Article #274074

ChatGPT allegedly mangled some quotes in Matt Goodwin’s book, but which of these are correct or correctly attributed?

Poor old Matt Goodwin. No sooner had he lost the Gorton and Denton byelection for Reform UK while seemingly having some very sour grapes about the outcome, but his new book – Suicide of a Nation – had come under scrutiny for allegedly relying to some extent on ChatGPT. That reliance appears to have stretched to allowing the chatbot to hallucinate some quotes by famous figures, intellectuals and philosophers, which somehow nobody saw fit to fact check. How awkward.

A former professor of politics, Goodwin has denied this, claiming that “critics would rather nit-pick over interpretations of Latin and historical quotes than deal with my book’s core argument” and that “criticism is coming from notorious left-wing activists”. Still, whatever the truth, we are sure that Guardian readers will be able to spot which of these famous quotes are correct or correctly attributed.