Outsourcing your job as a journalist to a chatbot that you know for a fact falsifies quotes (and everything else it generates) is absolutely intentional.
It's intentionally reckless, not intentionally harmful or intentionally falsifying quotes. I am sure they would have preferred if it hadn't falsified any quotes.
He's on the AI beat, if he is unaware that a chatbot will fabricate quotes and didn't verify them that is a level of reckless incompetence that warrants firing
The state of California can classify some driving under the influence cases as operating with "implied malice". Not sure it would qualify in this scenario, but there is precedent for arguing that reckless incompetence is malicious when it is done without regard for the consequences.
“In any statutory definition of a crime ‘malice’ must be taken not in the old vague sense of ‘wickedness’ in general, but as requiring either (i) an actual intention to do the particular kind of harm that was in fact done, or (ii) recklessness as to whether such harm should occur or not (ie the accused has foreseen that the particular kind of harm might be done, and yet has gone on to take the risk of it).” R v Cunningham
I think that is the crucial question. Often we lump together malice with "reckless disregard". The intention to cause harm is very close to the intention to do something that you know or should know is likely to cause harm, and we often treat them the same because there is no real way to prove intent, so otherwise everyone could just say they "meant no harm" and just didn't realize how harmful their actions could be.
I think that a journalist using an AI tool to write an article treads perilously close to that kind of recklessness. It is like a carpenter building a staircase using some kind of weak glue.
Replace parent-poster's "malice" with "malfeasance", and it works well-enough.
I may not intend to burn someone's house down by doing horribly reckless things with fireworks... but after it happens, surely I would still bear both some fault and some responsibility.
I don't think the article was written by an LLM; it doesn't read like it, it reads like it was written by actual people.
My assumption is that one of the authors used something like Perplexity to gather information about what happened. Since Shambaugh blocks AI company bots from accessing his blog, it did not get actual quotes from him, and instead hallucinated them.
They absolutely should have validated the quotes, but this isn't the same thing as just having an LLM write the whole article.
I also think this "apology" article sucks, I want to know specifically what happened and what they are doing to fix it.
"Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it is clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here."
They aren't allowed to use the tool, so there was clearly intention.
I think you're reading a lot of intentionality into the situation what may be present, but I have not seen information confirming or really even suggesting that it is. Did someone challenge them, "was AI used in the creation of this article?" and they denied it? I see no evidence of that.
Seems like ordinary, everyday corner cutting to me. I don't think that rises to the level of malice. Maybe if we go through their past articles and establish it as a pattern of behavior.
That's not a defence to be clear. Journalists should be held to a higher standard than that. I wouldn't be surprised if someone with "senior" in their title was fired for something like this. But I think this malice framing is unhelpful to understanding what happened.
> Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it is clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here.
By submitting this work they warranted that it was their own. Requiring an explicit false statement to qualify as a lie excludes many of the most harmful cases of deception.
Have you ever gone through a stop sign without coming to a complete stop? Was that dishonesty?
You can absolutely lie through omission, I just don't see evidence that that is a better hypothesis than corner cutting in this particular case. I am open to more evidence coming out. I wouldn't be shocked to hear in a few days that there was other bad behavior from this author. I just don't see those facts in evidence, at this moment. And I think calling it malice departs from the facts in evidence.
Presumably keeping to the facts in evidence is important to us all, right? That's why we all acknowledge this as a significant problem?
We see a typical issue in modern online media: The policy is to not use AI, but he demands of content created per day makes it very difficult to not use AI... so the end result is undisclosed AI. This is all over the old blogosphere publications, regardless of who owns them. The ad revenue per article is just not great
Some perspectives would say that they serve no real purpose other than performative wealth display and distribution. They appeal to everyone at fundamental psychological levels to "fit in" with a popular trend or "in group".
Their actual quality is often no better than other manufactured goods. It is their perceived quality and style that are the entire reason their brands exist.
(and... I can admit that certain "luxury brands" are definitely appealing to me personally, even if they make little "logical sense" to own - maybe not clothing so much, but... watches...)
Perhaps not but in the context of this discussion and legislation it is pertinent question to ask, perhaps not of you specifically but of the wider audience.
Brand value particularly for commodity products is usually just a form of information asymmetry between consumers and suppliers, and creates economic inefficiency since it diverts expenditure from other products that can materially improve lives. It also allows enshittification to happen since it creates inertia (brand loyalty) to switching, and the positive brand image sticks around for longer than the actual good quality products.
70% of the GDP of Laos comes from scamming people in the first world.
"A report by the Global Initiative on Transnational Organised Crime (based on United States Institute of Peace findings) estimated that revenues from “pig-butchering” cyber scams in Laos were around US $10.9 billion, which would be *equivalent to more than two-thirds (≈67–70 %) of formal Lao GDP in a recent year."
I assume you, the player, have to provide the assets yourself, and the game won't run without them. Since the code does not contain the assets, there is no copyright infringement.
Exactly. And now that labor's bargaining power has been thoroughly smashed for good, the problem they've perpetuated and grown serves as a convenient excuse for the need for lawless terror gangs and concentration camps to keep disempowered and desperate people in their place.
I'm frankly amazed at how people can look at the capital strike orchestrated with the AI narrative, protests being attacked by the aforementioned jackboots, the big tech authoritarians taking the gloves off, and a corrupt pay-to-play administration looting our country, and then conclude that any of this will somehow lead to everyday citizens being more enfranchised.
Sure, immigration reform could have achieved this twenty years ago. But powerful business interests didn't let it happen then, so it behooves you to start questioning why they are outright championing it now!
> Sure, immigration reform could have achieved this twenty years ago. But powerful business interests didn't let it happen then, so it behooves you to start questioning why they are outright championing it now!
That can't possibly be because championing a vindictive and corrupt admin is in their interests. No, it has to be nefarious forces working in the shadows.
The corruption and lawlessness of this admin is right out in the open, but you know what? It's probably the Jews, right? /s
> The real risk for American broadcasters is not that dissent will be visible. It is that audiences will start assuming anything they do not show is being hidden
Kinda daft not to assume this has been the case for a long time already
The opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics included a celebration of the National Health Service, which got mysteriously cut from the broadcast in the US, at a time when there was a bunch of fuss over Obamacare that had come into effect a year or two before.
Was hard not to imagine that was a deliberate choice.
Look again at the insurmountable hill that is the US's potential transition to a fully public healthcare system, and consider that celebrating having done that elsewhere might be valid.
You can check it out - the first couple of minutes here of people in nurse costumes standing by beds and moving around a bit. Not really must see stuff. https://youtu.be/ReJjvlipXpM
Well the "no censorship!"-crowd in rhe US has been strangly focused on the censorship of racists, bigots and nazis. I don't think they consider censorship that benefits the Neo-feudalist lords as censorship.
The naive part of me these past years was thinking that calling out contradictions would bring shame and reflection to these people.
It's still important to call them out for all the onlookers, but he goal in suc discussions should not be to try and convince the other party in these cases. They at best don't care and are going all on vibes, and at worst knowingly contradict because their goal is also onlookers.
Even if a large conspiracy isn't involved, I believe that biases in worldview can contribute to these effects. However, I still think it's important to inform people of things they might be missing and hold media accountable for their choices, regardless of whether those choices are random or unknowingly biasedWe need to be careful not to fall into the allure of "fake media" in our outrage, as this could ultimately benefit populists in the long run.
The NHS is genuinely loved by most British people, for all it's faults. Not celebrating it would have been very weird. So not really propaganda, just showing the world the things we are proud of.
Feel free to censor it on your end if you find the very idea dangerous.
How is the NHS very different from the military. Americans love their military and often have propaganda-style bits like fly-overs during football games. American's don't get the option to 'opt-out' of paying for its gigantic costs. Why not have military spending depend on voluntary donations?
They actually should be able to, for the most part.
The original idea of state exists to ensure 3 things:
- Protection of the territory of the state
- Protection of the integrity of the individual citizen
- Protection of the private property of the citizen
This is why people started organizing in societies and allowing the existence of a ruler class. These 3 things.
You will always need some amount of military to be part of the state. But what most countries waste today (the USA for instance), is pornographic. The state should only be allowed (by taxation) enough military to defend their territory, not to exert control over the all planet like the USA wants to do.
EDIT: Yeah, I should have guessed the part of the "integrity of the individual citizen" would, of course, be twisted. No, it's not protection of the individual from disease of from his own stupidity or lack of ability. It just means the role of the state is to ensure the citizen is protected from deliberate harm from another individual.
I would say that in the list 'Protection of the integrity of the individual citizen' is something that a NHS would serve. Individually, people want to know that if they get injured or sick they can be taken care when they can't for themselves. Everyone is at risk of these things. Society as an organism also benefits from having resources dedicated to repair of its components in the same as it does in defense of external threats. 'Protection of the territory of the state' also can be served by an NHS because of the damage and danger of highly infectious diseases.
> 'Protection of the territory of the state' also can be served by an NHS because of the damage and danger of highly infectious diseases.
Let's be honest here. You know the NHS (and various equivalents across the world) go way, way beyond this.
And I'm not even against the existence of a public funded health service within limits. But this is just phonographic. In my country (and from what I've read in the NHS it's relatively similar), in the past 10 years we added more than 90% medical doctors and nurses to the national NHS. The budget for the local NHS increased by 72% in that same period.
And the service has become absolutely terrible and now people (the ones that only benefit from it but don't pay the costs) are asking to raise taxes even more to put even more money into the problem.
Naa, enough is enough. I don't want to support this crap.
Fair enough to complain about the execution, but glad to see you see the logic of its existence. Back to the military comparison, the waste (fraud, corruption, kickbacks, etc, etc) in that part of the public expenditure is pretty massive. Yet there don't seem to be the same outrage or call for reforms in that area. Even when multi-billion dollar programs stagger about for years then produce nothing useful (except for the profits extracted by the defense firms and their investors). Lots of hate for NHS waste, but military spending waste seems to get a free pass. Why is this?
Basically, because the military got a massive budget in WWII and Americans just got used to it because slaughtering the Nazis was the only thing that can convince Americans to buy into that level of welfare.
Now it's mostly a jobs program for poor people plus pork for politicians to throw at their favored contractors/companies. Can't really be eliminated without political suicide because too many mouths are fed off of it and will make it their mission every waking moment to damn anyone who tries to do it.
Since prevention is a lot cheaper than cure we're trying to avoid the same mistake with other things rather than commit political supuku on things that already exist.
The idea behind taxation is to enable collective spending power for things that ideally benefit society. The NHS is likely to be useful for the vast majority of people at some point or another though individuals may well not get value for money if they're healthy or die young etc. However, providing free/cheap healthcare enables people to get check-ups and hopefully catch problems earlier which can make a huge difference to the outcomes. Of course, increasing the health of the workforce is going to benefit the economy as well, if you're looking for a purely monetary benefit.
There's option to opt out of social security if you are of the right religion that existed before, I want to say, by the 1960s was the nominal date in the statute -- and registered as such by some gatekeepers in the religion. The Amish won't let those who didn't grow up in the community register although some Mennonites might. Or are working as a preacher.
It should probably be challenged because it's a clear religious discrimination. I looked seriously at renouncing my right to social security but eventually I found out they've gamed the system in favor of a few insular religions.
What a weird worldview, celebrating censorship that aligns with corporate interests in healthcare, a basic necessity, while using the tired diatribe "but muh tax money!" to pathetically drum support for it, lol.
Aren't you tired of being so angry at the wrong stuff? Such an exhausting way to live.
Nope, I came commenting on your comment which given the pattern of your other comments getting flagged all the time shows to be an exhausting way to live: being mad at small things.
I wish I could live in your bubble, where disliking the state forcibly taking away 50% of my salary (more actually) to redistribute to people that don't contribute to society and to waste in severely mismanaged public services is "being mad at small things".
You live in the bubble where taxation is only to redistribute to wasteful means. In that bubble you get blinded by black-and-white thinking that can never achieve any kind of nuance to actually address issues, only seeing issues in it all is not conducive to creating concrete criticism which is the first step to change. You can only be cynical, and contrarian.
So yeah, seems exhausting, being mad at it all because you can't think in specifics, just a general sense of madness and outrage at a black hole of frustration.
Unfortunately you live in that bubble.
Sorry you live in a broken society, maybe do something to change it.
The NHS is a bit like the NRA in the US. Politicians and rich folk would ideally do away with it, but they cannot, so they have to play lip service to gain favour with the public.
So its not propaganda in the way you are thinking of.
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