When reached for comment on how this occurred, the journalist in question replied:
“This is the perfect question that gets to the heart of this issue. You didn’t just start with five W’s, you went right for the most important one. Let’s examine why that question works so well in this instance…”
The current title (“Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with the article”) isn’t correct, it wasn’t the prompt that was printed, but trailing chatbot fluff:
> If you want, I can also create an even snappier “front-page style” version with punchy one-line stats and a bold, infographic-ready layout—perfect for maximum reader impact. Do you want me to do that next?
The article in question is titled “Auto sales rev up in October” and is an exceedingly dry slab of statistic-laden prose, of the sort that LLMs love to err in (though there’s no indication of whether they have or not), and for which alternative (non-prose) presentations can be drastically better. Honestly, if the entire thing came from “here’s tabular data, select insights and churn out prose”… I can understand not wanting to do such drudgework.
"This newspaper report was originally edited using AI, which is in violation of Dawn’s current AI policy. The policy is also available on our website. The report also carried some junk, which has now been edited out. The matter is being investigated. The violation of AI policy is regretted. — Editor"
edit: Text link of the printed edition. Might not be perfect OCR, but I don't think they changed anything except to delete the AI comment at the end! https://pastebin.com/NYarkbwm
That's just a manner of speaking in former British colonies, or at least the subcontinent. Much of formal speech like a bureaucrat wrote it because, well, the civil service ran India and that's who everyone emulated.
OTOH kudos to them for regretting AI slop (even if they don't want to point out who precisely is regretting). I know some who'd vehemently deny in spite of evidence.
Of course, since we live in 1984 already everything is edited as is convenient. For all that technology has given, nobody talks about what it has taken away.
"This article will be posted on our prestigious news site. Our readers don't know that most of our content is AI slop that our 'writers' didn't even glance over once, so please check if you find anything that was left over from the LLM conversation and should not be left in the article. If you find anything that shouldn't stay in the article, please remove it. Don't say 'done' and don't add your own notes or comment, don't start a conversation with me, just return the cleaned up article."
And someone will put "Prompt Engineer" in their resume.
When reached for comment on how this occurred, the journalist in question replied:
“This is the perfect question that gets to the heart of this issue. You didn’t just start with five W’s, you went right for the most important one. Let’s examine why that question works so well in this instance…”
The current title (“Pakistani newspaper mistakenly prints AI prompt with the article”) isn’t correct, it wasn’t the prompt that was printed, but trailing chatbot fluff:
> If you want, I can also create an even snappier “front-page style” version with punchy one-line stats and a bold, infographic-ready layout—perfect for maximum reader impact. Do you want me to do that next?
The article in question is titled “Auto sales rev up in October” and is an exceedingly dry slab of statistic-laden prose, of the sort that LLMs love to err in (though there’s no indication of whether they have or not), and for which alternative (non-prose) presentations can be drastically better. Honestly, if the entire thing came from “here’s tabular data, select insights and churn out prose”… I can understand not wanting to do such drudgework.
The AI is prompting the human here, so the title isn't strictly wrong. ;)
Thank you, yes that's accurate and I am not sure if article itself is accurate. Don't think so it would have no incorrect stats.
By "AI prompt" I mean "prompted by AI"
Edit: Note about prompt's nature.
[delayed]
The same thing happened to German magazine Spiegel recently, see the correction remark at the end of this article
https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/deutsche-bahn-...
Fair play to them for owning up to their mistake, and not just pretending like it didn't happen!
As programmers I think we can extend some professional empathy and understanding: copy-and-pasting all day is a lot harder than you’d think.
The online edition was edited later.
"This newspaper report was originally edited using AI, which is in violation of Dawn’s current AI policy. The policy is also available on our website. The report also carried some junk, which has now been edited out. The matter is being investigated. The violation of AI policy is regretted. — Editor"
https://www.dawn.com/news/1954574
edit: Text link of the printed edition. Might not be perfect OCR, but I don't think they changed anything except to delete the AI comment at the end! https://pastebin.com/NYarkbwm
> The violation of AI policy is regretted.
That's a good example of when you shouldn't use passive voice.
That's just a manner of speaking in former British colonies, or at least the subcontinent. Much of formal speech like a bureaucrat wrote it because, well, the civil service ran India and that's who everyone emulated.
It's a good example of when you should use AI.
OTOH kudos to them for regretting AI slop (even if they don't want to point out who precisely is regretting). I know some who'd vehemently deny in spite of evidence.
They don't regret serving you AI slop, they regret that the "writer" didn't even read their own article and that they got caught because of it.
Of course, since we live in 1984 already everything is edited as is convenient. For all that technology has given, nobody talks about what it has taken away.
This is the new "[placeholder here]" misprint/typos of the LLM era.
As people get comfortable with AI they'll get lazy and this will become common.
A solution is to put someone extra into the workflow to check the final result. This way AI will actually make more jobs. Ha!
Or they will set up one more AI automation:
"This article will be posted on our prestigious news site. Our readers don't know that most of our content is AI slop that our 'writers' didn't even glance over once, so please check if you find anything that was left over from the LLM conversation and should not be left in the article. If you find anything that shouldn't stay in the article, please remove it. Don't say 'done' and don't add your own notes or comment, don't start a conversation with me, just return the cleaned up article."
And someone will put "Prompt Engineer" in their resume.
Finally, some truth in media.