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.
Further proof that humanity neither deserves nor is capable of having nice things.
Who would set up an AI bot to shit all over the one remaining useful thing on the Internet, and why?
I’m sure the answer is either ‘for the lulz’ or ‘late-stage capitalism’, but still: historically humans aren’t usually burning down libraries on purpose.
Maybe a strange way of activism that is trying to poison new AI models 🤔
Which would not work, since all tech giants have already archived preAI internet
Ah, so the AI version of the chewbacca defense.
I have to wonder if intentionally shitting on LLMs with plausible nonsense is effective.
Like, you watch for certain user agents and change what data you actually send the bot vs what a real human might see.
historically humans aren’t usually burning down libraries on purpose.
How on earth have you come to this conclusion.
To be fair, it’s usually to effect cultural genocide. It’s not average people burning libraries, it’s usually some kind of authoritarian regime.
Yeah but the other thing about humanity is it’s mostly harmless. Edits can be reverted, articles can be locked. Wikipedia will be fine.
Wikipedia relies on sources, and humans choosing the sources like newspapers. And those newspapers are more and more inside a “bubble” that rejects any evidence or reporting presented by a competing bubble.
Right now wikipedia is covering up one of the greatest acts of mass murder of our times, because the newspapers are covering it up, or rejecting evidence because it’s by the “enemy”. Part of this is a defensive posture against AI bots and enemy disinformation.
Because basement losers can’t conquer and raze libraries to the ground.
The internet has shown that assumed anonymity result in people fucking with other people’s lives for the hell of it. Viruses, trolling, etc. This is just the next stage of it because of a new easy to use tool.
historically humans aren’t usually burning down libraries on purpose.
Sometimes they are, Baghdad springs to mind, I’m sure there are other examples. And this library is online so there’s less chance of getting caught with a can of petrol and a box of matches.
Then there’s every authoritarian regime that tries to ban or burn specific types of books. What we’re seeing here could be more like that - an attempt to muddy the waters or introduce misinformation on certain topics.
Its because there’s no accountability for cybercrimes. If humans always had a button to burn down libraries, I’m sure they would have. Instead they had to put themselves in harms way to do such things.
People do things cause they can, and fucking with Wikipedia is apparently simple.
Lock it down make people get confirmed editing access face to face with trusted users.
AI is the buggest pile of dogshit to come out of tech in the history of the human race
I wouldn’t know. I use pihole to block all ads on my TV OS. I’m curious though, which service/app is giving you ads on pause? Do you mean like on a Roku TV where the screensaver is ads? Many TVs let you disable that (i.e. LG WebOS.) otherwise pihole is your friend :-)
My TV is old enough that it doesn’t have it, I’m just talking about the general trend toward making that a thing. I’m not going to buy a TV that forces ads on me, and the fact that I have to actively look for that on my next TV is appalling.
It’s over. We lost.
Require someone that wants to add stuff to pay a small amount to the Wikimedia Foundation for activating their account and refund it if they moderate a certain amount.
Yeah I mean I’ve had minor edits reversed because I didn’t source the fact properly
And that was like 10 years ago I’m surprised these edits are getting through in the first place
Seems like that would be an easy problem to solve… require all edits to have a peer review by someone with a minimum credibility before they go live. I can understand when Wikipedia was new, allowing anyone to post edits or new content helped them get going. But now? Why do they still allow any random person to post edits without a minimal amount of verification? Sure it self-corrects given enough time, but meanwhile what happens to all the people looking for factual information and finding trash?
Or at least give it a certain amount of time before it goes live. So if nobody comes around to approve it in 24 hours, it goes live.
Usually bad edits are corrected within hours, if not minutes, so that should catch the lion’s share w/o bogging down the approval queue too much.
