[rob_c]

> It’s sad to see Ars Technica at this level.

This was from a journalist _who_is_hired_as_expert_ at knowing of/about tooling that hallucinates (LLM ((AI)) chatbots). Decides to implicitly trust said technology to write a "hit piece" (lets be honest it was).

In several territories that would fall under slander and if is untrue is a major journalistic mis-step and career ending faux-pas.

Why in any situation would their position now be defendable?

This is akin to being a journalist of iron-mongering writing a "truth" piece on how "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" (if you don't get my reference here, lucky you). It's outright un-professional.

Blaming it on illness allows everyone to save face, but they were compos mentis enough to hit publish at the time. That itself carries a certain "I'm well enough to agree this is a good article" from said author.

[vor_]

I wouldn't characterize the story as a hit piece; the misquotes didn't distort his position. What happened is the LLM accurately summarized his position, but they weren't actually his words in the quotes.