alt Hacker NewsMy comment reports only facts and a few of my personal opinions on professional conduct in journalism.
I think you and I have a fundamental divergence on the definition of the term “hit comment”. Mine does not remotely qualify.
Telling the truth about someone isn’t a “hit” unless you are intentionally misrepresenting the state of affairs. I’m simply reposting accurate and direct information that is already public and already highlighted by TFA.
Ars obviously agrees with this assessment to some degree, as they didn’t issue a correction or retraction but completely deleted the original article - it now 404s. This, to me, is an implicit acknowledgment of the fact that someone fucked up bigtime.
A journalist getting fired because they didn’t do the basic thing that journalists are supposed to do each and every time they publish isn’t that big of a consequence. This wasn’t a casual “oopsie”, this was a basic dereliction of their core job function.
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One could argue that failing to catch errors in AI generated code is a basic dereliction of an engineer's core job function. I would argue this. That is to say, I agree with you, they used AI as a crutch and they should be held accountable for failing to critically evaluate its output. I would also say that precisely nobody is scrutinizing engineers who use AI equally irresponsibly. That's a shame.
> I’m simply reposting accurate and direct information that is already public and already highlighted by TFA.
No you aren't. To quote:
> There ought to be social consequences for using machines to mindlessly and recklessly libel people.
Ars didn't libel anyone. They misquoted with manufactured quotes, but the quotes weren't libelous in anyway because they weren't harmful to his reputation.
Indeed, you are closer to libel than they are.
For example, if these quotes were added during some automated editing processes by Ars rather than the authors themselves then your statement is both harmful to their reputation and false.
> These people should never publish for a professional outlet like Ars ever again. Publishing entirely hallucinated quotes without fact checking is a fireable offense in my book.
That's going perilously close to calling for them to be sacked over something which I think everyone would acknowledge is a mistake.