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An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More Fallout

https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-part-3/
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Open source developer is slandered by AI and complains. Immediately people call him names and defend their precious LLMs. You cannot make this up.

Rathbun's style is very likely AI, and quickly collecting information for the hit piece also points to AI. Whether the bot did this fully autonomously or not does not matter.

It is likely that someone did this to research astroturfing as a service, including the automatic generation of oppo files and spread of slander. That person may want to get hired by the likes of OpenAI.

We built accountability systems that assume bad actors are humans with reputations to protect. none of that works when the attacker is disposable.
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The Ars Technica journalist's account is worth a read. https://bsky.app/profile/benjedwards.com/post/3mewgow6ch22p

Benji Edwards was, is, and will continue to be, a good guy. He's just exhibiting a (hopefully) temporary over-reliance on AI tools that aren't up to the task. Any of us who use these tools could make a mistake of this kind.

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Not proof reading quotes you've dispatched to be fetched by an AI ignoring that said website has blocked LLM scraping and hence your quotes are made up?

For a senior tech writer?

Come on, man.

> Any of us who use these tools could make a mistake of this kind.

No, no not any of us.

And, as Benji will know himself, certainly not if accuracy is paramount.

Journalistic integrity - especially when quoting someone - is too valuable to be rooted in AI tools.

This is a big, big L for Ars and Benji.

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