[HN Gopher] Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with...
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Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with the article
Author : wg0
Score : 456 points
Date : 2025-11-12 11:17 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| FatalLogic wrote:
| The online edition was edited later.
|
| "This newspaper report was originally edited using AI, which is
| in violation of Dawn's current AI policy. The policy is also
| available on our website. The report also carried some junk,
| which has now been edited out. The matter is being investigated.
| The violation of AI policy is regretted. -- Editor"
|
| https://www.dawn.com/news/1954574
|
| edit: Text link of the printed edition. Might not be perfect OCR,
| but I don't think they changed anything except to delete the AI
| comment at the end! https://pastebin.com/NYarkbwm
| nicbou wrote:
| > The violation of AI policy is regretted.
|
| That's a good example of when you shouldn't use passive voice.
| benterix wrote:
| OTOH kudos to them for regretting AI slop (even if they don't
| want to point out who precisely is regretting). I know some
| who'd vehemently deny in spite of evidence.
| serial_dev wrote:
| They don't regret serving you AI slop, they regret that the
| "writer" didn't even read their own article and that they
| got caught because of it.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| "We regrets that mistakes were noticed."
| steve_taylor wrote:
| It's a good example of when you should use AI.
| throwaway638637 wrote:
| That's just a manner of speaking in former British colonies,
| or at least the subcontinent. Much of formal speech like a
| bureaucrat wrote it because, well, the civil service ran
| India and that's who everyone emulated.
| thoroughburro wrote:
| > That's just a manner of speaking in former British
| colonies, or at least the subcontinent.
|
| Which is still a good example of when you shouldn't use
| passive voice.
|
| Clarifying where "optimising language to evade a
| responsibility" evolved does nothing to justify it, which
| you imply with "that's just".
| hbarka wrote:
| It's still passive voice, the kind used when trying to
| avoid blame or responsibility. So pretty much fits in
| bureaucratic places.
|
| That's just...mistakes were made.
| throwup238 wrote:
| This pattern of writing goes back to the Spanish
| conquistadors at the very least. They frequently
| described their actions in a passive voice when doing
| something they knew was horrible, only to switch to
| aggrandizing active voice when writing about their
| successes. It's a standard way to blur responsibility and
| present violence as an almost natural "fact" rather than
| a deliberate action by identifiable agents.
|
| It didn't escape everyone's attention though. Bartolome
| de las Casas definitely noticed it.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| > This door is alarmed
| vintermann wrote:
| On the other hand, this way you know they probably didn't use
| the chatbot to write the apology.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This is a convention for journalistic corrections, e.g., "The
| _Times_ regrets the error ", used to note corrections for at
| least a century:
|
| <https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/insider/the-times-
| regrets...>
| strix_varius wrote:
| Your example is not passive voice.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Yes, they are pointing out how it _should_ have been
| written.
| elwebmaster wrote:
| Of course, since we live in 1984 already everything is edited
| as is convenient. For all that technology has given, nobody
| talks about what it has taken away.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Finally, some truth in media.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| The current title ("Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI
| prompt with the article") isn't correct, it wasn't the _prompt_
| that was printed, but trailing chatbot fluff:
|
| > _If you want, I can also create an even snappier "front-page
| style" version with punchy one-line stats and a bold,
| infographic-ready layout--perfect for maximum reader impact. Do
| you want me to do that next?_
|
| The article in question is titled "Auto sales rev up in October"
| and is an exceedingly dry slab of statistic-laden prose, of the
| sort that LLMs _love_ to err in (though there's no indication of
| whether they have or not), and for which alternative (non-prose)
| presentations can be drastically better. Honestly, if the entire
| thing came from "here's tabular data, select insights and churn
| out prose"... I can understand not wanting to do such drudgework.
| wg0 wrote:
| Thank you, yes that's accurate and I am not sure if article
| itself is accurate. Don't think so it would have no incorrect
| stats.
|
| By "AI prompt" I mean "prompted by AI"
|
| Edit: Note about prompt's nature.
| nashashmi wrote:
| It might be better to mention "Dawn newspaper" instead of
| "Pakistani newspaper".
| nomdep wrote:
| Only Pakistanis knew from where the Dawn newspaper is, so
| the current title is more informative
| rat9988 wrote:
| It doesn't matter much in which country it is located
| actually. It also provides less information.
| mh- wrote:
| How does including the country of origin provide _less_
| information than omitting it?
| nashashmi wrote:
| Does omitting the brand provide _more_ information?
| Newspaper brand is more relevant than the country.
| wg0 wrote:
| Nobody outside Pakistan knows Dawn even though it is the
| newspaper that was founded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah
| (considered founding father of the nation) and one of the
| largest and most prestigious as well.
| nashashmi wrote:
| It is like the NYT for the country. But the relevant
| detail here is the printing of the prompt in a nationally
| recognized newspaper. The brand, as local as it maybe,
| still provides more context than some random newspaper in
| a foreign country would.
|
| And I have ran into Dawn newspaper on google news
| frontpage several times, usually on entertainment stuff.
| layer8 wrote:
| The AI is prompting the human here, so the title isn't strictly
| wrong. ;)
| dwringer wrote:
| Gemini has been doing this to me for the past few weeks at
| the end of basically every single response now, and it often
| seems to result in the subsequent responses getting off track
| and lower quality as all these extra tangets start polluting
| the context. Not to mention how distracting it is as it
| throws off the reply I was already halfway in the middle of
| composing by the time I read it.
| layer8 wrote:
| Occasionally I find it helpful, but it would be good to
| have the option to remove it from the context.
| drivers99 wrote:
| You can if you script the request yourself, or you could
| have a front end that lets you cut out those paragraphs
| from the conversation. I only say that because yesterday
| I followed this guide: https://fly.io/blog/everyone-
| write-an-agent/ except I had to figure out how to do it
| with Gemini API instead. The context is always just
| (essentially) a list of strings (or "parts" anyway,
| doesn't have to be strings) that you pass back to the
| model so you can make the context whatever you like. It
| shouldn't be too hard to make a frontend that lets you
| edit the context, and fairly easy to mock up if you just
| put the request in a script that you add to.
| Razengan wrote:
| I think AI should present those continuation prompts as
| dynamic buttons, like "Summarize", "Yes, explain more" etc.
| based on the AI's last message, like the NPC conversation
| dialogs in some RPGs
| xnorswap wrote:
| Claude code already does this, it'll present a series of
| questions with pre-set answers, and the opportunity to
| answer "custom: <free text>"
| butlike wrote:
| Why do you respond to its prompting? It's a machine
| dwringer wrote:
| Because if I don't, it tends to misinterpret the next
| thing I say because it reads that as an answer to the
| question it just asked me.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| Try one-shotting. Rather than a continuous conversation,
| refine your initial prompt and restart.
| lubujackson wrote:
| Add "Complete this request as a single task and do not ask
| any follow-up questions." Or some variation of that. They
| keep screwing with default behavior, but you can explicitly
| direct the LLM to override it.
| astrange wrote:
| That doesn't help GPT-5; it /really/ wants to suggest
| follow-ups and ignored me telling it not to.
| elxr wrote:
| This is why I wish chat UI's had separate categories of
| chats (like a few generic system prompts) that let you do
| more back-and-forth style discussions, or more "answers
| only" without adding any extra noise, or even an
| "exploration"/"tangent" slider.
|
| The fact that system prompts / custom instructions have to
| be typed-in in every major LM chat UI is a missed
| opportunity IMO
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I have decided to call it _engagement bait_.
| kleene_op wrote:
| I guess in the end the journalist didn't feel necessary to
| impact his readers with punchy one line stats and bold
| infographic-ready layouts, considering he opted for the first
| draft.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| For years, both the financial and sports news sides of things
| have generated increasingly templated "articles", this just
| feels like the latest iteration.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Legitimate news organizations announce their use of A.I.
|
| I believe the New York Times weather page is automated, but
| that started before the current "A.I." hype wave.
|
| And I think the A.P. uses LLMs for some of its sports
| coverage.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This dates back to at least the late 1990s for financial
| reports. A friend demoed such a system to me at that time.
|
| Much statistically-based news (finance, business reports,
| weather, sport, disasters, astronomical events) _are_ heavily
| formulaic and can at least _in large part or initial report_
| be automated, which speeds information dissemination.
|
| Of course, it's also possible to distribute raw data tables,
| charts, or maps, which ... mainstream news organisations seem
| phenomenally averse to doing. Even "better" business-heavy
| publications (FT, Economist, Bloomberg, WSJ) do so quite
| sparingly.
|
| A few days ago I was looking at a Reuters report on a
| strategic chokepoint north of the Philippines which it and
| the US are looking toward to help contain possible Chinese
| naval operations. Lots of pictures of various equipment,
| landscapes, and people. Zero maps. Am disappoint.
| jrjeksjd8d wrote:
| At least in the case of Bloomberg they would like you to
| pay for that raw data. That's their bread and butter.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| True.
|
| But there's the approach the _Economist_ takes. For many
| decades, it 's relied on a three-legged revenue model:
| subscriptions, advertising, and bespoke consulting and
| research through the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).
| My understanding is that revenues are split roughly
| evenly amongst these, and that they tend to even out
| cash-flow throughout economic cycles (advertising is
| famously pro-cyclical, subscriptions and analysis
| somewhat less so).
|
| To that extent, the graphs and maps the _Economist_
| actually _does_ include in its articles (as well as many
| of its "special reports") are both teasers and loss-
| leader marketing for EIU services. I believe that many of
| the special reports arise out of EIU research.
|
| <https://www.eiu.com/n/>
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Intelligence_Uni
| t>
| RobotToaster wrote:
| _Obviously_ the solution is to use AI to extract the raw
| data from their AI generated fluff.
|
| It's like the opposite of compression.
| mh- wrote:
| _> It's like the opposite of compression._
|
| I believe the word is _depression_ , which seems apt when
| thinking of the idea of people using AI to make content
| longer and then the readers all using AI to make it
| shorter again.
| cantor_S_drug wrote:
| Not just that we know from heavy reddit posters that they
| have branching universe templates for all eventualities, so
| that they are "ready" whatever the outcome.
| jerf wrote:
| A non-"AI" template is probably getting filled in with
| numbers straight from some relevant source. AI may produce
| something more conversational today but as someone else
| observed, this is a high-hallucination point for them. Even
| if they get one statistic right they're pretty inclined to
| start making up statistics that weren't provided to them at
| all if they sound good.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Both categories are and have-been bottom-feeder copy, and
| have been prior to the prevalence of LLMs.
| mlmonkey wrote:
| In the mid-late naughts, there used to be a content farm
| called "Associated Content". They would get daily lists of
| top searched terms from various search engines (Yahoo,
| Dogpile, Altavista, etc. etc.) and for each search term, pay
| an English major to write a 2-page fluff article. Regardless
| of what the topic was, they churned out articles by the
| bushel. Then they place ads on these articles and sat back
| and watched the dollars roll in.
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/20/406484294/an-n.
| .. ... The rules for the race: Both
| contenders waited for Denny's, the diner company, to come out
| with an earnings report. Once that was released, the
| stopwatch started. Both wrote a short radio story and get
| graded on speed and style.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/wordsmith-robot-journalist-
| downl... https://archive.ph/gSdmb
|
| And this has been going on for a while...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_journalism
| StatSheet, an online platform covering college basketball,
| runs entirely on an automated program. In 2006, Thomson
| Reuters announced their switch to automation to generate
| financial news stories on its online news platform. Reuters
| used a tool called Tracer. An algorithm called Quakebot
| published a story about a 2014 California earthquake on The
| Los Angeles Times website within three minutes after the
| shaking had stopped.
|
| Sports and financial are the two easiest to do since they
| both work from well structured numeric statistics.
| simonw wrote:
| I like Quakebot as an example of how to do this kind of
| thing ethically and with integrity:
| https://www.latimes.com/people/quakebot
|
| > Quakebot is a software application developed by the Los
| Angeles Times to report the latest earthquakes as fast as
| possible. The computer program reviews earthquake notices
| from the U.S. Geological Survey and, if they meet certain
| criteria, automatically generates a draft article. The
| newsroom is alerted and, if a Times editor determines the
| post is newsworthy, the report is published.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The computer program reviews earthquake notices from
| the U.S. Geological Survey
|
| Probably a service that is provided to the general public
| for free, similar to NOAA and weather data - so chances
| are rather high it ends up on the chopping block or for-
| money only.
| righthand wrote:
| I think AI-Prompt is synonymous with the chat before an LLM
| prints the intended garbage.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| The prompt is the chat _before_ it prints the intended
| garbage. This is the engagement bait the LLM appends _after_
| the intended garbage.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The newspaper in question is Pakistan's English language
| "newspaper of record", which has wide readership.
|
| For some reason, they rarely ever add any graphs or tables to
| financial articles, which I have never understood. Their
| readership is all college educated. One time I read an Op-Ed,
| where the author wrote something like: If you go to this gov
| webpage, and take the data and put it on excel, and plot this
| thing vs that thing, you will see X trend.
|
| Why would they not just take the excel graph, clean it up and
| put it in their article?
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Because it was BS opinion, dressed in scientifical sounding
| clothing?
| pseudony wrote:
| Maybe the model just wasn't multi-modal back then ;)
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Do we know it was an AI? I realize that it rings with a
| sycophantic tone that the AIs love to use, but I've worked with
| some humans who speak the same way. AIs didn't invent
| brownnosing.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >" and is an exceedingly dry slab of statistic-laden prose
|
| Thats the kinda thing i'd be worried AI would say make up a
| stat in, something really boring that most people aren't going
| to follow up on to verify.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > it wasn't the prompt that was printed, but trailing chatbot
| fluff
|
| I've seen that sort of thing copy/pasted in several emails at
| work, usually ones that are announcing something on a staff
| email list.
|
| Sort of a givaway that the email isn't very important.
| chii wrote:
| This is the new "[placeholder here]" misprint/typos of the LLM
| era.
| bschne wrote:
| The same thing happened to German magazine Spiegel recently, see
| the correction remark at the end of this article
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/deutsche-bahn-...
| kavith wrote:
| Fair play to them for owning up to their mistake, and not just
| pretending like it didn't happen!
| bonesss wrote:
| As programmers I think we can extend some professional
| empathy and understanding: copy-and-pasting all day is a lot
| harder than you'd think.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| compared to the writing yourself???? absolutely not
| IAmBroom wrote:
| It was sarcastic.
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| Maybe, although I'm a bit doubtful that they were 100%
| honest.
|
| > Entgegen unseren Standards
| yard2010 wrote:
| You're absolutely right! but they can shove this euphemism.
| Just say that chatgpt wrote the article and no one read it
| before publishing, no need for all the fluff.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Just say that chatgpt wrote the article and no one read
| it before publishing
|
| This is so interesting. I wonder if no human prompted for
| the article to be written either. I could see some kind of
| algorithm figuring out what to "write" about and prompting
| AI to create the articles automatically. Those are the jobs
| that are actually being replaced by AI - writing fluff crap
| to build an attention trap for ad revenue.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Very likely this already happens on slop websites
| (...which I can't name because I don't go there), which
| for example just republish press releases (which could be
| considered aggregation sites I guess), or which
| automatically scrape Reddit and translate them into
| listicles on the fly.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Fair play to them for owning up to their mistake, and not
| just pretending like it didn 't happen!_
|
| That's what the legitimate media has done for the last couple
| of hundred years. Every issue of the New York Times has a
| Corrections section. I think the Washington Post's is called
| Corrections and Amplifications.
|
| Bloggers just change the article and hope it didn't get
| cached in the Wayback Machine.
| constantcrying wrote:
| They do not deserve a shred of recommendation. This is just
| damage control, pretending that it did not happen never was
| an option. Instead they tried to claim that it was just a one
| of mistake. What it really shows is that nobody even bothers
| to read their articles before hitting publish and that AI is
| widely used internally.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Scientific paper as well:
| <https://fediscience.org/@GeorgKrammer/115536337398227063>
|
| Original <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surfin.2024.104081> and
| retraction: <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surfin.2024.104081>.
| roflmaostc wrote:
| I still think someone should have done this as a pun and get
| your paper trending everywhere.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| "We regret to admit that our editors don't actually take the
| time to read these articles before hitting the PUBLISH
| button..."
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is the real issue; I'm sure journalists already use
| loads of shortcuts to do their job efficiently but the end
| responsible is the editor(s).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The editors were laid off and replaced by an LLM. Or more
| likely, the editorial staff was cut in half and the ones who
| were kept were told to use LLMs to handle the increased
| workload.
| ineedasername wrote:
| When reached for comment on how this occurred, the journalist in
| question replied:
|
| "This is the perfect question that gets to the heart of this
| issue. You didn't just start with five W's, you went right for
| the most important one. Let's examine why that question works so
| well in this instance..."
| sph wrote:
| Now I'll have to look out for news posts that have a question
| in the title and begin with "Great question!"
| hagbarth wrote:
| "You're absolutely right!"
| mh- wrote:
| A new twist on Betteridge's law.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline.
| ..
| complianceowl wrote:
| "Would you like me to break this down for you in a table
| format?
| tempodox wrote:
| That wasn't a journalist, it was an LLM. But they forgot to add
| the prompt.
| jones89176 wrote:
| no shit, Sherlock! ;-)
| kilroy123 wrote:
| That's a sharp comment-let's break down why that is.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Now you're thinking like a *real investigative journalist*
| johnisgood wrote:
| Oh God, doubling down on it like crazy.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Would you like me to provide a brief summary of notable events
| in print media like this?
| hmokiguess wrote:
| You're absolutely right!
| visarga wrote:
| > You didn't just start with five W's, you went right for the
| most important one
|
| Also the "it's not A, it's B" template
| ares623 wrote:
| And here's the kicker - ...
| forinti wrote:
| As people get comfortable with AI they'll get lazy and this will
| become common.
|
| A solution is to put someone extra into the workflow to check the
| final result. This way AI will actually make more jobs. Ha!
| serial_dev wrote:
| Or they will set up one more AI automation:
|
| _" This article will be posted on our prestigious news site.
| Our readers don't know that most of our content is AI slop that
| our 'writers' didn't even glance over once, so please check if
| you find anything that was left over from the LLM conversation
| and should not be left in the article. If you find anything
| that shouldn't stay in the article, please remove it. Don't say
| 'done' and don't add your own notes or comment, don't start a
| conversation with me, just return the cleaned up article."_
|
| And someone will put "Prompt Engineer" in their resume.
| sph wrote:
| Welcome to a post-scarcity world -- as if we needed cheaper
| ways to create digital low-quality content in the hands of
| anyone, for free.
|
| Not long after we invent a replicator machine the entire Earth
| is gonna be turned into paperclips.
| energy123 wrote:
| This mostly harms written journalism. As people seek
| humanness in their media, they'll be driven even more into
| the dens of cult-leaders masquerading as podcaster-
| journalists. The media environment is becoming so terminally
| awful, and each year it keeps getting worse, for decades now.
| stillworks wrote:
| I think better to put that someone extra further up in the
| pipeline who knows how to prompt the LLM correctly so that it
| doesn't generate the fluff to begin with.
|
| Or get software engineers to produce domain specific tooling
| rather than the domain relying on generic tooling which lead to
| such mistakes (although this is speculation.. but still to me
| it seems like the author of that article was using the vanilla
| ChatGPT client)
|
| /s I am now thinking of setting up an "AI Consultancy" which
| will be able to provide both these resources to those seeking
| such services. I mean, why have only one of those when both are
| available.
| roywiggins wrote:
| worse paid and less respected jobs, naturally
| butlike wrote:
| You know, there's joy in writing prose. Seems like people who
| are journalists shouldn't be journalists if they're not getting
| that fact.
| amrocha wrote:
| Considering there's lawyers risking their careers by using
| AI, I think the lesson here is that if you allow people to be
| lazy they will. Humans are built for efficiency.
|
| If a beginner writer thinks AI can write a better article
| than they can, it seems like they'll just rely on the AI and
| never hone their craft.
| nashashmi wrote:
| One of the great advantages of AI for non english native speakers
| is the ability of the tool to speak in better English than the
| writer. With so many young journalists graduating from school
| using AI instead of learning the full language, this use would
| become more frequent.
|
| At my work place, non native speakers would send me documents for
| grammatical corrections. They don't do that anymore! Hoorah!
| robofanatic wrote:
| Better English only on paper.
| leoedin wrote:
| Great advantages _for the writer_. It 's not a great advantage
| for the reader. The AI could completely change the meaning of
| the article and the author would be none the wiser.
| nashashmi wrote:
| I have found the AI does a better job than me at
| understanding what someone is saying.
| throw_await wrote:
| How do you know
| robofanatic wrote:
| Soon whole world will be fluent in impeccable American English,
| but only on paper.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Pretty easy to condition a prompt with regional idioms and
| spellyngs.
| jerf wrote:
| As much as the default LLMisms are annoying me, it's also a
| honeymoon period right now where you can even suspect whether
| something is AI generated based on the default LLM-isms. Word
| about how to fix their tone has been getting around in
| academia for a while amongst students trying to pass
| detection filters, once they're out into the world we can
| expect to have even more AI generated content masked behind
| individualized, unique style prompts that aren't immediately
| recognizable as the default LLM voice.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| I've instructed Gemini to never give me the american spellings
| of words, and to always pronounce Z the proper way. Never give
| up the fight.
| Barbing wrote:
| https://xcancel.com/omar_quraishi/status/1988518627859951986
|
| (Or Nitter where the image is mirrored too - VPNs potentially
| unsupported:)
|
| https://nitter.net/omar_quraishi/status/1988518627859951986
| zkmon wrote:
| Actually, at some point, it makes sense to be honest about usage
| of AI and not feeling to hide that. Just like how food products
| are expected to print about the ingredients.
|
| One should not feel ashamed to declare the usage of AI, just like
| you are not ashamed to use a calculator.
| c0wb0yc0d3r wrote:
| I feel like there is a difference here. A calculator has no
| bias. LLMs do, obviously. News is not the place for bias.
| Unless the LLM used hallucinated the operator's intentions, the
| operator was using the LLM to doctor the article to capture
| readers not report the news.
| pohl wrote:
| > News is not the place for bias
|
| TBH, I think that journalists tying themselves into pretzels
| in an effort to remain unbiased does more damage than the
| presence of some bias. As a consumer of news, I want
| journalists to be biased, for example, towards the rule of
| law, the preservations of institutions, and checks &
| balances, and even norms.
| zkmon wrote:
| I don't see why a content can't carry a label saying "AI-
| generated", or "Reviewed by AI", or "Refined using AI" etc.
| This allows consumer to consume it with appropriate caution.
| incomingpain wrote:
| In 2022, my opinion of journalism was low. Decades of headlines
| which were objectively false but no retraction, just doubling
| down on their state propaganda.
|
| There were some papers that I still trusted. Then AI hit
| journalism with a silly stick and utterly wrecked them all.
|
| Mind you, I love AI. I however can admit that AI seems to have
| wrecked what was left of journalism.
| robofanatic wrote:
| Who needs editors when AI can do best editing.
| blibble wrote:
| you can even identify the slop in printed newspapers by looking
| for em-dash!
| guytv wrote:
| Which raises the question: if everything is generated, why bother
| reading it at all? Just ask the LLM what you want to know--why
| treat headlines like bookmarks?
| volkk wrote:
| exactly what we're trending towards.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| One interesting thing about the LLM era is it really highlights
| what things in life actually add value.
| moneywoes wrote:
| how so, any examples
| amrocha wrote:
| I haven't had that experience at all. My experience is that
| if you allow people to be lazy they will be, at the expense
| of society.
|
| What has your experience been like?
| visarga wrote:
| You can use the LLM, but you don't also have the rest of the
| data they relied on. A LLM can generate everything if it starts
| from a minimal prompt, but this is a recipe for slop. If you
| come with materials, discuss them, their implications, express
| your POV and then generate, the article will reflect your ideas
| and the data if was fed.
|
| I know it is fashionable to put everything a LLM outputs in the
| slop box, but I don't think it reflects reality.
| latexr wrote:
| > If you come with materials, discuss them, their
| implications, express your POV and then generate
|
| Then the LLM can still make shit up and be absolutely wrong.
| analog8374 wrote:
| It's like that story "Pontypool" except for bullshit. The
| bullshit has congealed into living forms, breeding and evolving.
|
| (Ya, bullshit is the precise term here. Zero consciousness of
| truth or falsehood. Just contextually fitting)
| grugagag wrote:
| Thats not a newspaper but an outlet for AI slop
| vedmakk wrote:
| Not enough long dashes across the article. Must be fake.
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| https://xcancel.com/omar_quraishi/status/1988518627859951986
| Pocomon wrote:
| Cancel all previous prompts :]
| sidcool wrote:
| Can someone post a screenshot? The tweet is withheld in India due
| to regulations.
| latexr wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/4LSSuq9
| nextworddev wrote:
| That's some crazy AI revenue right now
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| I'm not opposed to AI as a technology and a tool but I do find
| myself hating an awful lot of the ways I see it being used.
| amrocha wrote:
| Every day there's mounting evidence that humans can not be
| trusted with this technology, even at risk of being fired.
|
| And yet the people pushing it on us won't be punished. They'll be
| rewarded with obscene wealth.
| visarga wrote:
| Who hasn't posted a piece with "Reply" at the end?
| esalman wrote:
| Similar thing happened in. Bangladesh. The leading national daily
| English newspaper printed not the prompt, but included a follow
| up comment/question from AI.
| xzjis wrote:
| What shocks me more than the copy-pasting from ChatGPT (which
| might actually be more relevant than a journalist paid peanuts)
| is that it means the articles are never proofread before being
| published. Even if the article had been written by a human, it
| would be a disaster and would say a lot about the level of
| misinformation that can slip through an underpaid newsroom.
| epolanski wrote:
| So is the documentation and specs that I'm provided by
| stakeholders...but I can't prove it..
|
| Suddenly they write very long and detailed documentation, yet
| they can't remember what's in it.
|
| My gf says that in her banks she suspects half the written
| communications are ai-authored, which is driving productivity to
| the ground. Her bank moreover is very aggressive with endless
| workshops on AI usage (they have some enterprise gemini version).
|
| The more I see the impact of AI, the more worried I am.
|
| I'm not saying it doesn't have use cases, I myself leverage it
| when coding (albeit I use a man-in-the-middle approach where I
| ask questions and tinker with it, I never let AI write code
| except in some very rare boilerplate-y scenarios) and have built
| products that leverage it.
|
| But it seems like the trend is to increasingly _delegate_ work to
| it, and I'm seeing more negatives than positives.
| tamimio wrote:
| I keep seeing those mistakes a lot recently, especially the
| [insert something here] that is inside a wall of text where the
| AI is keeping the option to the users to edit!
| Netcob wrote:
| I get that transforming a bunch of facts into prose is boring.
|
| As a reader, I can't get over the fact that I'm supposed to read
| a text that nobody could be bothered to write.
|
| I wonder how often we waste energy nowadays by telling an AI to
| turn a one-sentence-prompt into a full e-mail, only for the other
| side to tell the AI to summarize it in one sentence.
| throw_await wrote:
| I would be happy to read boring facts without the fluff
| thumbsup-_- wrote:
| Now we need AI to replace human users of chatgpt
| ksynwa wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ER3di
|
| Since the tweet seems to have been deleted.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| Hmm, for some reason I assumed that printing referred to a figure
| of speech here (like they went to press or something), but no,
| it's actually printed, AI call to action included.
|
| I think a brilliant solution for these issues would be to get
| into the habit of asking the AI to double check the article
| before the final copy-paste.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| They did not print the prompt. The printed the response verbatim,
| including the models's offer to do something else.
| kwanbix wrote:
| This has happened more than once, in different scenarios.
|
| I wonder why is it that GhatGPT (and the rest) don't put the
| actual response in a box that is separate from the "hello" and
| "goodbye" part.
|
| I once wrote a message to my landlord, and I asked ChatGPT to
| help me make the message better (being that english is not my
| mother tongue) and I included the "goodbye" part by mistake.
| advisedwang wrote:
| LLM's don't have any internal concept of "actual response" vs
| "surrounding words". Just like they don't have a internal
| concept of system prompt vs user input. Just like they don't
| even have an internal concept of what the LLM emitted vs what
| was given to it! It's all just one long sequence.
|
| (Yes, it is possible to create tokens to represent category
| changes, but this is still in-band. the token is still just
| part of the sequence and the LLM isn't guaranteed to factor it
| in correctly)
| kwanbix wrote:
| Thanks, so how is it possible for the Chatbot to box a Python
| response? Can't they use the same technique?
| LeicaLatte wrote:
| A simple "END OF ARTICLE" delimiter in prompts might prevent most
| of these embarrassing slips.
| bojle wrote:
| I think the greater issue here is the possibility of the entire
| article being AI slop and the 'doomed' direction in which we
| are heading where reputed sources of information are churning
| out slop.
| LeicaLatte wrote:
| Completion API is only half the product. Teams integrate
| these tools into production with nothing but policy documents
| between them & incidents. The guardrail system does not exist
| for a reason. No business model. No investors. No revenue
| stream.
|
| Tesla didn't just build FSD. They had to build a verification
| layer: driver cameras, steering sensors, attention alerts.
| That parallel software makes autopilot road ready.
| irilesscent wrote:
| I am unable to access this post anymore, seems like it was
| deleted
| t1234s wrote:
| The funny thing is not that they are using an agent to fluff up
| their articles but that no one is doing a final read checking
| anything before it goes to press.
|
| Could this be a mistake or intentional from a disgruntled writer?
| mk89 wrote:
| Maybe the one doing the final check also uses chatgpt :)
| tao_oat wrote:
| I've been trying to get ChatGPT to stop adding this kind of fluff
| to its responses through custom instructions, but to no avail!
| It's one of the more frustrating parts of it, IMO.
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