Chicago Sun-Times response to May 18 special section {embarrassed retraction}

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | May 20, 2025 | Melissa Bell

[Salman]

... To our great disappointment, that list was created through the use of an AI tool and recommended books that do not exist. We are actively investigating the accuracy of other content in the special section. We will provide more information on that investigation when we have more details. ...

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TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:

[Salman]

AI (by definition) means it can pass for human (through a text interface). That is what AI is. Which is technologically fantastic. To write convincingly human sounding BS is far beyond the capability of computers a few decades ago.

Pass for human (through a text interface), not be an infallible oracle.

"Artificial" does not mean it can beat the real thing, only convincingly fake it.

[\/\/ayne]

Any they love to fake it. AI lies like a rug.

[Salman]

Have fake human writing fake news. ;)

[Opinionated Blowhard]

and recommended books that do not exist.

LOL. How lazy is the editor? Where are the layers of fact checking? I've heard journalists are all tools. Now apparently its true - they're just AI tools.

[Leaning Right]

> To our great disappointment, that list was created through the use of an AI tool and recommended books that do not exist. <

In related news, AOC just announced that she has finished reading three of them.

[alternatives?]

The journalists will have to learn to code.

[Fido969]

How is lying and making stuff up not “passing for human”?

[dfwgator]

[econjack]

As an experiment, I asked ChatGPT to create 12 questions on the elasticity of demand, which it did. I have a Ph.D. in Econ and taught grad and undergrad courses for almost 30 years and was confident I would get then answers correct. I answered the 12 questions and asked for the answers, which it supplied.

Now the interesting part

I disagreed with the answer to one of the questions and “told” ChatGPT that its answer was incorrect. It answered: “You are right. We were just testing you.” What?

Now I don’t know whether to believe its answers or not.

[econjack]

You gotta love Sen. Kennedy. When asked what he thought of AOC, he responded:

“I recognized that she is the voice of the Democrat party. I also know that she is the reason that shampoo bottles have instructions printed on them.”

[Larry Lucido]

Books that never existed:

The list of intelligent liberals

Recent French military victories

The book of German stand-up comedy.

[dfwgator]

One of Rush’s:

Great Moderates In History

[poinq]

If you ask Chatgpt or Grok anything political, they will just give you Washington Post or Hew York Times dribble. They both are programmed to take those as highest value primary sources. They do not know how to discern BS. So if CNN and NYT and PBS says that COVID came from a fish market then it did. AI has all the Intelligence of a democrat flunky or a Black studies major.

[Larry Lucido]

Detroit Lions super bowl victories.

[Lockbox]

Ghost article pushing ghost books from a soon to be ghost newspaper….. 🧐

[dfwgator]

Ouch!

[dfwgator]

Heck you could do Detroit Lions Super Bowl Appearances.

[bk1000]

This is not the first time I have heard of AI making up data. It even admits it.

[Larry Lucido]

:)

[Salman]

How is lying and making stuff up not “passing for human”?

Precisely my point. It passes the test.