Correction (10/11/24): Lebleu reached out to clarify a few detailed regarding the motivations behing the user posting AI-generated materiel and the examples mentioned. These changes were applied...

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.

@nutsack@lemmy.world
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174d

why the fuck would anyone stick ai shit on wikipedia that doesn’t make any sense

“[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,” Lebleu said.

@nutsack@lemmy.world
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94d

so, stupidity basically. they’re just stupid.

The irony being a huge amount of the llm knowledge was based on WP in the first place, that and scientific papers.

@MellowSnow@lemmy.world
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84d

People suck

Jesus Christ. The amount of absolute bellends in the world never ceases to confound me.

Bahnd Rollard
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175d

They used to be contained, every village has their idiot. Now that the internet is the global village, all the formerly isolated idiots have a place to chat.

This is why we can’t have nice things

If anyone can survive the AI text apocalypse, it is wikipedia. They have been fending off and regulating article writing bots since someone coded up a US town article writer from the 2000 census (not the 2010 or 2020 census, the 2000 census. This bot was writing wikipedia articles in 2003)

@T156@lemmy.world
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54d

Hopefully they tightened things up after the Scots incident.

What Scots incident?

@T156@lemmy.world
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54d

A considerable number of the articles written in Scots weren’t written in Scots. The most prolific writer of the Scots articles was an American teen with no knowledge of Scots, and was more or less just writing them in a Scottish accent.

Yep, I recalled that.

A certain amount of Russians with Cossack roots would do this with Ukrainian on the web, causing a bit less butthurt because TBH a lot of Ukrainians don’t speak in any way proper Ukrainian, but a mix of Ukrainian and Russian, and a lot of the rest talk dialects still different from standard.

Ah. That.

It’s over. We lost.

@OhmsLawn@lemmy.world
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35d

Oh God. This is horrible news. So incredibly frustrating to hear.

RubberDuck
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45d

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.

aubertlone
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35d

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

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