[HN Gopher] How ProPublica Uses AI in Its Investigations
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How ProPublica Uses AI in Its Investigations
Author : marban
Score : 56 points
Date : 2025-03-14 15:19 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.propublica.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.propublica.org)
| nsagent wrote:
| > And crucially, we made sure to tell the model not to guess if
| it wasn't sure. (AI models are known to hallucinate, and we
| wanted to guard against that.)
|
| Prompting an LLM not to confabulate won't actually prevent it
| from doing so. It's so disappointing to see an organization like
| this, that's mission is to inform the public, used AI not
| understanding the limitations and then making a claim like this.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| It definitely does mitigate the risk (pretty substantially in
| my experience!)
| profchemai wrote:
| Criticism feels harsh. Of course models don't know what they
| don't know. Reporters can have the same biases. They could have
| worded it better "lowers the probability of hallucinating", but
| it is correct it helps to guard against it. It's just that it's
| not a binary thing.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > we made sure to tell the model not to guess if it wasn't
| sure
|
| Fair enough, but it's kind of ridiculous that in 2025 this
| "hack" still helps produce more reliable results.
| simonw wrote:
| From that same article:
|
| > Of course, members of our staff reviewed and confirmed every
| detail before we published our story, and we called all the
| named people and agencies seeking comment, which remains a
| must-do even in the world of AI.
|
| That sounds to me like they absolutely do understand the
| limitations of the technology they are using.
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