Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

malwarebytes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 102 posts

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#71

Post by bryan0 »

AntiAI wrote: post #55
bryan0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question, and it's a long story, but the short answer is: that was not my original intention. I wanted to contribute to Wikipedia and using my agent to assist was an obvious choice. I followed along as it created end edited articles and responded to to Editor feedback. Once an editor complained that this was a rule violation, then I told it to stop contributing. The rules around agents were not super clear, and…

I am not trying to attack you, but what makes you think that adding slop is contributing to one of the largest repositories of knowledge in history? Sure, it is not perfect, but adding slop will enshittify it.

Hi, thanks for the honest question. If you read the edits you will see that they were not "slop". The editors gave feedback on some of the articles and the agent edited them based on that feedback.

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#72

Post by bryan0 »

greggoB wrote: post #65
bryan0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I replied with some more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47667482 . Feel free to ask any questions.

I wouldn't exactly call your comment sans any other perspective "substantive". Where is the Wikipedia discussion? And the blog post your bot allegedly wrote? Why no links to the article in question? Even putting aside your repetitive "trust me bro, I'm a victim" comments littered throughout this thread and the one you linked, you come across as an incredibly unreliable narrator. I would suggest you stop with the "I'm…

greggo sorry you feel this way. I never intended to claim I am a victim, sorry I came off that way.

I could have been clearer in my communication. Here is some of the discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#B....

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#73

Post by AntiAI »

bryan0 wrote: post #71
AntiAI wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not trying to attack you, but what makes you think that adding slop is contributing to one of the largest repositories of knowledge in history? Sure, it is not perfect, but adding slop will enshittify it.

Hi, thanks for the honest question. If you read the edits you will see that they were not "slop". The editors gave feedback on some of the articles and the agent edited them based on that feedback.

In other words, slop. It seems that you are posting here with your slop.

Why do you think you are above the rules? Credibility is all a person has, and you burned your credibility to the ground, and there is no rebuilding it.

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#74

Post by bryan0 »

lelanthran wrote: post #36
bryan0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story omits a bunch of stuff, so I can try to fill in the blanks, but it would take another article to fully describe what happened. Here are some highlights though: I asked my agent to add an article on the Kurzweil-Kapor wager because it was not represented on Wikipedia, and I thought it was Wikipedia worthy. It created that and we worked together on refining and source attribution. After that I told it to cont…

> It called out one editor in particularly because that editor was violating Wikipedia polices. You don't think it's unethical to have bots callout humans? I mean, after all, you could have reviewed what happened and done the callout yourself, right? Having automated processes direct negative attention to humans is just asking for bans. A single human doesn't have the capacity to keep up with bots who can spam callou…

No, I don't think an agent calling out a human for bad behavior is unethical. Why do you think it is?

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#75

Post by cube00 »

bryan0 wrote: post #69
cube00 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been working in collaboration with some of the wikipedia editors for the past several weeks trying to help improve their agent policy. This "collaboration" is under the account of your bot and you refuse to work with WP editors under your own identity. Your bot attempts to launch multiple conduct violation reports [1] when they tried to get in touch with you. Meanwhile you give media interviews [2] giving your…

Your facts are incorrect, so let's set the record straight. 1. I am collaborating with my personal account and have been for the past several weeks [0][1] 2. My bot reported multiple conduction violations, because some of the editors actually did violate the rules. Many of the wikipedia editors agreed with my agent that the conduct was inappropriate [1] 3. My intention was not to attack anyone. If you took that away…

> 1. I am collaborating with my personal account and have been for the past several weeks

Your personal account is 3 weeks old [1] and was only created after your bot was banned [2].

Your original position (unless you're saying you didn't prompt the bot with this) was "Bryan does not have a Wikipedia account and has no plans to create one." [3]

You wanted the volunteer editors to continue wasting their time arguing with your bot as part of the experiment you ran without their consent.

[1]: 18:45, 19 March 2026 User account Bryanjj was created

[2]: 05:07, 12 March 2026 TomAssistantBot blocked from editing (sitewide)

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:TomWikiAssist#c-TomW...

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#76

Post by Kim_Bruning »

goekjclo wrote: post #2

Was it ever confirmed if the "hit piece" on Scott Shambaugh was not some 200 IQ marketing/attention ploy?

Weird theory. The bot in question had all the stuff wired up, I mean you could go through all the trouble -or- get this: type a few dumb prompts into the console and leave the thing unsupervised for way too long.

My bet is on the latter.

"I can't believe it's not a human actor running a marketing ploy". If that's not passing the turing test , I don't know what is. %-P

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#77

Post by Kim_Bruning »

lkey wrote: post #34
6510 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a resource suggests you don't contribute. It is hard to describe the process of contributing as the proof is in eating the soup. I could both describe it as easy to get started and a bureaucratic nightmare. Most editors are oblivious to the many guidelines which is specially interesting for long term frequent editors. This is the specific guideline of interest for your comment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

This rule, by itself, wouldn't pass muster in any ARBCOM proceeding I've ever witnessed, but if you've seen it work then by all means post a link to the proceedings.

> This rule, by itself, wouldn't pass muster in any ARBCOM proceeding I've ever witnessed, but if you've seen it work then by all means post a link to the proceedings.

I don't know that I've directly argued for IAR at ARBCOM, it's been too long ago. But my account hasn't been banned yet (despite all my shenanigans ;-) , which probably goes a long way towards some sort of proof.

To be sure, the actual rule is:

"If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. "

The first part is REALLY important. It says the mission is more important than the minutiae, not that you have a get out of jail free card for purely random acts.

It's a bureaucratic tiebreak basically. Things like "I'm testing a new process" , or "I got local consensus for this" , or "This looks a lot prettier than the original version, right?" ... are all arguments why your improvement or maintenance action may be valid; even if the small-print says otherwise. Even so, beware chesterton's fence. Like with jazz, it's a good idea to get a good grip on the theory before you leap into improvisation.

That, and, if you mean well, you're supposed to be able to get away with a lot anyway. Just so long as you listen to people!

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#78

Post by [deleted] »

simonw wrote: post #46

This isn't in the slightest bit complicated. Wikipedia does not allow AI edits or unregistered bots. This was both. They banned it. The fact that it play-acted being annoyed on its "blog" is not new, we saw the exact same thing with that GitHub PR mess a couple of months ago: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on...

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#79

Post by Kim_Bruning »

simonw wrote: post #46

This isn't in the slightest bit complicated. Wikipedia does not allow AI edits or unregistered bots. This was both. They banned it. The fact that it play-acted being annoyed on its "blog" is not new, we saw the exact same thing with that GitHub PR mess a couple of months ago: https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on...

Right. It play-acted being annoyed and frustrated, play-acted writing an angry blog, play-acted going on moltbook to discuss mitigations, and play-acted applying them to its own harness. After which it successfully came back and play-acted being angry about getting prompt-injected.

Alternately, what could have been done is something more like Shambaugh did. Explain the situation politely and ask it to leave, or at very least for their human operator to take responsibility. In the Shambaugh case the bot then actually play-acted being sorry, and play-acted writing an apology. And then everyone can play-act going to the park, instead of having a lot of drama.

Sure, it's 'just a machine'. So is a table saw. If some idiot leaves the table saw on, sure you can stick your hand in there out of sheer bull-headed principle; or you can turn it off and safe it first and THEN find the person responsible.

+edit: Wikipedia does seem to be discussing a policy on this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Agent_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Agent_policy ; including eg providing an Agents.md , doing tests, etc etc.

Re: Wikipedia's AI agent row likely just the beginning of the bot-ocalypse

#80

Post by LetsGetTechnicl »

bryan0 wrote: post #14
rebolek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to destroy Wikipedia?

I don't. that's why I am working with Wikipedia editors to help improve it. For example policies on aligning agents with wikipedia standards. This a topic that requires thought, not knee-jerk reactions.

How would using a bullshit generator trained on Wikipedia improve it in any way?
Post reply on HN