> 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!
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?
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.
> “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.
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?
They stop thinking and they stop verifying output too.
"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 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.