The second reckoning about AI writing

Steven Rosenbaum has concluded that the real villain behind the false quotes in his book is a chatbot. Earlier this week, The New York Times I reported that The future of truthRosenbaum’s much-discussed book about how AI shapes reality contains more than half a dozen fake or misattributed quotes. Rosenbaum attributed some of this to his use of AI. He took responsibility for the mistakes and said he was investigating what went wrong. However, when I spoke to him on Thursday, he pointed the finger otherwise. ChatGPT “screwed the book,” Rosenbaum said.

Rosenbaum, a media entrepreneur and executive director of the Sustainable Media Center, said he relied on AI tools as both a resource and a conversation partner when working on the book (which he also notes in the book’s acknowledgments). During our conversation, Rosenbaum struggled to balance the AI’s sometimes overwhelming capabilities with its penchant for head-scratching hallucinations – like…