The Company Behind Ars Technica, Reddit and Wired Caught Publishing LLM Slop (It Also Admits It Now)
Condé Nast busted
As we've only just mentioned, Wired got busted publishing slop as articles. So Condé Nast got caught red-handed, as well... at last. That means that Ars Technica, Reddit and all those other Condé Nast sites cannot be trusted anymore (could they ever?). As for Business Insider, it happened there also, but this is not the first time this is happening amid layoffs and cuts. Their site is moreover malicious (merely opening an article there causes my PC and my wife's PC as well to quickly run out of RAM, perhaps because of their aggressive anti-adblocking tactics).
"Think," an associate recalls, "back in the 1990s, Wired was the best. If you read it, you were well informed about what was going on in the world of ICT. It's been ages since that was the case, not since the sale." (To Condé Nast)
"They own too much nowadays," he says about Condé Nast.
There are many other sites they own (Wired is more focused on tech).
LLMs have no real prospects in journalism. They're not improving and they won't improve.
This afternoon there are several good new comments in this thread about IBM hyping up "AI" [sic], including: "Current stock market valuations depend on a fictional idea of what AI can do. A flood of articles over last couple of weeks show that people are realizing it's fiction or at least many years away. CEOs are panicking and saying nonsense like the above to desperately try and maintain valuations. Not going to end well. Or at least won't end well for CEOs and investors, will probably be good for all the laid off tech workers who will get hired back once companies finally acknowledge that, no, AI couldn't replace them."
We already saw sites that experimented with LLM slop, then stopped, then rehired the people they sacked (to be replaced by LLMs). In other words, they made foolish decisions based on wrong assumptions and false marketing. The reputation of those sites is severely damaged. █