Episode 9: Panic is a Terrible Editor

Let's begin.

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to Human Print.

So in May 2025, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a summer reading list in its weekend section.

Fifteen book recommendations, real authors, apparently great titles.

The problem was that 10 of the 15 books didn't exist.

The authors were real, but the books were completely fabricated by A.I.

The freelancer who submitted the piece, Marco Buscaglia, said afterward, I do use AI for background at times, but always check out the material first.

This time, I did not, and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious.

No excuses.

So that statement again, I do use AI for background at times, but I always check out the material first, and this time I did not.

That sentence is not a story about someone who doesn't know how to use AI responsibly.

Margot is only human, just like the rest of us.

He knows about AI, but under deadline, he slipped and skipped arguably the most important step of the AI process, especially as a journalist, fact-checking.

And I think this is the thing that gets missed in most conversations about AI errors and AI overuse, which is that the people making these mistakes usually aren't careless people with no standards.

They're people who are tired, behind, overloaded, trying to just get to the end of the task so they can get to the next thing.

And the AI output was right there and it looked fine and they'd already been staring at the screen for six hours and the deadline was in 20 minutes.

I can also relate to this because my first career as a nurse, the reason for countless training and drilling and procedures baked into everything that you do in healthcare, everything that we did, this stuff existed as scaffolding, especially for when things got hectic, which is like in nursing most of the time.

Setting up and drilling procedures ahead of time before the crazy stuff set in, that was like insurance to increase the odds that we would make the right decisions when things were hectic.

Marco had a rule, just like the nurse's training.

It was a good rule, good training.

He just slipped up when things got hectic.

And I'm not saying that to pile on him.

I'm saying it because I think most of us can recognize that exact moment.

That moment where you know what you're supposed to do and you're just too depleted to do it, and the thing in front of you looks good enough.

And you tell yourself you'll catch it later, except later you don't.