this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
94 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
42237 readers
430 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The author explained
Good response, and it sounds like lessons learned!
Agreed, why is why I really do not like how much people are beating on him, but the problem remains that he published an article with fabricated quotes, which hurts not only his own credibility but that of Ars as a whole. I think that it may be best for everyone if he applies the lessons that he learned at another place of employment.
(Also, though, Ars really needs to do something about its culture regarding working while sick, as that makes it inevitable that a mistake like this is going to be made, AI or not.)
I think beating him while he’s down is too much. Mean comments on the internet do not compare to having to find a new job while recovering from covid
Fair enough. Realistically, my understanding is that he and the other authors are part of WGA, so Ars would be required to go through an investigative process before firing him, which would probably take enough time that he would have had plenty of time to recover from COVID before having to hunt for a job.
Having said that, I am out for change, not for blood. I think that if Ars announced that the root problem was the lack of sick leave so it was a systemic failure rather than a personal failure (or something along those lines), then that might actually be a pretty good outcome as well.
That would be a good outcome!
i dont think any journalist, especially a technology journalist, should be using AI summaries in any capacity as part of their research. i'm glad he owned up to it but this should be a career damning event.
Yeah, you should lose your entire career for one mistake! Fucking up an article on the internet, can you imagine a worse sin???
He caused a massive shitshow, it’s already a mark on his career.
He was using the AI to help him extract quotes; it makes sense that, as the head AI writer, he would be experimenting with new AI tools to become more familiar with them. It sounds like he just got confused at some point at mixed up a paraphrasing of the AI tool with an original quote, and it sounds like he was not in the best shape when writing this article so he made a dumb mistake. Regardless, arguably the use of AI here is a red herring, because if he had double-checked his quotes and fixed them then it would not have mattered whether he used AI or not.
I think that damning his entire career over this would be too extreme. I suspect that his will be a very good learning experience for him, but that unfortunately he will need to apply his lessons at another place of employment.