Native speakers don’t deviate from the rules. The rules are simply wrong when they don’t describe how native speakers speak. Native speakers speak differently than their ancestors. That’s normal. It’s not deviant. The grammar pedants need to learn to be more flexible and describe the actual language - English as She is Spoke - 2026 edition.
The problem is cultural, not technical or legal. Most people are at best indifferent and more often supportive of the exploitation of others. Unless that changes, the exploitation will be relentless. AI is a new tool that facilitates a kind of exploitation. But the fundamental inclination to exploit with minimal appreciation and compensation is nothing new. Exploitation is not merely tolerated. It is broadly encouraged and venerated. The law is primarily a tool of the elite to protect themselves. It does little to protect the interests of a typical FOSS contributor and the state does even less. There have been a few cases fought and won but compared to the scale of the industry, the resources committed to defending FOSS are trivial. That’s no more the end of FOSS now than it was in the beginning. It will probably reduce revenue for a few companies that have been exploiting FOSS and FOSS producers for profit. The vast majority of contributors were never compensated. Of those that were, it was typically far less than the value of their contributions.
You’re absolutely correct. But the problem is bigger than the rogue journalist. Separation of duties is a well known requirement for robust, reliable processes immune to single points of failure (whether malicious or, as I suspect in this case, merely grossly negligent and irresponsible). It is necessary but not sufficient to hold just the journalist who used AI responsible for the publication of false statements.
Maybe they should do more than just fire a person who was caught using AI. Maybe they should establish a process of independent fact checking before publication, regardless of whether AI was known or intended to be used to produce the article. It is a problem that AI was used in a way that introduced factual errors. It’s fair that the person responsible for this was fired. But all processes need quality control. Why hasn’t the person who failed to wrap quality control processes around the author fired?
Her company has been good, though a recent restructuring is worrying. The advice came to an assembly of CFOs. The problem is much bigger than her company. This was the second professional development guidance she has received in the past month, promoting AI. I give her examples of unreliability and advise caution. At the session, they advised that no one should study programming or accounting any more. My advice was that they should study how to audit and that use of AI would make effective audit much harder than it has been, but also more necessary. The clusterfuck is going to affect everyone, unfortunately. You can’t avoid it by avoiding her company.
My wife is an accountant. She went to a seminar today where they were told to start using AI or get out of the way. They were shown an AI that can produce consolidated annual accounts and financial statements in a few minutes, that it takes her and the auditors a month to produce. And they look very good! The company is unlikely to pay her and wait for the quality reports she has been producing for years. She’s on notice: start prompting the AI or move on. The AI promoters are going to run her and me and probably you into the ground and walk over us all, as they move on to their glorious future.
The elite don’t need the masses to be informed, they need them to be placated and oblivious or confused about what is happening, so they support what is contrary to their interests - idolize and support the elite. Good newsrooms don’t serve the purposes of those that own them. AI producing slop with embedded propaganda serves them. It has only just begun. Watch young people on TikTok, sopping up the numbing propaganda. It is the future - now controlled by US elites. Like programmers who know their code, accountants that know their books, and so many other professionals who pride themselves on the quality of their work, journalists who do their jobs to a high standard are being replaced. It will be very good for a few - those that can afford quality, free from slop and misinformation. But that’s not the audience of Ars.
Best if you don’t if quality is more important than financial viability, but no one can compete financially with the flood of AI/LLM being given away for free or, at most, far below actual cost. It’s not good for anyone but the billionaires, but have you noticed how much wealth they have accumulated in the past few years? It’s very, very good for them.
And yet, if you don’t, you will be undercut by the grossly subsidized AI and out of a job, either individually if your management leans AI or the whole enterprise if they don’t, replaced by the AI slop factories.
AI - damned if you do and damned if you don’t. And it’s not just journalism affected.
You might find the techniques used in Network-Aware Firewall useful. You can use firewall configuration to handle connections differently depending on whether you are connected to your home network or not. Or you can use the same techniquest to do other things, depending on network connection, like bringing up your VPN or not; modifying DNS or hosts file or not; etc.
How, when and where will all these satellites come back down?
Despite the title, the article presents many well reasoned arguments that Europeans are making many important contributions to technology and society and that it is better to do it the European way rather than becoming better at creating monopolies and extracting wealth from society, like the big American tech. companies.
Who needs separate apps when you can just tell copilot what you want and it can put the slop straight into your trough?
Didn’t OpenAI say it’s right about 25% of the time?
Maybe WHO could declare a mental health emergency and mandate a lockdown and minimum 8 hours per day of AI use. And ban references to ‘slop’ - It’s really bad for the mental health of the billionaires when they hear their scam referred to as ‘slop’.
it is the fourth largest oil producer in the Western Hemisphere
Might have something to do with it.
Is the plan that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” or are they just going to bomb them “back to the Stone Ages where they belong”?