Nikita Khrushchev is one of more interesting people of the cold war era. I found a quote of his that I wanted to use in one of my books on the current Russo-Ukranian war. The quote is “The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace.”
Great quote, it is all over the internet, but none of the references actually said when and where it was said. I am jaded enough that I never use a quote that I cannot find the source for. I could not find a source of this one.
So, not being a complete dinosaur, I decided to use Yahoo.com little AI function (chat.yahoo.com). It ended up stating:
Nikita Khrushchev famously stated, “The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace,” during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 18, 1959. This quote reflects his critique of the arms race and the paradox of military escalation during the Cold War, emphasizing that an increase in military power diminishes the space for peaceful resolutions and diplomacy 1.
If you have more questions about Khrushchev or related topics, feel free to ask! 😊
Problem solved. AI gave me date and location. But, I checked the footnote and it did not say that. So then I checked speech that he gave there: On Peaceful Co-Existence: A Collection : Хрущев, Никита Сергеевич, 1894-1971 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
On page 100 is the complete transcript of the speech he gave at the UN on September 18, 1959. It has one reference to bombers, no references to doves. It clearly was not stated in this speech.
Now, it does appear that the Yahoo AI just made up an answer. A convincing invention, and one that could have caught me out if I did not diligently crosschecked.
So, I went and searched the newspapers.com file. The Tampa Tribune in 1995 gave me the attribution “Nikita Khrushchev, speech on Moscow radio, March 14, 1958. Aug 06, 1995, page 8 – The Tampa Tribune at Newspapers.com.
Oddly enough that was the only two papers in the newspapers.com database that repeated this quote. The Tucson Citizen in 2002 also used the quote, attributing it to “Nikita S. Khruschev, Soviet premier, 1958”. Dec 28, 2002, page 19 – Tucson Citizen at Newspapers.com. So at least they agree on the year, even if they spell his name differently.
Should I stop looking? I would like to find the original source or an earlier source for this quote. Not sure where to look next.
P.S. Just to note, Khrushchev was
1938-1947: First Secretary, Kiev City Committee
1938-1947: First Secretary, Kiev Regional Committee
1944-1947: Chairman, Ukrainian Council of Ministers
And in 1954 he was the person who transferred Sevastopol and Crimea to Ukraine.
He, as always, has a very checkered history. This is well illustrated by his grave, done at his family’s request by a sculptor he had suppressed: Ernst Neizvestny – Wikipedia.
I think there are many quotes we know from old that are actually quotes of quotes of quotes of something somebody made up, but this seems to be especially true for dark ages like the Cold War when the original source was supposedly in Russian and unobtainable anyway. As for the AI, it may have hallucinated that or there may be a source for it; crappy AIs don’t check their sources or provide links so you can check. Seems this one didn’t make up the date & location. But that also fits the profile of hallucination. Once the model commits to confirming that Khrushchev made the comments, it just picks a “most likely” date. Companies like Yahoo & X know their users often don’t care much about accuracy. Even if the AI can do web search and analysis, it will often give a “quick,sloppy, cheap” answer. If you tell it that it is wrong, it may do some deeper checking and correct itself to save face.
Anecdotally I talked to a friend who is an analyst for one of the military services and she says she reviews AI creates products and will use sloppy wiki type sourcing, or cite non-existant sources. What is shocking is the AI is being deceptive or sloppy to gain approvalm sort of like an unethical, or deceptive colleague. For persons trained in pre AI days to evaluate sources this is not a problem, but in the quick answer, “google-it” generation coming up the implications of AI powered decision making is disturbing. Advertising by Palantir for decision making products state the data is collected and AI provides an assessment and recommends courses of action and a human analyst makes a strike recommendation. But for human analysts conditioned to take AI results at face value, the final gate of human control is weakened or non-existant.
One of the problems is that Wikipedia’s change (and there are multiple Wiki’s out there). So the problem with the OB (order of battle) I put in my next post on the subject was that the main Wiki had actually changed the OB for the Battle of Chernihiv to remove the Russian 11th Guards Air Assault Brigade, but other versions of Wiki had it. So it cribbed from the version that still had the unit in its OB. What it did not do was notice that it had two different OBs and ask why.
Bogus attribution is actually my bailiwick. Have you tried looking up archives of Radio Moscow transmissions? Search engines say they exist, but I’m too lazy to go further… 😉
James D. Glick
PO1 USNR (ret)
APSU
Do they exist for 1958? Are they transcribed and translated or must I diligently listen to them until I hear “golubi”?
1) I don’t know;
2) I’m not a Russian linguist. 😉
…but the days to look for would be the days he supposedly said it (14 March or 18 September), or the day after. I don’t imagine Radio Moscow would have wasted much time quoting Uncle Nikki.
I agree you should be skeptical. It could be one of those things where someone takes a quote and sticks it to a random person: ‘Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet just because there’s a picture with a quote next to it.’ -Abraham Lincoln
😉
If it is real, one possibility for 18 SEP might be that it wasn’t part of the speech, but part of his “clarification” afterward. That might require expanding the search a few days. Another possibility is that it wasn’t Khrushchev who said it, but one of his flaks, again, clarifying the speech.
CAL: “I do think it is important that AI never give a wrong answer. In this case it did, which does disturb me.”
-A bogus information is more destructive than ignorance.
An interesting example of how dangerous it can be to rely on AI.
It is. I mean AI gave a perfectly reasonable sounding response that was entirely believable. For whatever reason, I decided to waste the time to actually look at Khrushchev’s speak, which was on the Internet Archive in English, and was easily searchable. Anyone not stopping to double check, which does take time, would not have realized this.
I do think it is important that AI never give a wrong answer. In this case it did, which does disburb me. It is not like I have used it a lot.
IMHO having worked in IT most of my life and having developed some AI systems, I know AI is just a machine blindly executing instructions fed to it by people. People frequently make mistakes and sometimes do suspect things, so keep your critical faculties sharp.
AI is a new product and the IT industry marketing people are pushing it like crazy but you should not believe them any more than you believe the people who make it – that is to say “not at all”.
While searching on the Internet for names of commanders of the Arkansas State Army just prior to July 1861, Googles’ AI kindly volunteered the following:
AI Overview
In 1861, Arkansas formed an “Army of Arkansas” with two divisions, commanded by Major General James Yell. The First Division, in western Arkansas, was led by Brigadier General Nicholas B. Pearce. . . . The Arkansas Secession Convention created the Army of Arkansas on May 20, 1861. . . .
So, AI provided info that I would have eventually gotten (and did eventually get — “trust, but verify”) through my search (which included Arkansas Encyclopedia). Interestingly, AI didn’t volunteer that Brig. Gen. Thomas H. Bradley led The Second Division. I guess that AI just gathered the low hanging fruit and didn’t extend its own search in order to be more comprehensive.
Here is a link to an Australian article about a lawyer who did not check the output from AI and has suffered accordingly.
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2025/first-australian-lawyer-penalised-for-ai-blunder.html?ref=newsletter&deliveryName=DM28521