RE: https://infosec.exchange/@mttaggart/116065340523529645
welp, there goes Ars Technica as a reliable and useful website / source for me to ever read. Wow.
What's going on here? The matplotlib maintainer this story is about correctly notes that all the quotes from his post in the article are made up.
UPDATE: Link was pulled; see below.
@andypiper I understand it was deleted? I wonder if anybody has a cached version or link to the archive.org version?
I'd be curious to know which reporter was responsible for that. If Ars really published an article with AI-fabricated quotes then they have some real answering to do. I hope they're not just going to bury this under the rug and hope it goes away.
@jzb @andypiper Archived link, from the original thread: https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
@neil @andypiper Thanks. Not familiar with the folks listed.
IMO it's not a good practice to just disappear the story - they should've kept the original text with an apology / explanation up top. Just erasing it is not a way to build trust with readers.
I let my Ars subscription lapse a while back because they just would not stop with breathless coverage of SpaceX and such even when it was apparent what Musk really is. Guess I'm not too sad about it.
I see your point. In this case there are allegedly fake quotes attributed to a real source. If I were that source, I would prefer the story be taken down. Especially now with all the scraping for (ironically) LLMs, a retraction is not going to put the genie back in the bottle.
Also, given the timing on a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend, it’s understandable to take some time for investigation and apology. 1/2
Also, while publishing fake quotes is almost certainly going to cost at least one person a job, the folks involved (at least 2 authors and an editor, probably) are entitled to an investigation. And probably at least 3 real human beings (manager, HR, legal) who probably have lives and weekend plans need to do the investigation, which should go beyond this one article.
A memorable Friday the 13th!
2/2
@andypiper will nothing be reliable anymore? T-T
@andypiper @mttaggart So now Ars is printing AI slop and pretending it’s written by a journalist…
@andypiper on a related note, it's actually kinda shocking for me to see just how many open-source projects have added those AI prompt files to their repos, and I mean real prompts, not the kind I did
@andypiper on a related note, it's actually kinda shocking for me to see just how many open-source projects have added those AI prompt files to their repos, and I mean real prompts, not the kind I did
@andypiper @mttaggart I felt the place became irredeemably icky when they rushed to publish this:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/nsa-leaker-ed-snowdens-life-on-ars-technica/
@andypiper fascinating story though (I mean the whole thing, not the ai generated article)
@andypiper betcha we’re gonna have to have discussions about this on WP. Places like Ars are often the guarantor of notability for a lot of software and tech articles, so if they lose their credibility…
@andypiper Indeed, Bookmark deleted.
