Author Steven Rosenbaum has a book release that is beyond timely. “The Future of Truth” is a serious exploration of the impacts of the wildfire spread of artificial intelligence across numerous industries. While this mushrooming technology has plenty of benefits, it carries with it caution and concern, as the new tech has also proven to be suspect at times.
As a result, the growth of its use in media spectrums presents challenges and frequently delivers problems. One is plagiarism, something I have touched on this past week in my media column, where a writer from New York Magazine is now suspected of over-reliance on A.I. to craft his columns and has been shown to have multiple columns where he appeared to have lifted entire sections from previously published work.
So yes, Rosenbaum’s book appears to be a more than timely arrival. It also appears to be a more than passive approach to A.I. Writing at the New York Times, Ben Mullin looked over Rosenbaum’s new release, and he had some curiosities spring up.
“The Future of Truth” is distributed by Simon and Schuster and published by a small publisher, BenBella Books. (This is akin to a Hollywood practice, where a small production company will make a movie and have it distributed into theaters by a major studio.) Apparently, neither company filtered Rosenbaum's work through publishing programs because it was discovered that the book had a number of generated problems.
Mullin stated that in his review of the book’s contents, he found at least six examples of quotes that are either misattributed or entirely made up. It has become a known entity with the use of A.I. that “hallucinated” content is a common problem, and it is one this author apparently ran into without realizing it. Yes, he used A.I. to write his book about the danger of working with A.I. After being contacted about this by Mullin, Rosenbaum admitted that he fell prey to what he described as “synthetic quotes.”
In one section that Mullin highlights, media figure and CNN personality Kara Swisher is quoted at length discussing the topic, with several sentences said to have been penned by her in previous outlets. Swisher confirms that those were not her words. The irony deepens, as this generated-from-digital-cloth segment appears in a chapter focusing on A.I. lies. Another chapter on the effects of A.I. videos and social media has pull quotes from a book on the topic in which those lines never appear.
The published work serves as a cautionary tale of the danger inherent in A.I. usage and the attack on facts. The book is undermined by the very technology it warns about, and delivers enough irony to clear up the worst case of anemia. How a writer can fall prey to it while studying that very adverse effect is rather mystifying. It calls to mind another case from years ago that echoes some of this result.
That would be the case of “author” Jumi Bello. As her novel “The Leaving" was set to arrive in stores, publisher Riverhead Books pulled the release once it was revealed that sections of the book had been taken from previously published materials. But Ms. Bello was not done. A few months later, she dared to write a column about her experience at the site Literary Hub, and it became apparent that this was a recidivist copy-paste artist.
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Bello—again, writing on her case of plagiarism—was found to have ALSO plagiarized sections of her column in her practice. And, better (worse) still, was where she had lifted those segments; she took work by Jonathan Bailey, who writes at Plagiarism Today. So the author whose book was yanked for plagiarism had her article on plagiarism spiked because of plagiarism, for content stolen from a source focused on plagiarism.
Now, in the case of Rosenbaum’s book, we have something of an almost helpless feeling in the face of the A.I. storm approaching. When a book designed as a warning about the encroachment of false content is riddled with A.I.-generated false content, what are we to do?
Well, don’t expect help from Rosenbaum. He stands by his book, and if anything, tries to claim that being exposed in this manner only buttresses his work.
Mr. Rosenbaum said that if the episode “serves as a warning about the risks of A.I.-assisted research and verification, that is why I wrote the book. These A.I. errors do not, in fact, diminish the larger questions that the book raises about truth, trust and A.I. and its impact on society, democracy and editorial,” he added.
This sounds too much in line with the people who have been pushing the environmental hysteria for generations. Even when exposed as wildly inaccurate in their predictions and promises about the effects of the global climate change crisis, the science and data proving them wrong are said to be all the more reason we need to heed their words.
Sorry, climate hysterics and Mr. Rosenbaum; when I am to turn to voices of authority on a topic, I tend to opt for those who have a track record of accuracy.