Accidental AI(A-Eye)

For those interested in the world of ‘can’t make shit like this up’, I point you to an article in the NYT from May 19 (I know, old news, but I just saw it). It reports that a book titled The Future of Truth, just published this May, includes a bunch of quotes that were either misattributed by AI or completely fabricated by……go ahead, guess. Yes! By AI!!

Said book’s author is one Steven Rosenbaum, who appears to be an actual person, and before I tell you what he had to say about all this, let me first tell you how the NYT describes Mr. Rosenbaum:

Mr. Rosenbaum is a well-known convener in the media industry. He is the executive director of the Sustainable Media Center, a nonprofit that, according to its mission statement, is dedicated to giving “a new generation of media consumers” and creators “ownership of their increasingly media-centric lives.” The center has drawn together media and technology luminaries for in-person gatherings and online interviews.

He’s a ‘convener’. A well-known one. He brings people together, nonprofitably, and then they do gatherings and interviews. Clearly a step up from being an ‘influencer’, don’t you think?

Here’s some of what nonprofit-convener Rosenbaum had to say about the fake quotes:

The Times asked Mr. Rosenbaum about the quotes on Sunday and Monday. On Monday night, Mr. Rosenbaum acknowledged in a statement that the book had “a handful of improperly attributed or synthetic quotes” and said that he had started his own investigation.

He said that the inclusion of the incorrect quotes was an accident and that he had “no intention of fabricating any viewpoints” while writing the book.

There you go. It was an accident, and the author of the book in which these accidents happened has started an investigation. I know I’m re-assured.

The book was published by Ben Bella Books, for which Simon and Schuster is the distributor. You’ve probably heard of S&S. The NYT could get no comment on this accident from anyone from either of those two companies. Of course not.

(AI-Generated Bull)

I should say that nothing could persuade me to part with good money for any book with the title ‘The Future of Truth’. A title like that fairly screams ‘Lotta bullshit here’. And I would have felt that way before learning that the book contained ‘accidental AI’ bullshit.

And, here’s the thing. I bet this article appearing in the NYT did not hurt sales of that book at all.