The risks of inviting AI into the heart of our economy, society and governance | Letters
Readers respond to Nesrine Malik's article on AI, highlighting the deeper problem of AI's relationship with evidence, including fabricated quotations and misplaced trust in machine-generated content.
Readers respond to an article by Nesrine Malik on what we lose when we trust machines over humans
Nesrine Malik is right to worry about the effect that AI may have on writing (AI is devoid of meaning and humanity. That’s why its vapid voice suits this political moment, 1 June). The examples she cites of fabricated quotations and unreliable research should concern anyone who values truth and public trust.
However, I suspect the deeper problem is not AI’s bland prose but its relationship to evidence. The writers caught out by false quotations were often not trying to deceive. They believed that they were using AI as a research aid while retaining editorial control. Yet somehow, fiction entered the factual record. The issue was not laziness but misplaced confidence in a system that can produce plausible reconstructions without distinguishing between what was observed, inferred or simply generated.
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