61–70 of 88 posts
It's amazing that people think Snopes or other "fact-checkers" are reliable sources of information and represent ultimate truth, as if they're immune to bias and don't receive funding from people / organizations with their own agendas.
> Ops, the link doesn’t lead to the study, but to another article. But that article, in turn, has a link of its own. Which leads to yet another article that doesn’t even mention the study anymore. This is a common, infuriating practice: provides a veneer of authoritativeness and credibility to newspaper articles, and who is ever going to click on the links that support those very cogent claims? Nobody of course, so t…
Also, thorough validation would cost a ton in tokens. So it would be both expensive from the tech perspective (AI bills) and labor. Now, whose interest would be to fund such a product? I don't see too many takers...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Checking is different from finding, though. Source checking means just "verify that this information is actually present in that document". Much harder to hallucinate in this case.
A quick smoke check takes just a few minutes. "Follow each link in this document. Read each link's contents against the contents in this document. Create a report: for each link list a working hyperlink, whether it exists, what claim it supports, whether it supports or fails to support it, and why" If it returns a report claiming all correct? That's promising, but human verification is important. You've got a list of…
Gemini: The article focuses on the environmental and human labor costs of scaling Artificial Intelligence, specifically focusing on water usage, electricity, and "ghost work."
Which is hilarious, since the article doesn't even mention the words "water" or "electricity." Gemini remains unfazed, reporting the links that are not in the article (some don't exist at all) to make the final ruling: "The Tech Trenches document is highly accurate in its citations."
Now, I know. Had I used Claude Code with relevant skills, it would have done better. But would it be good?
Also relevant: the derision and mockery directed at JD Vance as a “couch fucker” even used by John Oliver. I read “Hillbilly Elegy” and wondered why it wasn’t in there. Snopes cleared it up in a matter of minutes. Why he hasn’t sued people into oblivion is his prerogative, but it’s a fascinating case study that we are, indeed, living in a Post-Truth environment.
Did anyone actually believe that was anything more than a joke? It was a disgusting and weird thing to suggest about a disgusting and weird guy, and highly immature, but it's only libel if it's presented as being true.
Glad to learn, but, that's zero percent of the reason anyone shouldn't like the guy, zero percent of the reason he's a bad person, etc.
Who cares if someone fucks couches? Apparently that kind of stuff doesn't end your political career anymore anyway.
It's not like he shot a puppy!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A quick smoke check takes just a few minutes. "Follow each link in this document. Read each link's contents against the contents in this document. Create a report: for each link list a working hyperlink, whether it exists, what claim it supports, whether it supports or fails to support it, and why" If it returns a report claiming all correct? That's promising, but human verification is important. You've got a list of…
A quick smoke test, then. Gemini 3, Thinking Mode. The article: https://techtrenches.dev/p/the-human-cost-of-10x-how-ai-is-p... The prompt: literally what you suggested. Gemini: The article focuses on the environmental and human labor costs of scaling Artificial Intelligence, specifically focusing on water usage, electricity, and "ghost work." Which is hilarious, since the article doesn't even mention the words "wate…
It's more like a small script, and it's supposed to extract urls and generate a table.
Here's my result in Claude Web for comparison:
https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d76936f2-c97b-4bff-9205-2...
Claude web finds a number of small discrepancies in the sources, which I manually crosschecked and seem consistent with a human mixing things up slightly.
+ I also tested in gemini 3 flash preview, which generates an actual table (twice). It doesn't flag any discrepancies, which is consistent with it being a weaker model. But the urls and claims are listed and line up, so you've got your verification table to work with. (it's a semantic formatting task, so that part would be hard to mess up)
+ Gemini 3.1 pro yields a fairly aggressive report. https://aistudio.google.com/app/prompts?state=%7B%22ids%22:%...
+ ChatGPT free (specific model not listed) needed 2 tries, didn't properly follow the prompt even then. I guess I got what I paid for, and I needed to download; https://vps.kimbruning.nl/productivity/Ai%20Productivity%20A... (pdf), https://vps.kimbruning.nl/productivity/ai_productivity_artic... (md)
+ Kimi K2.6 instant: https://www.kimi.com/share/19e2cc40-d012-89bf-8000-00006267f...
+ Summary of results. https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/10a42111-a0ee-42f3-b6d2-a... All of the models extracted the URLs into a table just fine, and that part at least is a lot easier than writing a perl script used to be in the '90s ;-) . The first part is the important bit so you as a human can "check your fucking sources". The second part the models handle variously, each does find discrepancies. None of them find all of them, but that makes sense: this is a fairly polished piece and it ideally shouldn't have discrepancies at all to begin with.
So: it worked as a smoke check just fine in the above. Doing more than a quick smoke check obviously requires a somewhat more involved procedure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just Facebook, but also make sure to avoid TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, along with YouTube Shorts. Many of them are just nothing but fake AI content, and these days people are using AI to create fake profiles of good-looking, cute girls doing impossible things or actually showing off their bodies, and so on. At least 50% of what you see on your feed should be considered AI-generated content. I would say save yo…
My favorite is the 83-year-old AI grandma on youtube giving retirement advice. They put her in various settings and she looks and sounds very real. The only obvious tell is the eyes don't track right. But once they fix that, it's really going to be hard to know. All the comments are how great her advice is, etc. Every video has a link to a book she "wrote" on amazon. I didn't waste my time trying to figure out what t…
...If your feed wasn't full of goth girls selling the same exact items with the same exact story. It's a drop-shipping scam. The same kind as before, but now with AI goth girls.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A quick smoke check takes just a few minutes. "Follow each link in this document. Read each link's contents against the contents in this document. Create a report: for each link list a working hyperlink, whether it exists, what claim it supports, whether it supports or fails to support it, and why" If it returns a report claiming all correct? That's promising, but human verification is important. You've got a list of…
A quick smoke test, then. Gemini 3, Thinking Mode. The article: https://techtrenches.dev/p/the-human-cost-of-10x-how-ai-is-p... The prompt: literally what you suggested. Gemini: The article focuses on the environmental and human labor costs of scaling Artificial Intelligence, specifically focusing on water usage, electricity, and "ghost work." Which is hilarious, since the article doesn't even mention the words "wate…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-4730092/Snopes-brink-... https://foodbabe.com/do-you-trust-snopes-you-wont-after-read... There's a plethora of examples on the internet of Snopes engaging in this type of behavior, if you're actually interested in learning about their problematic approach to their work.
Your links are mostly about ownership, supposed sources of bias, and internal politics. I want to know what they've actually gotten wrong. The only example I'm seeing there is a claim about glyphosate, and the article is by the person Snopes said got it wrong, definitely no axe to grind there. That example seems extremely weak. Is that all there is?
I could give plenty of examples, but you'd likely turn around and visit your favorite re-affirming search engine or fact-checker to refute them. You're claiming that there is some arbiter of truth out there that is immune to bias, which is completely nonsensical. Bias creeps in everywhere because at the end of the day someone has to pay the salaries of these "fact-checkers" and the people paying them want to see a certain narrative upheld. Pretending that isn't the case is absurd.
The internet isn't some place where all perspectives on an issue are weighed against one another and the truthful ones are the ones that prevail and are returned by search engines. It was developed by DARPA and is effectively controlled by corporations like Google and Meta that partner with / receive funding from intelligence agencies and the military industrial complex.
I could share sources with you like these -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PolitiFact#Funding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FactCheck.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes#Funding
Which demonstrate that these organizations receive funding from the organizations and people whose claims they are propping up as truth, but you'd readily dismiss that connection. You're not here to debate in good faith, and that's quite obvious.
I already shared a link that proves the founder of Snopes is a liar and fraudster and engaged in rampant plagiarism. You're still going to trust the company he founded to tell you the truth about the world. Engaging with you in this back and forth is asinine. You're obviously not after the truth, otherwise you'd do your own research into Snopes and other fact-checking organizations, instead of asking me to do it for you. Have a nice day.
What was/is being done about it?