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Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

mcsweeneys.net

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Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#121

Post by benphley »

miltonlost wrote: post #50
jalapenos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone please enlighten me: what is the point of an AI-generated Wikipedia when we're all now using (Wikipedia-trained) AIs directly instead of Wikipedias?

From the wikipedia on grokipedia: "Following the public launch of Grokipedia, it was criticised for publishing false information. Wired reported that "The new AI-powered Wikipedia competitor falsely claims that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic and that social media may be fueling a rise in transgender people." So, it's a way of Musk using AI to propagandize on a large scale.

Are these false claims? From Grokipedia:

> This marked the onset of what would become a devastating crisis disproportionately affecting gay male communities, where behaviors idealized in pornography—such as unprotected receptive anal intercourse and multiple anonymous partners—aligned directly with primary transmission routes, leading to rapid seroconversion rates.

This sounds plausible. Is it factually incorrect?

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#122

Post by moritzwarhier »

jalapenos wrote: post #42
babblingfish wrote: post #5

Especially relevant today with the release of grokipedia

Someone please enlighten me: what is the point of an AI-generated Wikipedia when we're all now using (Wikipedia-trained) AIs directly instead of Wikipedias?

It makes sense to people who don't know what an encyclopedia or an AI chatbot are, respectively.

It's ideal to poison the web with arbitrarily distorted texts that are a mix of facts and lies, and will be picked up by others, from AI to Zoomer school essay.

There is no point except for manipulation. Right now, you have to be pretty inept to think that a language AI could contribute anything valuable to an encyclopedia.

But maybe, this will change, the group of people who consider Chatbot output as insightful about the real world seems to be growing.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#123

Post by incomingpain »

jaredklewis wrote: post #116
incomingpain wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s and honest question. I haven’t noticed a strong bias on Wikipedia but that may just be because the kinds of the things I look up on Wikipedia are usually not political in nature. Lets do it on some random article that isnt political.I have aichophobia, so I'm an outside observer on this one. I will never ever ever ever have it done on me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acupuncture >Acupuncture[b] is a form of al…

I agree with you that the Grokipedia article is better here, though I guess I disagree that the wikipedia lead has "no neutrality" and is a "straight up ideological attack." Having read both articles (and knowing very little about this topic before), I came away with the firm conclusion that acupuncture is psuedoscience; both articles clearly explain that is not based on scientific principles and its practice is not…

>I came away with the firm conclusion that acupuncture is psuedoscience;

I dont think most disagrees on this. As I said, I'm not interested in it at all, even if it did work. The science however is not saying it's pseduoscience. It's saying that the Qi and meridians and that sort of stuff is wrong. Whereas the actual needles are scientifically based as providing pain relief in a small and short term effect.

It's a complex topic that doesn't have good conclusions and I chose it because I knew it would show their ideological bias. There's absolutely no reason to call it qwackery when it's not a settled subject. Perhaps even finish defining what it is before going on the attack.

>Anyway, I thought the Grokipedia article was quite good, but also didn't find the Wikipedia article to be particularly biased.

That's completely fair to come to the conclusion. My guess would be that you tend to also align with the ideology that wiki is written for.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#124

Post by philipwhiuk »

thepuppet33r wrote: post #102
antisol wrote: post #82

I bet now you’d kill for a senior thesis based on my free, multilingual, publicly cited, text-based articles, motherfucker Yeeeeeeeeah.... Not if it's written in or about the Scots language. (see: https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/ ) (see also: that time the Scottish governmment used Scots wikipedia as a source)

Wasn't that an edge case, though? Not even done by a bad actor, just someone misguided? And it was discovered and quickly corrected, unlike what would happen on something owned by a massive FAANG-style corp. I have been schooled many times on the failures of Wikipedia, why I shouldn't waste my time editing it, how the editors are toxic; but ultimately, I can't help but buy into the idea of a crowdsourced, centrally a…

> And it was discovered and quickly corrected

It was definitely not quickly corrected. It was going on for years.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#125

Post by slater »

benphley wrote: post #121
miltonlost wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the wikipedia on grokipedia: "Following the public launch of Grokipedia, it was criticised for publishing false information. Wired reported that "The new AI-powered Wikipedia competitor falsely claims that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic and that social media may be fueling a rise in transgender people." So, it's a way of Musk using AI to propagandize on a large scale.

Are these false claims? From Grokipedia: > This marked the onset of what would become a devastating crisis disproportionately affecting gay male communities, where behaviors idealized in pornography—such as unprotected receptive anal intercourse and multiple anonymous partners—aligned directly with primary transmission routes, leading to rapid seroconversion rates. This sounds plausible. Is it factually incorrect?

Why not have the decency to respond with your real HN account, instead of making a new account just to post tedious sealioning?

[this is the point at which you swear up, down and sideways that you've never ever in your whole life had a HN account, this is your first account ever, how dare i, etc. etc. etc.]

Edit to answer your totally-asked-in-good-faith question: Causation != correlation.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#126

Post by philipwhiuk »

incomingpain wrote: post #123
jaredklewis wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that the Grokipedia article is better here, though I guess I disagree that the wikipedia lead has "no neutrality" and is a "straight up ideological attack." Having read both articles (and knowing very little about this topic before), I came away with the firm conclusion that acupuncture is psuedoscience; both articles clearly explain that is not based on scientific principles and its practice is not…

>I came away with the firm conclusion that acupuncture is psuedoscience; I dont think most disagrees on this. As I said, I'm not interested in it at all, even if it did work. The science however is not saying it's pseduoscience. It's saying that the Qi and meridians and that sort of stuff is wrong. Whereas the actual needles are scientifically based as providing pain relief in a small and short term effect. It's a co…

> Whereas the actual needles are scientifically based as providing pain relief in a small and short term effect.

This is the basically the same evidence that says if I set you on fire you'll stop complaining about a cough, right?

> qwackery

Quackery has a 'u'. Maybe you need Grammarly.

> Which I dont know if you know, but tylenol is extremely ineffective for pain relief.

Try not to source all your opinions from the guy who suggested people drink bleach.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#127

Post by benphley »

slater wrote: post #125
benphley wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these false claims? From Grokipedia: > This marked the onset of what would become a devastating crisis disproportionately affecting gay male communities, where behaviors idealized in pornography—such as unprotected receptive anal intercourse and multiple anonymous partners—aligned directly with primary transmission routes, leading to rapid seroconversion rates. This sounds plausible. Is it factually incorrect?

Why not have the decency to respond with your real HN account, instead of making a new account just to post tedious sealioning? [this is the point at which you swear up, down and sideways that you've never ever in your whole life had a HN account, this is your first account ever, how dare i, etc. etc. etc.] Edit to answer your totally-asked-in-good-faith question: Causation != correlation.

It is a genuine question. If you don't want to engage in intellectual curiosity on this topic, please do not respond at all. Thank you.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#128

Post by tim333 »

z7 wrote: post #67
babblingfish wrote: post #5

Especially relevant today with the release of grokipedia

Here's the Grokipedia submission (currently censored / flagged): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45726459

It seems a bit unfairly flagged. After all the first AI written encyclopedia seems a new and interesting thing.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#129

Post by exasperaited »

embedding-shape wrote: post #105
HPsquared wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That references another article "Views of Elon Musk" ... Quite an unusual format, "views of [public figure]". I don't remember seeing anything quite like it on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Elon_Musk

Seems there are a couple of pages like that, if you enter "views of" without hitting enter in the Wikipedia search bar, you get some suggestions. Seems there is similar pages for Kanye West, Richard Dawkins and some more. Many of the pages are redirects back to the main page of the person though, so seems they're maybe disappearing or exclusively used for people who are very outspoken about lots of different things.

They are largely used to put the Talk: flamewar in a box, I think, so they can separate out the mundane fact edits from the rest.

Re: Hi, it's me, Wikipedia, and I am ready for your apology

#130

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

sokka_h2otribe wrote: post #93
rconti wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a website called Wikipedia that is a free online encyclopedia; a compendium of knowledge that can be freely viewed OR edited by anyone with an internet connection. Founded in 2001, it has been looked down upon by academics who believe that compiling and providing knowledge for free leads to cheating. Over the past few years, ANOTHER new technology called Large Language Model, or LLM, has been invented. This n…

I believe the academics concern early on was a lack of confidence in the quality. First through the sciences then outside I think wikipedia showed sufficient quality to eventually be in the good books for academia.

Yeah, some people didn't like it because anyone could edit it, in contrast to books & journal articles anyone with a bit of money could publish.

You still shouldn't cite it, because it's not a primary source. That's the same with any encyclopedia.

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