After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name
web.archive.org
One developer is struggling with the social implications of a drive-by AI character attack.

Likely AI, because otherwise they just made up some quotes on their own. Either is egregious journalistic malpractice. But we all know which one it was.

The maintainer reported in the comments of the article that he is exclusively misquoted in the 2nd half of the article (including misquoted calling himself a “gatekeeper”).

Edit: I did confirm all misquotes from archive versions of the blog and ars article. But I also read the blog yesterday and have memory and it hasn’t changed

Edit 2: Ars took down the article, replaced with archive.org. And here’s the blog archive version

https://web.archive.org/web/20260213082753/https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/

  • James R Kirk@startrek.websiteEnglish
    8·
    1 day ago

    Getting a “429 Too Many Requests” error.

    But if true- this is depressing. I’ve always viewed Ars as a sort of standard bearer when it comes to tech news. Other outlets like The Verge do a lot of “best [product]” articles with affiliate links, and while I understand why, and don’t think they’re being dishonest, it just feels cheap. Seeing Ars fail at basic fact-checking is truly depressing.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    14·
    1 day ago

    I used to email the editor with examples of typos after I complained that their articles were in decline and he said they needed examples. So I sent a bunch of examples. That person was very receptive. He even said it was useful because they’d been discussing internally whether or not they were doing well in that area.

    A few years ago, someone else took the position. I found out because I emailed the original person and he replied and CC’d the new editor. That person wasn’t receptive and never showed any sign that they cared that I wanted their articles to be high enough quality that I was confident sharing them with people who I thought needed more science regarding social issues.

    Guess Ars is not gonna be among the sites that I trust to get things right from here on. And to hell with any editor who was ok with using agents when writing articles cause they clearly don’t have the internal structure to keep that from being a liability.

  • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    6·
    1 day ago

    Ars has been on a downward slide in quality for a while in my opinion. Just the other day there was an announcement from NASA about astronauts being able to take smartphones to space and the Ars article mentioned iPhones specifically in the headline and the article despite the press release not naming brands.