What's going on here?

@GerardThornley @theorangetheme @mttaggart

A bigger problem with AI and journalism is probably the volume of writers who have written about it who don't seem to understand that the fearmongering about it is part of the hype. Like the "AI could take over the world" spiel is definitely perpetuated by companies and individuals that want it venerated as some out-of-control force beyond human comprehension. It's just another side of the AI hype coin.

@addison @mttaggart It‘s in the Internet Archive.

@aliide @theorangetheme @mttaggart
Yeah, I do get a little frustrated with the big "skynet" doom scenario stories that for the time being are unlikely, when things like obfuscation of responsibility, (at least attempted) manipulation of populations, and drastic economic shifts are pretty much here already and certain to cause harm.

@mttaggart The thick plottens.

@Gaelan

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.

@Gaelan
Strategic ambiguity is what this *appears* to be, it's the calculated vague speak that allows for plausible deniability that gets me.

Also, news cycles: Friday news dumps allow stories to die over the weekend. Pushing the response back isn't just about the holiday, it’s about waiting for the news cycle. They're betting that by Tuesday, the "outrage" will have lost its momentum, making vague statements easier to swallow.

I know they have internal processes for this, but not a good look.

@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.

@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 ...

@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/

@GerardThornley @theorangetheme @mttaggart yes! as well as the problems/biases inherent in the training material or in the ways that it's trained

@mttaggart Revenge of the bots. Creepy.

@JizzelEtBass @mttaggart even if they *didn't* "instruct" the tool to do so, they're responsible for the text it generated, I'd say

@IcooIey @mttaggart

I am so disappointed in Ars Technica.

@mttaggart sounds like a job for @404mediaco

@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.

@jalefkowit @mttaggart it's a huge betrayal on their part. I'm so angry right now.

@mttaggart I stopped going to [Big Publish] websites when the electrical conductor magazine site (they can pay me to mention their brands) started whinging about me blocking their animated ads which were so distracting I couldn’t read their articles without blocking them. It was obvious their goal wasn’t to publish news or informational articles, it’s to sell my attention to their actual customers, their advertisers.

@mttaggart The layers of delusion and irony to all of this is just staggering. One Ai gets pissy, and another AI writes a delusional article about the pissy AI... What a world we live in...

@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.

@mttaggart Ayyyy. I just cancelled my subscription. Not good.