AI Fabricated Quotes In A Book About AI Undermining Truth. The Author Says This Proves His Point.

from the it-undermines-something-alright dept

Last week I read this excerpt of Steven Rosenbaum’s new book in Wired. His book is titled “The Future of Truth” and the Wired article has the attention grabbing headline: “Gen Z Is Pioneering a New Understanding of Truth.” I debated writing about the article, because it read to me like pretty typical “older generation whines about the kids these days and how their newfangled tech is melting their brains.”

We’ve seen this moral panic before.

And nothing has yet convinced me that “the kids these days” are any worse off than any previous generation. Yes, the technology is new, but like every generation, they tend to actually figure out the pros and cons of new technology way before their parents do.

To be fair, the Wired excerpt presents Rosenbaum’s argument as somewhat more nuanced than a standard “kids are dumb now” panic — he’s describing how Gen Z has developed different epistemic habits, relying on emotional cues and communal verification through social networks rather than traditional institutional gatekeepers. Some of that uncovers a real phenomenon that might be worth discussing. And yet, something about the framing still felt off to me — as if “different” was being dressed up as “broken.”

Also, if you tend to read a lot of AI-generated content, the Wired excerpt has a large number of tells. Plenty of “that’s not x, it’s y” and a bunch of words that AI loves to use (to be clear: that’s not definitive, as a reason why AI tools use those types of words and phrases is because they’re so common in human written communications, and it frustrates me to no end that I now feel the need to consciously limit my own use of certain rhetorical devices I actually liked to use in my past writing).

Speaking of which… a week later, the NY Times reports that Rosenbaum’s book appears to be stuffed with quotes that were made up entirely by whatever AI tool he used to write it. Oops!

The author of a nonfiction book about the effects of artificial intelligence on truth acknowledged on Monday that he had included numerous made-up or misattributed quotes concocted by A.I.

The author, Steven Rosenbaum, whose book “The Future of Truth” was released this month to great fanfare, incorporated more than a half-dozen misattributed or fake quotes in sections of the book reviewed by The New York Times.

Yes, but the truly astounding bit is buried all the way at the end of the the NY Times article, in which Rosenbaum seeks to judo this total editorial failure into evidence supporting the premise of his book. I only wish I were kidding:

In his statement, Mr. Rosenbaum said that if the episode “serves as a warning about the risks of A.I.-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book.”

“These A.I. errors do not, in fact, diminish the larger questions that the book raises about truth, trust and A.I. and its impact on society, democracy and editorial,” he added.

Dude. No. Just… no.

You don’t get to write an entire book fretting about how the kids these days don’t understand truth because of AI… and then when its exposed that you didn’t even check the quotes AI gave you, claim that this just proves your point.

That’s not how any of this works.

This is a book called “The Future of Truth.” It seems like you should at least grapple with the fact that part of the “future of truth” is that your own book is spreading false information because you didn’t… actually write parts of it.

If anything, it seems likely that kids are learning whatever lesson there is to be learned here way better than the adults. The widespread disdain many kids have for AI is, in part, a direct response to all the bullshit ways adults are using it. I will continue to argue that LLMs are a tool that, when properly used, can be quite empowering. But the absolute worst way to use these tools is to let them do your primary work for you. They can help assist you, but anyone who is relying on them as a lazy way of doing the deeper work you need to do will run into problems.

But I don’t think any of that has to do with how “the kids these days” “understand truth.” A lot of it has to do with how adults are rushing around looking for shortcuts and schemes to get away from doing the actual work. But apparently there’s no book deal or Wired feature story in “the kids these days are probably figuring it out just fine.”

Filed Under: ai, generation z, moral panic, steven rosenbaum, truth