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Notes -
Building off of yesterday's discussion of AI hallucinations, there's a new story about journalist hallucinations. Of course they don't call it that: the journalists "got them wrong" and gave a "false impression" in their articles/tweets instead. They're talking about Alberta's new book ban (pdf of bill) which restricts sexually explicit materials in school libraries. In short, it:
The journalists were saying that non-sexual content (e.g. handholding) would be restricted like non-explicit sexual content, and therefore be unavailable until grade 10. One even went so far as to
hallucinateget something wrong and give people the false impression that he was right and the government edited its releases to fix their mistake, which is why you can't find it now.Yes, AIs hallucinate, but buddy, have you seen humans? (see also: the "unmarked graves" story (paywalled), where ground penetrating radar anomalies somehow became child remains with no investigation having taken place.) When I set my standards low, it's not because I believe falsehoods are safe, it's because the alternatives aren't great either.
Regarding the burial sites hoax, that is state sponsored propaganda, so any misrepresentations or questionably false statements are intentional, rather than mistakes. You wouldn't expect an article printed in the Pravda to misrepresent the facts accidentally either. AI is not immune to this, for example in chatgpt.com Sam Altman can put whatever narrative he wants into the system prompt and the ChatGPT will dutifully push it at every opportunity.
The hoax is also pushed with a degree of nuance. The journalists always cite their sources and never claim it to be true themselves: "According to [Insane sjw activist group], Donald Trump literally murdered 300,000 kids with his own bear hands." is not technically a false statement. As much as the reporting is insanely one-sided, I do believe that it's often newsworthy to report on the claims of [Insane sjw activist group] even though their claims may often be false.
They did not retract this article because it's not strictly false: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tk-emlúps-te-secwépemc-215-children-former-kamloops-indian-residential-school-1.6043778 The are re-reporting what the indigenous group falsely claimed, but did not ever make a statement of fact that there were actually bodies there.
Nevertheless, they actually provided a correction after the fact at the top of the article that says there were no bodies discovered:
From NYT (I bypass the paywall by F12 to inspect the source, and delete < head > ):
No "according to" or anything for that statement, and it was last updated on March 28, 2022, compared to the clarification the First Nation put out in July 2021 (and another in May 2024).
Huh you're right. I never expected NYT to do worse than CBC of all places.
The NYT’s house style was deliberately constructed in opposition to the British style of quoting everything.
NYT: Earthquake kills thousands
[London] Times: Earthquake “Kills Thousands”.
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