Former NRC chief editor suspended for citing AI hallucinations

Former NRC editor-in-Chief Peter Vandermeersch has been suspended by publisher Mediahuis for using artificial intelligence to write newsletters. These contained quotes hallucinated by the AI, the journalist confirmed in a blog post following reporting on the matter by NRC.

In his post, Vandermeersch said that he used various language models and experimented extensively with them. “Even I, with all those years of experience and knowledge under my belt, fell into the trap of hallucinations,” wrote Vandermeersch.

“I summarized reports using an AI tool and started working on them, trusting that the summaries were correct. In doing so, I wrongly put words in people’s mouths, whereas I should have formulated them as paraphrases. In a number of cases, it concerned my interpretation of their words. That was not just careless, it was wrong.”

Vandermeersch, who is active at Mediahuis as a Journalism & Society fellow, said he finds it “more than bitter” that he was the one who made this mistake after warning colleagues about the dangers of AI for a long time. “Of course, I should have checked those cases. The much-needed ‘human oversight,’ which I myself constantly advocate for, fell short.”

Vandermeersch also believes that he should have been more transparent about his use of AI. “When I realized that a number of quotes were incorrect, I should have corrected them immediately. Now NRC did that in my place.”