owned by conde nast Ars Technica Senior AI reporter Benj Edwards has been sacked following controversy over his role in the publication and retraction of an article containing AI-generated quotes. futurism has confirmed.
earlier this month, arse The story was retracted after it was found that it contained fake quotes attributed to a real person. Article – article of a viral phenomenon featuring an AI agent A hit masterpiece appears to have been published About a human engineer named Scott Shambaugh – initially published on February 13. After Shambaugh explained that he had never said the quotes attributed to him, arseEditor-in-chief Ken Fisher apologized editor’s NoteIn which he confirmed that the piece “contains fabricated quotes generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them” and described the error as a “serious failure of our standards.” He further stated that, upon further review, the error appeared to be an “isolated incident”. (404 media first reported On return.)
Shortly after Fisher’s editor’s note was published, Edwards, one of the two highlighted authors of the report, took bluesky Taking “full responsibility” for including fabricated quotes.
In the post, Edwards said he was ill at the time, and “while working from bed with a fever and very little sleep,” he “inadvertently made a serious journalistic error” as he attempted to use an “experimental cloud code-based AI tool” to help “extract relevant verbatim source material.” He said the tool was not being used to generate articles, but was designed to “help structure lists of references” to outline them. When the tool failed to work, Edwards said, he decided to try using ChatGPT to help understand why.
Edwards continued, “I should have taken a sick day because during that conversation, I inadvertently reached out with an abridged version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words.” He emphasized that “the text of the article was human-written by us, and this incident was isolated and is not representative of arse‘Editorial standards. None of our articles are AI-generated, it is against company policy and we have always respected it.
Edwards also stressed that his colleague Kyle Orland, the site’s senior gaming editor, who co-wrote the retracted story, “had no role in this error.”
A round of reactions and speculations started on this controversy. arse Readers, many of whom expressed deep frustration and disappointment long comment thread on the website. On 27th February, arse Creative director Aurich Lawson, closing the comment thread, Said He “arse Have completed review of this matter” and “appropriate internal steps have been taken.”
“In the coming weeks, we will publish a reader-facing guide explaining how we do and don’t use AI in our work,” Lawson wrote. “We do not comment on personnel decisions.”
As of February 28, Edwards’ bio on arse According to one, the past tense was changed archived version Of webpage. It now reads that Edwards “was a reporter arseWhere he covered artificial intelligence and technology history.
futurism reached up to arseConde Nast, and Edwards to inquire about the reporter’s employment status. Neither the publication nor its owner responded. Edwards said he was unable to comment at this time.
arse‘ The retreat is not the first AI controversy to rock a newsroom or anger a publication’s readers. It also comes at a moment when many media owners are pressuring staff to explore the use of AI – as are executives in most industries – while clear guidelines about how to use the technology maintain editorial ethics remain elusive.
Meanwhile, these orders to integrate AI take place against the backdrop of a complex, constantly changing landscape: the contentious copyright battle between news giants and AI companies; A deal by news giants and AI companies together; The Internet is increasingly filled with AI-generated bad news and misinformation; and the traffic cliff associated with Google’s “AI Overviews”, which now explain news stories rather than pointing readers to a list of blue links.
This is a flaming, disorienting moment in the history of media and technology, when lines are being drawn in the sand by both journalists and their audiences. and this arse Fallout highlights a phenomenon we’ve seen time and again, where even people who are deeply familiar with AI and its shortcomings can rely on it at a crucial moment — and in the process, fall victim to something far older than generative AI: human error.
“The irony of an AI reporter getting sucked into an AI hallucination is not lost on me,” Edwards said in his February 15 Bluesky post. “I take accuracy in my work very seriously and this is a painful failure on my part.”
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