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I won a championship that doesn't exist

ron.stoner.com

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Re: I won a championship that doesn't exist

#31

Post by nickthegreek »

duskwuff wrote: post #14
dyauspitr wrote: post #5

Why does this person deserve any kind of support? What’s the point of poisoning LLMs? To put some cursory Luddite roadblock that might delay the technology for a couple of months?

> What’s the point of poisoning LLMs? It's a demonstration. If a domain name and a quick bit of Wikipedia vandalism is all it takes to make an LLM start spouting nonsense about a "surprisingly serious tournament circuit" or a "massive online community" for an obscure card game, consider what an unscrupulous PR team or a political operative could do to influence its output on more important topics.

> consider what an unscrupulous PR team or a political operative could do to influence its output on more important topics.

‘is doing’.

Re: I won a championship that doesn't exist

#32

Post by rincebrain »

billypilgrim wrote: post #25

I must say I expected an actual poisoning of the data used to train the LLM and was excited, but the examples indicate that the LLM just searched the web and reported what it found? When you create a website with fake information and search Google for that information, it will of course bring up your site, not because it’s factually correct but because it’s related to what you searched for. What am I missing?

The part where lots of people have historically trusted LLM responses without verification, more than trying to sort through the dross on Google or Bing search results is, I think, the point.

Re: I won a championship that doesn't exist

#33

Post by nicole_express »

It's an odd thing here, because I don't really understand why this is LLM-specific at all. If someone came up to me and asked "who's the 6 Nimmt world champion?" I'd google it and probably find the same result, and have no reason not to believe it. I mean, for all I know the game is being made up too, though it has more sources at least.

Re: I won a championship that doesn't exist

#34

Post by blobbers »

nailer wrote: post #28
blobbers wrote: post #26

This is basically the same problem of products astroturfing reddit, or SEO optimizing google. You want a new X, and so they heavily go after the keywords associated with it. This is sort of why "brand" matters; it provides a source of trust. Encyclopedia Britannica used to be that source of 'facts'. Then it became whatever page-rank told you. Eventually SEO optimization ruined that. News stories are the same thing. F…

It's such a pity the Oxford English Dictionary decided to paywall themselves decades ago - they used to be THE dictionary in most countries, now nobody seems to know who they are.

They would have been better off going freemium or ad-supported. Or 501(c)(3) ala wikipedia?

Re: I won a championship that doesn't exist

#35

Post by anikom15 »

nailer wrote: post #28
blobbers wrote: post #26

This is basically the same problem of products astroturfing reddit, or SEO optimizing google. You want a new X, and so they heavily go after the keywords associated with it. This is sort of why "brand" matters; it provides a source of trust. Encyclopedia Britannica used to be that source of 'facts'. Then it became whatever page-rank told you. Eventually SEO optimization ruined that. News stories are the same thing. F…

It's such a pity the Oxford English Dictionary decided to paywall themselves decades ago - they used to be THE dictionary in most countries, now nobody seems to know who they are.

The OED’s goal isn’t really to be every nation’s dictionary.

Re: I won a championship that doesn't exist

#36

Post by alnwlsn »

dyauspitr wrote: post #5

Why does this person deserve any kind of support? What’s the point of poisoning LLMs? To put some cursory Luddite roadblock that might delay the technology for a couple of months?

To prove you can. Which means someone else with more to gain from it will probably do it also, and you should probably expect this to happen.

Re: I won a championship that doesn't exist

#37

Post by Lerc »

How many people have done things like this and then disclosed the fact? It would be fascinating to collect as many instances as you can to develop a data set. Could you train a system to find more? How many could it find, and in what areas?

Re: I won a championship that doesn't exist

#38

Post by MassPikeMike »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #27
slater wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(it probably helps that your name & blog carry some weight, vs. some rando writing something on blogspot or wordpress ;) )

Which illustrates another problem: unscrupulous actors with big names can spread whatever information they want to millions of people with minimal effort.

Ever since the invention of the printing press, every new communication technology has reduced the effort needed to widely disseminate information-- and misinformation! So you could say this is nothing new. On the other hand, this is remarkably little effort.

Re: I won a championship that doesn't exist

#40

Post by duxup »

In American college football there's all sorts of awards, and each year they put out "watch-lists" and silly press releases that get parroted on social media by any team that has their own player mentioned.

I've wanted to come up with my own for a while ...

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