened, this is perilous - then we gain from what happened and can protect ourselves.
(We might also ask why this valuable tool also includes such manipulative interface. Don't take it for granted; it's not at all necessary for LLMs to work, and they could just as easily sound like a-holes.)
[0] I mean that obviously they are carefully designed to sound appealing
The tool didn't fail here, the person did. An experienced journalist should know better. Editorial review exists for exactly this reason, if you skip it, this is what happens.
HN is full of people saying ABCD should know better and honestly I thought the same, but when I look at almost all of my friends working in critical domains like as a judge or engineer or lawyer or even doctor, they seem to trust ChatGPT more or less blindly. People get defensive when I point out out to them that ChatGPT will make things up and it is widely know, and some even tell me it is the fault of "tech people" for not fixing it and they can't be expected to double check every chatgpt conversation. So I am very sure this problem is more prevalent than what we see and also that it is going to continue increasing.
Ironic coming from the Guardian. One of their journalists consistently publishes ai slop and the paper is in denial about it.
https://x.com/maxwelltani/status/2023089526445371777?s=46
It doesn't seem AI generated to me. Are we at the point where you have to write in a particularly outrageous style in order to not be accused of using AI?
Fair enough. It reads as extremely AI generated to me. But that isn’t completely reliable.
Good lord, even the apology is AI generated: "That was not just careless—it was wrong."
https://pressanddemocracy.substack.com/p/i-am-admitting-my-m...
Particularly given that the dreaded em-dash is not commonly used in Irish or UK English; it’s mostly a US English thing.
I’m tempted to agree, but this is a case where I think there’s more human than AI. Maybe he used LLMs for a bit, and changed parts of it. Maybe he is patient zero for LLM speak?
> I wrongly put words into people’s mouths, when I should have presented them as paraphrases
Journalists were doing this for decades. Stitching and editing words out of context, to put words into peoples mouths! I will take AI halucinations over journalists halucinations anytime, at least machine has no hostile intent, and is making a geunine error!
The idea that somehow AI is magically unbiased and not influenced by those making it is incorrect.
> I will take AI halucinations over journalists halucinations anytime, at least machine has no hostile intent,
Famous last words. What do you think is the main application for AI ? Spreading propaganda.
I have witnessed in person what LLMs have done to the mind of seemingly intelligent people. It’s a disaster.
Don't leave us hanging. What happened?
A CTO sent me a message that opened with:
“Here’s a friendly message that will perfectly convey what you want to say”.
A double PhD friend says she has to talk to chatGPT for all sort of advice and can’t feel safe not doing it, “because you know I’m single and don’t have a companion to spitball my ideas”. She let chatGPT decide which way to take to get to a certain island, and she got stranded because the suggested service didn’t exist.
I have more examples. It’s a fucking mind virus.
How is the getting stranded example different than asking on a travel forum how to get somewhere, and an active and well intentioned user that isn't familiar with your area of travel answers, gives you wrong instructions, and you get lost?
They stop thinking and they stop verifying output too.
> “It is particularly painful that I made precisely the mistake I have repeatedly warned colleagues about: these language models are so good that they produce irresistible quotes you are tempted to use as an author. Of course, I should have verified them. The necessary ‘human oversight’, which I consistently advocate, fell short.”
What? Irresistible quotes? This betrays a terrible way of thinking as a journalist. Basically an admission of wanting to fake news that'd sound good. At that point just write fiction.
Cant you, like, ask or instruct it to create a bibliography with the citations or at least put the source of any quotes next to it for reviewing purposes?
> Basically an admission of wanting to fake news that'd sound good
How did you read that? Something sounding good and making sense and you wanting it to be true doesn't mean you'd fake it.
Looking at the media ecosystem at large, gives me a case of gallows humor.
In some sections of the ecosystem, firms still penalize journalists for errors. In other sections, checking reduces the velocity of attention grabbing headlines. The difference in treatment is… farcical.
We need more good journalists, and more good journalism - but we no longer have ways to subsidize such work. Ads / classifieds are dead, and revenue accrues to only a few.
I have no idea how we square this circle.
We can't square this circle. It's why they're all A/B flipping headlines (resulting in the most deranged partisan clickbait), killed of their (too expensive) redactions (especially international news), rely solely on (barely) rewriting AP, Reuters and PRNewswire, and fill their site with opinion rather than factual reporting in support of gov handouts to the sector.
"Journalism" over here seems to have died a long time ago. Most if not all of the former "quality newspapers" unfortunately seem to have devolved into what could be more accurately described as "pro regime activist blogs".
They said earlier that they didn't verify the quotes. I understand them to mean that the LLM outputted text that included quotes. They assumed the output was accurate and found it so appealing, on an emotional level, that they just went with it without checking.
The most valuable lesson here, by far, is not about other people but about ourselves. This person is trained, takes it seriously, and advocates for making sure the AI is supervised, and got caught in the emotional manipulation of LLM design [0].
We all are at risk. If we look at the other person and mock them, and think we are better than them, we are only exposing ourselves to more risk. If we think - oh my goodness, look what happened, this is perilous - then we gain from what happened and can protect ourselves.
(We might also ask why this valuable tool also includes such manipulative interface. Don't take it for granted; it's not at all necessary for LLMs to work, and they could just as easily sound like a-holes.)
[0] I mean that obviously they are carefully designed to sound appealing