ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge • Hacker News Board

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#71

Post by idiotsecant » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #26

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources. This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica… alas, it’s a brave new world out there… nowhere to run to nowhere to hide, see that Wiezenbaum post also on the homepage now, as another commenter quotes[0]: > Writing of the enthusiastic embrace of a fully computerized world, Weizenbaum grumbled, “These people see the techn…

>> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources. > This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica... And they were right. If "they" were wrong about anything, it was the assumption that the masses would prioritize quality over cost, but it turns out that cheap wins every time. When it comes to information, it's like most people's taste buds don't work, so they'll pick…

Were they right, though? I am pretty sure I've seen research that compared the scope and accuracy of both and wikipedia was miles ahead.

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#72

Post by moritonal » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #26

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources. This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica… alas, it’s a brave new world out there… nowhere to run to nowhere to hide, see that Wiezenbaum post also on the homepage now, as another commenter quotes[0]: > Writing of the enthusiastic embrace of a fully computerized world, Weizenbaum grumbled, “These people see the techn…

>> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources. > This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica... And they were right. If "they" were wrong about anything, it was the assumption that the masses would prioritize quality over cost, but it turns out that cheap wins every time. When it comes to information, it's like most people's taste buds don't work, so they'll pick…

Most peoples taste buds don't work? We love sugar even when our bodies cant take anymore?

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#73

Post by xdennis » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

gptgpp wrote: post #46

tablespoon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's true though, Wikipedia really is terrible and full of fake citations that lead nowhere. It's an anti-knowledge base that sometimes has good information. Yeah, Wikipedia is garbage puffed up beyond all belief. I literally just today saw something just like you describe. It should be viewed very skeptically on anything anyone disagrees over (because then it's just snapshots of an agenda-pushing battle).

Could you elaborate on this? If it is full of garbage a couple examples should be very easy to find. I completely agree that Wikipedia can have errors, but in topics that I am educated in it seems pretty decent and I can't remember the last time I came across any (comp sci for example). The most recent example I can think of is about is an article on vulture bees, and a citation about what their honey tastes like, wh…

Examples: anything that's political.

Let's take for example the article about Patrisse Cullors (of BLM fame). A video surfaced of her saying "I am a trained Marxist". If you look at the archives[1], many people wanted to include this. But it was rejected with such ridiculous arguments as: "it is entirely unclear what a 'trained Marxist' actually means [...] She doesn't say anything like 'I am a Marxist' "

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Patrisse_Cullors/Archive_...

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#74

Post by idiotsecant » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #66

mountainb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true though, Wikipedia really is terrible and full of fake citations that lead nowhere. It's an anti-knowledge base that sometimes has good information.

Not only that, but it suffers from a persistent yet subtle liberal bias.

[flagged]

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#75

Post by 0xBABAD00C » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

lubujackson wrote: post #17

If you think of the knowledge base of the internet as a living thing, ChatGPT is a like a virus that now threatens its life. This is the same process SEO spam caused for search - it hampers the nature by which things function and the river needs to reroute (pagerank then usage metadata) to replace the lost signal. ChatGPT is more of an existential threat because it will propagate to infect other knowledge bases. Luke…

> ChatGPT is more of an existential threat because it will propagate to infect other knowledge bases. Luke Wikipedia relies on "published" facts as an authority, but ChatGPT output is going to wind up as a source one way or another. And worse, then ChatGPT will digest its own excrement, worsening its own results further.

This is what people do collectively, long before any GPTs were in sight. Lots of strong convictions people hold today and publish all over the place, are re-processed excrements of long-gone mental viruses of past civilizations.

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#76

Post by userabchn » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

A friend is a member of quite a few Facebook groups. She doubts my belief that these groups already contain ChatGPT-like influence operation chatbots, but was recently surprised when in one of the groups several participants discussed a photograph of a typical large chest of drawers while referring to it as a "locker". Maybe some people do refer to such furniture as a locker, or maybe the first person did for some reason and the others then just followed along to avoid confusion, but it made me wonder whether it was an example of a group of chatbots talking to each other and making up a nonsense name for the item. (She still doesn't believe me.)

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#77

Post by miguelazo » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #31

mountainb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true though, Wikipedia really is terrible and full of fake citations that lead nowhere. It's an anti-knowledge base that sometimes has good information.

> It's true though, Wikipedia really is terrible and full of fake citations that lead nowhere. It's an anti-knowledge base that sometimes has good information. Yeah, Wikipedia is garbage puffed up beyond all belief. I literally just today saw something just like you describe. It should be viewed very skeptically on anything anyone disagrees over (because then it's just snapshots of an agenda-pushing battle).

There's also tons of censorship on Wikipedia based on nothing but ideology. Just look at how the Grayzone can no longer be used as a source, based on claims it is "state-affiliated" media, despite ZERO evidence after literally years of such BS claims and now documented evidence of Western states targeting them (look up the exposé on Paul Mason) because they report inconvenient facts about what the security state is doing. There are many more lower-profile harassment campaigns carried out by "editors" looking to smear intellectuals (especially on the left) so that they can't get speaking gigs, print articles in major media, etc. Jimmy Wales himself went after the Grayzone. https://thegrayzone.com/2020/06/11/meet-wikipedias-ayn-rand-...

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#78

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #31

mountainb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true though, Wikipedia really is terrible and full of fake citations that lead nowhere. It's an anti-knowledge base that sometimes has good information.

> It's true though, Wikipedia really is terrible and full of fake citations that lead nowhere. It's an anti-knowledge base that sometimes has good information. Yeah, Wikipedia is garbage puffed up beyond all belief. I literally just today saw something just like you describe. It should be viewed very skeptically on anything anyone disagrees over (because then it's just snapshots of an agenda-pushing battle).

Did you take a moment to improve the article you had an issue with? That's kind of the point...

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#79

Post by shadowtree » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

ornornor wrote: post #69

markus_zhang wrote: post #61

From my experiments, ChatGPT is at least valuable by generating boilerplate code for scripting languages. I believe once connected to enterprise codebase its quality and completion can dramatically increase.

> enterprise codebase > quality increase We must have seen very different enterprise code.

It's called garbage collection for a reason. ;)

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#80

Post by pawelduda » Fri, Jan 27, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

Internet often feels it's getting rotten with SEO spam with very little substance already. Now the flood gates are open to generate more shit in a much better wrapping. And it's going to take more effort to check its quality than to produce it. Unless we get better tools to do that - but text has more dimensions to process/understand as opposed to for example AI generated images which (for now) can be told apart by glitches, or trails detectable by software.