South Africa's Draft AI Policy Withdrawn Due to 'Fictitious' AI-Generated Citations

An official in South Africa withdrew a draft of the country's national AI policy, reports a local newspaper, "after it was found the draft policy was compiled using AI, which cited academic articles that were 'fictitious'." Earlier this month, minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni announced cabinet had approved the draft policy for public comment. [Ntshavheni] said the policy seeks to strengthen government's ability to regulate and adopt AI responsibly, while fostering innovation, job creation, and skills access.
The article includes this quotes from the country's minister of communications/digital technologies department. "This unacceptable lapse proves why vigilant human oversight over the use of artificial intelligence is critical."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Tokolosh for sharing the article.

AI will imagine our truth and history for us

[LondoMollari]

Just wait until South Africa starts writing their history books with AI. They will be filled will references to how the land was liberated from those evil white farmers wielding assault pitchforks and replaced with ultra successful and just saints, providing today's bountiful cornucopia of plenty.

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[RitchCraft]

Yeah, I was surprised to hear they still have a somewhat functioning government.

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[r1348]

Uh no, most LLM models are owned by apartheid lovers.

Saying SA is corrupt

[TheMiddleRoad]

Is like saying water is wet. They went from racism to racism and corruption. Apartheid wasn't really ended. It just put a few black people at the top of the power structure.

Everything that comes out of an AI needs checking

[JoshuaZ]

These systems are genuinely useful and can sometimes do very impressive things. But absolutely everything that comes out of them needs to be checked. I'm not sure how people don't get this at this point. It is also particularly a big deal for something like this being produced by a major government, since they can presumably afford access to pay for the higher quality models which have lower hallucination rates (Claude in particular is better for this.). This still shouldn't stop the humans from looking over everything, as noted by the minister in TFS, but everyone should already know this by now. How many more incidents of this sort do we need?

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[Black Parrot]

ISTM that there ought to be consequences for this kind of thing slipping by unchecked. I don't know who or what in this case, but I would suggest the immediate disbarment in the somewhat common case of a lawyer who submits a legal brief with fake citations. Some professionals need to be held accountable for doing professional work.

This is an example of irony, right?

[Krishnoid]

Just wanted to confirm, as the definition can be a little elusive.