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Truth in the age of AI, indeed.
A buzzy new book called “The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality” contains more than a half-dozen misattributed or fake quotes,” a review by The New York Times discovered. In response to questions from the paper, the author, Steven Rosenbaum, admitted that the book contained a “handful of improperly attributed or synthetic quotes” stemming from his use of AI tools.
“As I disclosed in the book’s acknowledgments, I used AI tools ChatGPT and Claude during the research, writing and editing process,” Rosenbaum told the NYT. “That does not excuse these errors, of which I take full responsibility. I am now working with the editors to thoroughly review and quickly correct any affected passages; any future editions will be corrected.”
Rosenbaum is the cofounder and executive director of the Sustainable Media Center, a media-focused nonprofit. A website for the book — which notes that Rosenbaum has a “Masters Degree in Truth” from New York University’s Gallatin school — lists praise from the likes of The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, Eurasia group president Ian Bremmer, and Maria Ressa, the journalist and nobel laureate. Ressa, per the NYT, even wrote the foreword to the book.
“Rosenbaum challenges us to face reality with honesty and urgency,” reads a blurb attributed to Ressa included on the book’s website. “This is why ‘The Future of Truth’ matters.”
But it seems that Rosenbaum’s NYU-sanctioned truth mastery didn’t extend to double-checking AI-generated quotes to ensure that they were actually, you know, truthful.
One of the fabricated quotes discovered by the NYT was attributed to the venerable tech journalist Kara Swisher. According to Rosenbaum’s book, Swisher — in a chapter apparently about AI lies, no less — once said that “the most sophisticated AI language model is like a mirror” that “reflects our own morality back at us, polished and articulate, but ultimately empty behind the surface.”
“It’s not bound by Asimov’s laws or any ethical framework — it’s bound by the patterns in its training data and the objectives set by its creators,” the quote continued.
Yet the real Swisher told the NYT that she “never said that.” She added that the quote made her “sound like I have a stick up my butt, according to ChatGPT.”
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