CNET Issues Correction After Its Article-Writing AI Makes Huge Errors
The robot revolution isn’t quite ready yet.
Jakub Porzycki/Getty
To the surprise of absolutely no one, CNET’s article-writing AI is having a tough time separating truth from fiction. The consumer tech website issued a lengthy correction to one of its bot-made articles on Sunday after Futurism reported that it had made several egregious factual errors when attempting to explain compound interest. For example, the article erroneously claimed that if “you deposit $10,000 into a savings account that earns 3 percent interest compounding annually, you’ll earn $10,300 at the end of the first year.” In reality, you’d earn just $300 on top of your $10,000 principal. It also went on to make errors when it comes to how loans and CDs work too. “We are actively reviewing all our AI-assisted pieces to make sure no further inaccuracies made it through the editing process, as humans make mistakes, too," a spokesperson told Futurism in a statement. While AI seems like it might be helpful in creating boilerplate SEO articles for sites like CNET, this is a great reminder that bots will always have limitations when it comes to writing—mostly because they don’t know how to write like humans at all.
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