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Comment by ab_testing | Hacker News Reader

So they fired that author after the author had publicly apologized on Blue sky.

He was supposed to be their "Senior AI Reporter." Him including basically anything from LLMs, without verifying it, in articles not only demonstrates a complete lack of credibility as a writer, but also a complete lack of understanding of AI. Even if they might have personally wanted to keep him on, you just can't after something like this.

What is the connection between these two statements? Are we supposed to presume that someone who apologizes on Bluesky should never be fired? Or did you also read the article and thought this was important information?

The raison d’etre for the journalist, in AD 2026, is less to gather information than to verify it. The journalist who cannot be trusted is no journalist at all. He is a blogger.

Why would apologizing for plagiarism and fabrication preclude you from facing sanctions for plagiarism and fabrication?

Is it “plagiarism” to misattribute hallucinated quotes? Not that a whole lot of sloppy, unprofessional shortcuts weren’t taken, but plagiarism doesn’t seem like the right word, as quotes are almost definitionally not plagiarism. But maybe these were paraphrasings masquerading as quotes, so maybe that’s the difference.

"Slop" and "hallucinate" have meanings outside of AI too, but it's easier to repurpose existing words than come up with a whole new lexicon for AI failure modes.

Groan, redefining "plagiarism" to add "inventing quotes" is a stupidity too far for me.

Making up quotes and attributing them to people has happened before AI, journalists proper and pretend have done it too.

Maybe it's plagiarism because he did not attribute the LLM output to the LLM.

Yeah, it's the lack of attribution that is key, even if it sounds like a trivial and ceremonial step. If a New York Times reporter writes "'Our investigation has completely stalled,' Kings County Sheriff Bob Jones told the Springfield Observer", I can infer that the NYT is reliant on local reporting for this story and may not have done original on-the-ground work themselves.

Imagine how flimsy Ars' story about a blog post would look like if the story had correctly attributed the quotes (fabricated or not) to, "according to Claude AI's analysis of the blog post". The reader would have the right to wonder if the reporter had even read the blog post.

Plagiarism hurts not only the original author (in this case, I don't think we have to worry about the LLM), but also the reporter's audience, who has an expectation that the writer's reporting and analysis are original and based on the writer's own research and observations. At the very least it's a theft of the reader's time, if I wanted an LLM's perspective on a topic, I'd generate it myself

One of the things left unsaid in Edwards's apology [0] was whether he read the blog post that is the entire raison d'etre of his story. It's not like the story purported to do anything other than incorporate publish blog posts. So in his overworked and sickened state, how did trying out an "experimental Claude Code-based AI tool" substantially save him time versus jotting notes while ostensibly reading the source material himself

[0] https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p

Can you name any other way for Ars Technica to handle this situation without permanently soiling their reputation?

That's the thing. I feel kinda bad for Benj, I don't wish him ill, and maybe he keeps writing on his own site and/or other places, but I don't see any way that he could have kept writing for Ars.

"Apologized on Blue Sky" is absolutely no reason to keep them. The author did the absolutely worst things a journalist can do (short of actual corruption) and is unfit for the job:

- He didn't care for his story,

- he didn't care to verify his story,

- he published bullshit made up stuff,

- and put words in a real person's mouth

- and he didn't even care to write the thing himself

Why keep him and pay him? What mentality all the above show? What respect, both self respect and respect for the job?

If they wanted stories from an LLM, they can pay for a subscription to one directly.

Hope this sends a message to journalist hacks who offload their writing or research to an LLM.

That absolutely should be career-ending for a journalist, apology or no

Not "career-ending" but definitely back a few paces.

This wasn't outright fabrication, it was a sloppy editorial workflow that resulted in hallucinations being published as fast (which is absolutely going to be get more and more common unless newsrooms develop specific guards against it).

How is it not "outright fabrication"? Quotes were attributed to a subject that he didn't say. That's fabrication.

Fabrication implies agency in a way that doesn't feel accurate.

If you signed your name to the story you settled the agency question right there

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