What's going on here?
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@IcooIey @mttaggart way deep in this article he says “more than likely there was no human telling the AI to do this.” I’m skeptical. More than likely? How so? Maybe he should have run down that possibility first? It would be so easy for whoever created that agent to hoax this whole thing for clicks.
@IcooIey @mttaggart I’m very disappointed in not only Ars, but also BoingBoing and other ostensible news outlets for spreading this story when none of them have managed to figure out who deployed the agent in the first place. Without that info this isn’t a story at all it’s just speculation on what AI might be capable of. Smells like a troll to me.
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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.
@mttaggart Ayyyy. I just cancelled my subscription. Not good.
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@GerardThornley @theorangetheme @mttaggart yes! as well as the problems/biases inherent in the training material or in the ways that it's trained
@aliide @theorangetheme @mttaggart right!? So the biases get embedded in their black box, and all they can say is "sorry, the computer says no", and no-one can question it because no-one really understands it.
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Was AI used to generate this content? (Yes/No)
Does Ars have a strict "No-AI" policy for editorial content? (Yes/No)
If the answer to both is "Yes," how did the internal vetting process fail?
Regardless of a holiday, "I don't know what we'll be able to say" implies negotiation with the truth. For a publication built on facts, the only thing to "say" is the truth of what happened. The longer the silence, the more it looks like calibrating an excuse rather than admitting a failure.
@rusty__shackleford @Gaelan Give ‘em a break it’s the weekend - they have to wait til Monday to buy more tokens so they can generate an apology letter.
(Edit: typo)
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@Epic_Null @mttaggart
Winston Smith's job in 1984 was to change newspaper stories to match the Party's version of the truth, and the original sent down the Memory Hole to be incinerated.@RealGene @mttaggart okay fine, if you successfully create massive fashist infrastructure, then yes, you can erase written works on a whim.
It's still a hell of a lot harder than taking down a webpage.
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@JizzelEtBass @mttaggart even if they *didn't* "instruct" the tool to do so, they're responsible for the text it generated, I'd say
@Kiloku @mttaggart #ThisRightHere
Yep, totally agree. If an aggressive dog bites someone with out warning, the owner is held liable. Same principle should apply here. -
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.
@mttaggart Just wanted to note they did eventually take down the comments on the article, but only after Aurich edited his last one to say they might not be able to comment publicly on their investigation. Which is the absolutely possible choice Ars (and more likely Condé Nast) could make if they want to retain credibility on...well, anything, but specifically on their AI coverage.
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Was AI used to generate this content? (Yes/No)
Does Ars have a strict "No-AI" policy for editorial content? (Yes/No)
If the answer to both is "Yes," how did the internal vetting process fail?
Regardless of a holiday, "I don't know what we'll be able to say" implies negotiation with the truth. For a publication built on facts, the only thing to "say" is the truth of what happened. The longer the silence, the more it looks like calibrating an excuse rather than admitting a failure.
@rusty__shackleford @Gaelan yeah, all but the "do we have a policy against AI writing?" are questions that take time to investigate. In terms of the process failure, potentially quite a bit of time because you have to schedule interviews with many people. I'm curious how it happened too but i don't want people hauled in on a long weekend over it.
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@rusty__shackleford @Gaelan yeah, all but the "do we have a policy against AI writing?" are questions that take time to investigate. In terms of the process failure, potentially quite a bit of time because you have to schedule interviews with many people. I'm curious how it happened too but i don't want people hauled in on a long weekend over it.
It should be cut & dry.
Restate your policy on AI generated content.
State you are doing an investigation.
Then move on.This particular wording leaves room for excuses for the continued use of AI summarizers/ writing assistants.
I'm not saying to actually do anything over the weekend.
I'm aware of Condé Nas's internal policies when an article gets pulled from Ars, there's a formal investigation to avoid slandering the writer & chain of trust their work passed through.
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UPDATE: They pulled the story, but I had it up and had SingleFile in my browser, so: https://mttaggart.neocities.org/ars-whoopsie
@mttaggart@infosec.exchange AI is giving itself Cyberpsychosis now, amazing
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@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.@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.
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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.
@mttaggart The Wayback Machine has the article (though not the comments) for those interested: https://web.archive.org/web/20260213194851/https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-rejection-an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-someone-by-name/
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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/
@mttaggart if the authors unilaterally did this, they're so fired.
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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:
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@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.
@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.
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@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.
@misty @art_codesmith @tankgrrl @mttaggart yea, agreed.
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@RealGene @mttaggart okay fine, if you successfully create massive fashist infrastructure, then yes, you can erase written works on a whim.
It's still a hell of a lot harder than taking down a webpage.
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@mttaggart this is the weirdest story. Here is a link to SCOTT SHAMBAUGH’s blog explaining the whole thing with an update about the additional AI generated reporting. https://web.archive.org/web/20260214062635/https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/
@IcooIey @mttaggart wild thing indeed. Gatekeeping is in fact not a bad thing at all, and it worked long before AI. Open source communities have their right to place guardrails and policies, and they are not obliged to accept any PR. If they say "place a comment every second line" you should comply. If they say "that is good entry level issue, don't fix it with automated tools" - don't fix it, and don't complain if you do and they reject you, AI or not.
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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/
@mttaggart same Ars that let this article hit the front page years back?
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It should be cut & dry.
Restate your policy on AI generated content.
State you are doing an investigation.
Then move on.This particular wording leaves room for excuses for the continued use of AI summarizers/ writing assistants.
I'm not saying to actually do anything over the weekend.
I'm aware of Condé Nas's internal policies when an article gets pulled from Ars, there's a formal investigation to avoid slandering the writer & chain of trust their work passed through.
@rusty__shackleford @Gaelan sure they could answer the second of your questions right away. It read to me like you were saying they should answer all three right away, which I think isn't realistic. If that's not what you were getting at, fair enough - I just misread you.
