Senior European journalist suspended over AI-generated quotes

I have witnessed in person what LLMs have done to the mind of seemingly intelligent people. It’s a disaster.

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.

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

> “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.

"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".

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...

> 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!