Biblioracle on the AI issues with “The Future of Truth” book

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/05/30/biblioracle-future-of-truth-artificial-intelligence/

Publish Date: 2026-05-30 06:07:00

It was, sadly, inevitable that some AI “hallucinated” prose was going to show up in a major nonfiction book from a Big 5 publisher, but the irony of that book being titled “The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality” is simply off the charts.

A week or so after publication, a New York Times investigation revealed that “The Future of Truth” contained “numerous made-up or misattributed quotes concocted by AI.” Steven Rosenbaum, the book’s author, acknowledged the errors, saying that he had previously disclosed his use of ChatGPT and Claude (leading generative AI models) during the “research, writing, and editing process,” and that for the errors he takes “full responsibility.”

One should hope so, though as I’ll get to in a bit, I think there may be some things we readers can do to arrest the potential for a slide down the slippery slope into a world of AI slop.

Published by the Matt Holt imprint under the Simon & Schuster banner, the book had garnered glowing pre-publication reviews and ecstatic blurbs from bestselling author Daniel Pink and The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, among equally august others.

Rosenbaum is the executive director of the nonprofit Sustainable Media Center and the author of a previous book, “Curation Nation: How to Win in a World Where Consumers Are Creators.” In addition to his acceptance of responsibility, Rosenbaum told the Times he’s starting his “own investigation,” which had me thinking of none other than O.J. Simpson.

Given that I’ve written my own book on writing and AI, and deliver talks and workshops in schools and universities on the subject, I could play armchair quarterback on how something like this could happen when interacting with the technology, but I’d rather get to the root of the problem.

And the root of the problem is a lack of respect.

It’s a lack of respect for the people that Rosenbaum misquoted or misattributed. It’s a lack of respect for readers who expect the…

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