I think AI has increased the volume of such mistakes, but not necessarily the ratio. Compare this to all too human false reports this week of Justice Alito's retirement.

Nina Totenberg was the source and has been remarkably honest about it. She saw some activity around the court, asked about it, heard "retirement announcements," and that was sufficient for her to rush a story about Alito retiring. Given her stature it was instant national news until a denial was issued.

It can be a win if the increased AI slop volume leads us to inspect all news more closely, regardless of source.

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gdulli 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What will actually happen is that instead of a person being accountable and taking a reputational hit, errors will be shrugged off as bugs and accountability will go off into the aether. Like all the other reasons to distrust the tech giants that have not meaningfully damaged or corrected them.

	▲	iwontberude an hour ago \| parent [-]
		This is what gives me hope that we will have a societal collapse and be forced to reckon with the monster we’ve been pressing snooze on (oligarchy). AI gives people the tools to press forward to and beyond their level of incompetence and accelerate us to a place where they cannot sustain.

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toast0 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> She saw some activity around the court, asked about it, heard "retirement announcements,"

You missed the nuance. She had left the press room and noticed many others hadn't; asking about why not, she heard "retirement announcement", but what was said was "retirement announcements"

A singular announcement, that people were waiting around to listen to, would have only been Alito. Multiple announcements could include Alito or not, but would include staff and what not. A singular staff retirement would not have kept people for long.

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delichon an hour ago | parent [-]

> A singular announcement, that people were waiting around to listen to, would have only been Alito.

To me this is a wishful leap, more so that you would break a historic news story based on it. It seems to be a kind of Rorschach test. What do you see in this random blob? Both natural and artificial intelligences have answers ready, so it's a real problem but not novel.

	▲	toast0 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		There'a a push in the news industry to want the scoop. I don't know the exact timeline and circumstances, but if you leave the press room to go call in your story from the opinion releases, and notice it's been several minutes and nobody else came out, obviously you missed something. If that something is one person retired, they're probably saying a few words or being sent off with some words etc, so that'd be a Justice and Alito is known to be retiring 'soon'. It's like when your company is struggling and all of a sudden there's a mandatory all hands meeting in the morning. Gonna be layoffs (but sometimes it's not)