Innovation
From the Trump administration’s “formatting errors” to South Africa’s historic policy withdrawal, AI confabulation is infiltrating official documents.
Last month, South Africa withdrew its Draft National Artificial Intelligence Policy 17 days after it was published because the document cited fake research, created by AI.
The incident tarnished a historic moment, as South Africa was set to become the first African nation to adopt a policy establishing a formal ethics board to oversee AI outside the West. “The most plausible explanation is that AI-generated citations were included without proper verification,” Solly Malatsi, South Africa’s minister of communications and digital technologies, wrote in a statement. “There will be consequence management for those responsible for drafting and quality assurance.”
This is the first time a government has withdrawn a document over AI hallucinations, but certainly not the first time AI hallucinations have appeared in official materials. AI-generated text or citations have slipped into official or quasi-official documents several times, raising concerns about accountability and highlighting the need for human verification.
