Education report calling for ethical AI use contains over 15 fake sources; Ars Technica, September 12, 2025

BENJ EDWARDS, Ars Technica ; Education report calling for ethical AI use contains over 15 fake sources

"On Friday, CBC News reported that a major education reform document prepared for the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador contains at least 15 fabricated citations that academics suspect were generated by an AI language model—despite the same report calling for "ethical" AI use in schools.

"A Vision for the Future: Transforming and Modernizing Education," released August 28, serves as a 10-year roadmap for modernizing the province's public schools and post-secondary institutions. The 418-page document took 18 months to complete and was unveiled by co-chairs Anne Burke and Karen Goodnough, both professors at Memorial University's Faculty of Education, alongside Education Minister Bernard Davis...

The irony runs deep

The presence of potentially AI-generated fake citations becomes especially awkward given that one of the report's 110 recommendations specifically states the provincial government should "provide learners and educators with essential AI knowledge, including ethics, data privacy, and responsible technology use."

Sarah Martin, a Memorial political science professor who spent days reviewing the document, discovered multiple fabricated citations. "Around the references I cannot find, I can't imagine another explanation," she told CBC. "You're like, 'This has to be right, this can't not be.' This is a citation in a very important document for educational policy.""

Meta’s A.I. Assistant Is Fun to Use, but It Can’t Be Trusted; The New York Times, April 24, 2024

Brian X. Chen, The New York Times ; Meta’s A.I. Assistant Is Fun to Use, but It Can’t Be Trusted

"“We believe Meta AI is now the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use,” Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, wrote on Instagram on Thursday.

The new bot invites you to “ask Meta AI anything” — but my advice, after testing it for six days, is to approach it with caution. It makes lots of mistakes when you treat it as a search engine. For now, you can have some fun: Its image generator can be a clever way to express yourself when chatting with friends.

A Meta spokeswoman said that because the technology was new, it might not always return accurate responses, similar to other A.I. systems. There is currently no way to turn off Meta AI inside the apps.

Here’s what doesn’t work well — and what does — in Meta’s AI."