Technology

Reporters may use AI tools vetted and approved for our workflow to assist with research, including navigating large volumes of material, summarizing background documents, and searching datasets. Even then, AI output is never treated as an authoritative source. Everything must be verified.

When we attribute a statement, a position, or a quote to a named source, that material comes from direct engagement with interviews, transcripts, published statements, or documents reviewed by the reporter. AI tools must not be used to generate, extract, or summarize material that is then attributed to a named source, whether as a direct quote, a paraphrase, or a characterization of someone’s views.

How do you control „Everything must be verified” specifically? I’m pretty sure similar rules must have been in place when they published a hallucinated interview.

tl;dr - don’t quote or link to Arse Technica because it could be made up entirely

I'm still good with Ars (though, I have used the term "Arse Technica" in the past — I mean, it's right there), but I've always respected their journalism.

IMO, using AI in the way they're talking about is using Wikipedia. Whenever I look something up on DDG and it uses Duck.ai to summarise search results (same thing Google gets shit on for doing!), I check their sources. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're not. I approach Wikipedia in the same way. It's a good collection of knowledge, but Wikipedia is subject to vandalism, so I check behind them. Wikipedia is more reliable than the AIs, but sometimes it gets it wrong, too.

You have to remember and realise, Ars Technica is a tech site. In fact, the name is Latin for "the art of technology" (I think — something like that). If they don't embrace AI to some extent, how can they reasonably call themselves a tech site? They have to embrace it. They write about it, they cover it, they use it — but the line has to be drawn somewhere, and they still fall on the side of responsible AI use. If you draw the line at any AI use, you're outside their target audience. You might also be outside the target audience of a comm called "technology." There are comms for retro tech that would be glad to have you. That is not to say that AI is the only way forward. It's just where technology is now. I'm with those hoping it's a fad that blows over and a bubble that bursts. As a technologist, there are plenty of things about AI that I don't like, but I don't avoid it entirely.