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by bgun 548 days ago
This is straight-up identity theft, and likely breaks any number of consumer protection laws. I don't necessarily mind AI being used to write articles that are otherwise factual, but stealing a reporter's name to write about places he's never been and things he's never done, restaurants he's never eaten at - strikes me as a dangerous gamble for companies playing in the slim margins of advertising-based journalism.

AI may write a great restaurant review or local experience story, but the lack of fact-checking is disturbing and I hope the corporations behind these tools can be held to account when they inevitably harm someone with egregious misinformation.
1 comments
nonrandomstring 548 days ago
> inevitably harm someone with egregious misinformation

Isn't the deception itself a sufficiently egregious harm?

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throw646577 548 days ago
In general, if you harm everyone in an instinctively obvious but factually hard-to-demonstrate way, there aren't any meaningful penalties. The situations in which "we all suffer" are the ones where people get away with it, eh?

Personifying it this way -- finding someone who is clearly injured -- is the only way to make progress.

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nonrandomstring 548 days ago
"A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." -- Stalin

Thanks for replying. I wonder, although, in US America for example, it requires "demonstrable harm" to bring lawsuits etc, there is an enduring concept of "the fabric of society" [0] in many legal traditions. (I think it is likely examined by J.S. Mill) and even appears in US congressional commentary [1]. In a digital context there is some mileage here [3].

Might we see a successful lawsuit on the merits that the "mere existence" of some technologies is an affront. "Artificial Intelligence" is after all "artifice"

artifice: a clever trick, guile, deception, cunning, a skillful or artful contrivance

[0] https://societyforpeace.com/fabric-of-society-meaning/

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1027...

[3] https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sulr/vol27/iss1/2/

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