this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Wikipedia is under assault: rogue users keep posting AI generated nonsense (www.techspot.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Wikipedia has a new initiative called WikiProject AI Cleanup. It is a task force of volunteers currently combing through Wikipedia articles, editing or removing false information that appears to have been posted by people using generative AI.

Ilyas Lebleu, a founding member of the cleanup crew, told 404 Media that the crisis began when Wikipedia editors and users began seeing passages that were unmistakably written by a chatbot of some kind.

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[–] [email protected] 115 points 1 month ago (3 children)

As for why this is happening, the cleanup crew thinks there are three primary reasons.

"[The] main reasons that motivate editors to add AI-generated content: self-promotion, deliberate hoaxing, and being misinformed into thinking that the generated content is accurate and constructive,"

That last one. Ouch.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The vast majority of people think they're the good guys...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Are we the baddies?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Without knowing you: probably.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Russian agriculture is in dire need of mechanization.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (2 children)

“[The] main reasons that motivate editors to add AI-generated content: self-promotion, deliberate hoaxing, and being misinformed into thinking that the generated content is accurate and constructive,”

I think the main driver behind people misinformed about AI content comes from the fact that outside of tech people, most have no idea that AI will:

  1. 100% make up answers to things it doesn't know because either the sample size of data they have ingested was to small or was bad. And it will do this with the same robot confidence you get for any other answer.

  2. AI that has been fed to much other AI generated content will begin to "hallucinate" and give some wild outputs, very similar to humans suffering from schizophrenia. And again these answers will be given as "fact" with the same robotic confidence.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

And then #2 will be copied by other people and AIs, becoming seen as fact.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

And then #2 will be copied by other people and AIs, becoming seen as fact.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Well, I was in doubt, so I asked the AI whether I could trust the answers and it told me not to worry about it. That must mean that I only get accurate answers, right? /s