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Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

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Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#31

Post by abacadaba »

mmooss wrote: post #18
mjburgess wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any articles where newspapers are the main source are basically just propaganda. An encyclopaedia should not be in the business of laundering yellow journalism into what is supposed to be a tertiary resource. If they banned this practice, that would immediately deal with this issue.

A blanket dimsissal is a simple way to avoid dealing with complexity, here both in understanding the problem and forming solutions. Obviously not all newspapers are propaganda and at the same time not all can be trusted; not everything in the same newspaper or any other news source is of the same accuracy; nothing is completely trustworthy or completely untrustworthy. I think accepting that gets us to the starting li…

> Obviously not all newspapers are propaganda

citation needed

Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#32

Post by emp17344 »

throwaway5465 wrote: post #28

There seems much defensiveness in the comments here along the lines of "not a new thing" and "not unique to LLM/AI". It seems to deflect, even gaslight TFA. > For most of the articles Pangram flagged as written by GenAI, nearly every cited sentence in the article failed verification. So why deflect that into convenient other pedantry (surely not under the guise tech forums often do so)? WSo why the discomfort for par…

Astroturfing or marketing, I’d guess. I’ve noticed you’re no longer allowed to say negative things about AI here without significant pushback, and I’d bet this isn’t an organic shift in perception.

Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#33

Post by bawolff »

simianwords wrote: post #7

I find it very interesting that the main competitor to Wikipedia which is Grokipedia is taking a 180 degree approach being AI first.

> I find it very interesting that the main competitor to Wikipedia which is Grokipedia

Encyclopedia Britannica (the website not the printed book) is the main competitor to Wikipedia and gets an order of magnitude more traffic than grokipedia. Right now grokipedia is the new kid on the block. It has yet to be seen if its just a novelty or if it has staying power but either way it still has a ways to go before its Wikipedia's primary competitor.

Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#34

Post by FranklinJabar »

mmooss wrote: post #17
crazygringo wrote: post #12

> That means the article contained a plausible-sounding sentence, cited to a real, relevant-sounding source. But when you read the source it’s cited to, the information on Wikipedia does not exist in that specific source. When a claim fails verification, it’s impossible to tell whether the information is true or not. This has been a rampant problem on Wikipedia always. I can't seem to find any indicator that this has…

When I've checked Wikipedia citations I've found so much brazen deception - citations that obviously don't support the claim - that I don't have confidence in Wikipedia. > Applying correct citations is actually really hard work, even when you know the material thoroughly. Why do you find it hard? Scholarly references can be sources for fundamental claims, review articles are a big help too. Also, I tend to add things…

[dead]

Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#35

Post by gwern »

asyncadventure wrote: post #24

[dead]

Thanks for the LLM comment, but that's dumb. If the problem really was as bad with humans (it obviously is not), then OP wouldn't've happened:

> For most of the articles Pangram flagged as written by GenAI, nearly every cited sentence in the article failed verification.

Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#36

Post by chr15m »

crazygringo wrote: post #12

> That means the article contained a plausible-sounding sentence, cited to a real, relevant-sounding source. But when you read the source it’s cited to, the information on Wikipedia does not exist in that specific source. When a claim fails verification, it’s impossible to tell whether the information is true or not. This has been a rampant problem on Wikipedia always. I can't seem to find any indicator that this has…

LLMs can add unsubstantiated conclusions at a far higher rate than humans working without LLMs.

Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#37

Post by tbossanova »

abacadaba wrote: post #31
mmooss wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A blanket dimsissal is a simple way to avoid dealing with complexity, here both in understanding the problem and forming solutions. Obviously not all newspapers are propaganda and at the same time not all can be trusted; not everything in the same newspaper or any other news source is of the same accuracy; nothing is completely trustworthy or completely untrustworthy. I think accepting that gets us to the starting li…

> Obviously not all newspapers are propaganda citation needed

There is literally no source without bias. You just need to consider whether you think a sources biases are reasonable or not

Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#38

Post by chr15m »

ColinWright wrote: post #2

The title I've chosen here is carefully selected to highlight one of the main points. It comes (lightly edited for length) from this paragraph: Far more insidious, however, was something else we discovered: More than two-thirds of these articles failed verification. That means the article contained a plausible-sounding sentence, cited to a real, relevant-sounding source. But when you read the source it’s cited to, th…

People here are claiming that this is true of humans as well. Apart from the fact that bad content can be generated much faster with LLMs, what's your feeling about that criticism? It's there any measure of how many submissions before LLMs make unsubstantiated claims?

Thank you for publishing this work. Very useful reminder to verify sources ourselves!

Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#39

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #12

> That means the article contained a plausible-sounding sentence, cited to a real, relevant-sounding source. But when you read the source it’s cited to, the information on Wikipedia does not exist in that specific source. When a claim fails verification, it’s impossible to tell whether the information is true or not. This has been a rampant problem on Wikipedia always. I can't seem to find any indicator that this has…

[deleted]

Re: Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

#40

Post by EA-3167 »

chr15m wrote: post #36
crazygringo wrote: post #12

> That means the article contained a plausible-sounding sentence, cited to a real, relevant-sounding source. But when you read the source it’s cited to, the information on Wikipedia does not exist in that specific source. When a claim fails verification, it’s impossible to tell whether the information is true or not. This has been a rampant problem on Wikipedia always. I can't seem to find any indicator that this has…

LLMs can add unsubstantiated conclusions at a far higher rate than humans working without LLMs.

At some point you're forced to either believe that people have never heard of the concept of a force multiplier, or to return to Upton Sinclair's observation about getting people to believe in things that hurt their bottom line.
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