Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I. [View all]

Source: NYT

The author of a nonfiction book about the effects of artificial intelligence on truth acknowledged on Monday that he had included numerous made-up or misattributed quotes concocted by A.I.

The author, Steven Rosenbaum, whose book “The Future of Truth” was released this month to great fanfare, incorporated more than a half-dozen misattributed or fake quotes in sections of the book reviewed by The New York Times.

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Mr. Rosenbaum is a well-known convener in the media industry. He is the executive director of the Sustainable Media Center, a nonprofit that, according to its mission statement, is dedicated to giving “a new generation of media consumers” and creators “ownership of their increasingly media-centric lives.” The center has drawn together media and technology luminaries for in-person gatherings and online interviews.

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“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.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/media/future-of-truth-ai-quotes.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

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It should certainly diminish his credibility. And where in hell was the editor who could have checked the quotes? Obviously the publisher trusted Rosenbaum too much.

There's absolutely no excuse for this. And the only explanations are laziness and delusional trust in hallucinating chatbots.

This book has a foreword (which the Times article misspells as foreward) written by Maria Ressa, a journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Wired magazine ran an excerpt from the book.

Rosenbaum admitted in the acknowledgments that he used both ChatGPT and Claude "during the research, writing and editing process." In other words, for most of the book. The fake, hallucinated quotes and misattributed quotes - which he says are just "a handful" but the Times calls "numerous" - are scattered throughout, suggesting he didn't bother to check at all.

Disgusting.

Honestly, I think that trusting generative AI, when it's known to make mistakes, should be considered a type of AI psychosis. Or at least an AI delusion - delusions can be a symptom of psychosis. Anyone who's ever heard that generative AI models, LLMs, can always hallucinate, and yet still trusts AI results without checking, is already acting irrationally.

A lot of people are trusting AI way too much. And that's just as foolish as trusting other sources of misinformation, like Fox News.