Nils
TaggartWhat'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.
UPDATE: They pulled the story, but I had it up and had SingleFile in my browser, so: https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
This scoop brought to you by the TTI Intel Feed, which also routinely beats commercial threat intel to the punch on important emerging threats.
Putting this here so all can see it. Ars forum thread where the pull and investigation are mentioned: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/journalistic-standards.1511650/
Journalistic standards?
Hi folks, Since Ars is apparently posting partially or fully AI generated articles now, I have to ask - is this going to be a continued policy going forward? That is, will Ars be officially publishing AI generated content from now on? If so, will it be marked? This is obviously pretty concerning.
Aaand the full comments thread from the original story: https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/after-a-routine-code-rejection-an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name.1511649/
These were pulled too, but thank you again Wayback:
The final chapter? The statement from Ars:
On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published an article containing fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them. That is a serious failure of our standards. Direct quotations must always reflect what a source actually said.
Dave Wilburn 
Good. No quibbling, just taking responsibility with transparency.
James 🦉 #FBPE 🇪🇺@mttaggart Was the article about how good AI is?
Éamonn
Ariadne Conill 🐰
@mttaggart did you archive that?
staringatclouds@mttaggart Fuck! I thought that was real
@staringatclouds The event is real. The quotes in the story were hallucinated.
💀 𝓕airchild 💀
Artemis@tankgrrl @mttaggart I mean, I assume that's what an internal investigation was about?
They probably want to properly call the author and ask them if they used AI or not, what were their sources, etc.
I don't think it's fair to mock them for wanting to conclude an investigation.
They probably want to properly call the author and ask them if they used AI or not, what were their sources, etc.
I don't think it's fair to mock them for wanting to conclude an investigation.
SnoopJ@art_codesmith @tankgrrl @mttaggart they have enough information already to justify immediately yanking the article, so "we'll tell you next week" scans to me as "we need to figure out the PR angle on this" more than "we need to find out what happened".
Maybe their explanation will be a good one, but I'm not holding my breath.
Misty@SnoopJ @art_codesmith @tankgrrl @mttaggart I'm waiting to see what happens in a few days to judge. It's clear the quotes are fake and they acknowledged that, but I can see it taking a few days to identify *how* this happened, and how it made it through editorial. I'm worried though, and I don't know if their answer next week is going to satisfy me.
hackillu@mttaggart Crap, they DID?! I still have it open! Anything you want before it goes into the void?
@mttaggart And thus we close it.
@mttaggart I got the comments though.
The Other Brook@hackillu @mttaggart You got the comments online anywhere? I am dying to see them.
@theotherbrook @mttaggart I just have a text file.
@theotherbrook @mttaggart the site wouldn't download, so i did copy paste
@hackillu @mttaggart There's now a thread on the open forum.
EDIT: Oh, but it's been locked. I've bumped heads with Aurich about some stuff but I do trust him to be pretty open when they are ready to talk about it.
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/journalistic-standards.1511650/
Journalistic standards?
Hi folks, Since Ars is apparently posting partially or fully AI generated articles now, I have to ask - is this going to be a continued policy going forward? That is, will Ars be officially publishing AI generated content from now on? If so, will it be marked? This is obviously pretty concerning.
@mttaggart What on earth?
Kevin Mirsky @mttaggart and here I was, just recently reflecting that I should probably be reading Ars more based on some other coverage. Come on!!
Katie Kloss 🏳️⚧️@mttaggart It's like they all *want* to be made fun of.
Jason Lefkowitz@mttaggart jfc. As an Ars subscriber, I am furious
@jalefkowit @mttaggart I'm really saddened that Benj's work seems to have fallen off. I trusted his writing, once.
Glyph@SnoopJ @jalefkowit @mttaggart I am tempted to go on a tagging spree but out of respect for your mentions I will refrain. but what the hell, someone needs to be held to account for this
@SnoopJ @jalefkowit @mttaggart in this day and age I do not want to go around saying reporters should be fired, I get that it’s hard out there, but this needs to be a MAJOR scandal for ars and for Benj and Kyle personally
@SnoopJ @glyph @jalefkowit I can not imagine an explanation of how this occurred that isn't damning.
@mttaggart @glyph @jalefkowit laying my personal wager on "someone used the nonsense machine" but agreed, I cannot think of any explanation for this that would be remotely acceptable.
@mttaggart @glyph @jalefkowit correction: I *can* think of one, and it's "they accidentally quoted from the hit-piece blog articles instead"
But they didn't do that, those don't contain the quotes either.
@SnoopJ @mttaggart @glyph Looks like the article has been completely deleted.
Aurich said in the comments before it vanished that they were aware of the issue and looking into it. I assume the findings were pretty dire.
Asta [AMP]@SnoopJ @glyph @jalefkowit @mttaggart I am disappointed, although not surprised, that my read on Benj's work at Ars turned out to the accurate one in recent years. Bleh.
@aud very rude of him to fall off so strongly immediately after I defended his work to you 
@SnoopJ One explanation I can think of is that an editor or Conde Nast higher up generated this using the author's bylines, without their involvement.
I would not put it past Conde Nast.
I would not put it past Conde Nast.
@SnoopJ but if his work had been good (which I was not familiar with before I started reading his articles that smacked increasingly more of boosterism) before... well, it certainly seems to fall into the pattern that people are seeing with regards to LLM usage (trusting it more and more without checking, etc).
cthos 🐱
Jose@jalefkowit @mttaggart Big same. Decades now.
They need to respond fast or I'm out.
@j_s_j @mttaggart Aurich said in the comments that they are investigating, but probably won't have a response until Monday.
It had better be a good one
Matt Griffin@jalefkowit @mttaggart it's a huge betrayal on their part. I'm so angry right now.
Blessd are the Chessemakers 🌱@mttaggart lol @ the one downvote
Addison@mttaggart link is dead
@addison @mttaggart It‘s in the Internet Archive.
BrettSeeing the absolute shit shoveling going on that counts for producing content at Ars over the past well...10-15 years at this point...
I'm not sure anyone should be following them let alone paying them subscription money.
That they are now using AI to write their articles is the least surprising thing ever. What a catastrophic fall from grace.
Eric Jennings@HitokiriEric @mhoye @arstechnica Maybe, but Pepperidge Farm remembers: https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
brendan (ジャンク品)@mttaggart i expect better from kyle; i do not trust benj edwards at all. between him and eric berger doing free pr for elon musk ars is in a sorry state right now
Dr. Sobek@bnys @mttaggart Yep, when you add the Transphobic pieces a few year back and Aurich moderation that tends to let the polite fascist slide while banning people calling out fascist, they lost my sub, which Siracusa had earned them.
Lee from Colorado@Sobex @bnys @mttaggart
and while this was a faster response than the trans hit piece of a couple years ago, it's the same playbook: lock comments, promise an investigation, and hope it dies down over the weekend.
A pity really. A place I used to value. For me, the anti-trans piece was the end.
and while this was a faster response than the trans hit piece of a couple years ago, it's the same playbook: lock comments, promise an investigation, and hope it dies down over the weekend.
A pity really. A place I used to value. For me, the anti-trans piece was the end.
iam-py-test@colo_lee What anti-trans piece?
@iampytest1 It's fair to ask for a citation. I can give you some clues: it was shortly after musk acquired Twitter. Story by Timmer, I believe. More like unconscious and unacknowledged bigotry than the journalistic malpractice of this latest piece. Trust breaking behavior on the part of Ars editors and mgmt. I cancelled my sub at that point. I've seen a lot of links to Ars articles recently and thought about starting to read them again. But ...
Patrick Morris Miller@Sobex @bnys @mttaggart Oh, you see the comment where Aurich called Discord demanding biometrics and scans of ID cards 'a nothingburger'? And the further comments (plural) where he defended that wording?
@bnys @mttaggart Berger is an embarassment
Melvin Gundlach@mttaggart Seems they took it down. Just wow.