That behaviour would probably have the opposite effect that the people who created this rule would want.

Why are you suggesting that? Ignoring capitalistic incentives, the rule is theoretically in place to increase safety. Your decision would have no impact on safety so I’m not sure why you think it would have the opposite effect.

Uber is not society. It is making a decision it thinks will increase its revenue. It is indeed a sign of a lack of progress, but the people responsible for the progress you want are us. I’m not chiming in on the policy itself, but your comment makes it feel like you are not as committed to the progress you want made. There are men in this thread saying that they hate what women have to put up with, but understand it and want them to feel safe. That’s not what I’m getting from your comment. If I had to choose between being in a forest with you vs them I’d choose them because it seems like you’re more concerned with how you’re perceived than how other people are actually affected. I can imagine that being viewed as a predator must be uncomfortable, but women are often viewed as prey and that’s not great either. I don’t want to start playing at oppression olympics, but the fact that a post about a move to theoretically increase women’s safety has you responding about your feelings as a perceived predator makes it seem like you don’t think we as a society should do things that make women feel safer because it makes you feel like you’re being viewed as a predator.

I for the most part don’t mind being around male strangers, but the ones that give me extra room on a sidewalk or in a bar are undoubtedly the ones I’m most comfortable around and ones I’d be most likely to engage with. Not because the others make me feel unsafe but because they make me feel safe. It’s like if you invite someone into your house you can offer them food or a drink to help them feel comfortable or you can just not. You’re not necessarily a bad person for not offering something, just potentially perceived as less inviting. Society is still seen and felt as the dominion of men for a lot of people, so when men go out of their way to make space for us, it signals that they are friendly and welcoming and want us to feel safe. I think if you want to work on that divide, the best thing to do is make the women you’re around feel safe. It’s unfortunate, but it’s up to us to destigmatize our own identities. I just don’t think your comment does that.

Per RAINN, 57% of perpetrators are white. I’ll charitably imagine you’re attempting to point out perceived hypocrisy in gender vs race selection, but you’re perpetuating racist and xenophobic stereotypes. White men commit rape at more than twice the rate of black men, and naturally born citizens commit crimes at rates higher than both documented and undocumented immigrants.

If you want to make the case that it’s a discriminatory policy, you’re welcome to do so, but tying it to false perceptions of race is probably not the best move. It’s coming off as reactionary at best.

Thank you for this comment. I have backups I tested on implementation and rummaged through two years ago after a weird corruption issue, but not once since. I still get alerts about them, so I just assume they’re fine, but first thing Monday I’m gonna test them. I feel stupid for not having implemented regular checks already, but will do so now.

Yea, I mentioned in my comment that there was a confluence of issues, but the article does point out that the AI translation made the statement more definitive.

Edit to add:

As part of our post-mortem on this article’s evolution, PCWelt’s executive editor pointed out that the translation makes the article sound more definitive than its native German. He says that in the context of the article, the German word “soll” signals a rumored expectation, but the English translation used “will” instead of something more akin to “is rumored to.”

I thought this was a very well written, transparent article that took accountability as seriously as it should. I am still not sure why people are using AI for translation when translation software already existed. People mention that AI is more context aware, but I feel like when you saw those friction points in old translation software it prompted you to look further into the context, whereas AI will just make an executive decision and people feel like it must be right because it’s AI. I guess it’s possible old language software, or even a translator, would have done the same thing, but I still think people would have less inherent trust in the old software alone. I do want to point out that this AI issue was just a small part of the problem and they addressed plenty of other issues and how they plan to remedy those.

Yes, I saw that, I just didn’t see them say that’s what happened to them. If that’s what happened then this should be an open and shut case. Like I said initially, Google is a bad company doing bad things and this change was an objectively greedy and evil thing.

Google is a bad company with bad policies, but I’d love to have them explain what caused the compromise. They dispute that it was uploaded publicly to GitHub, but don’t seem to provide any information as to what happened. They also didn’t have 2fa on, which is strange to hear because AWS (they’re using Google) required 2fa on all accounts at least a year ago, regardless of permissions if memory serves. Really sorry to hear this happened to them, and the fact you can’t set a hard cap on spend makes Google the party ultimately responsible here, but I’d appreciate having more information on the actual cause.

I get where you’re coming from, but I think it’s important that ars has held this person accountable. They have a journalistic standard they are sticking to, which is that there should be no AI use, and there are repercussions for people who don’t abide. There’s not an extremely large cohort that is willing to spend more to avoid AI, but I am certainly part of it, and seeing ars hold this person accountable helps me know that I can trust and patronize them ethically. There are businesses out there unwilling to acquiesce to an AI first narrative, and I’m just worried that elements of doomerism are going to make people unwilling to believe those companies when they have every reason to believe them.

Extremely sorry to hear that is happening. For what it’s worth, reports like this are not uncommon now:

https://futurism.com/future-society/deloitte-government-ai-hallucinations

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/oct/06/deloitte-to-pay-money-back-to-albanese-government-after-using-ai-in-440000-report

There’s an assumption that there has been an increased workload requested of them that I don’t have a reason to believe. That person has been a writer for them for years and since they don’t use AI as a rule, I don’t know why they would have increased expected output from their staff. I’m not saying that never happens, I just don’t believe that’s what happened in this case as there is no evidence to suggest that. I appreciate you explaining that comment though.

What was the damned if you don’t in this scenario? Seems more like damned if do, best if you don’t in this situation.

I don’t work at Ars, and maybe you know something I don’t, but I have seen nothing to suggest that they’re one of the companies doing that. It seems like they are pretty open about how they do not allow AI to be used in the process. Have they said something to indicate otherwise and I just misssed it?