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Wikipedia Bans AI-Generated Content (www.404media.co)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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https://web.archive.org/web/20260326162031/https://www.404media.co/wikipedia-bans-ai-generated-content/

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[–] 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

AI is going to be useful in a number of areas.

This isn't one of them.

The best use of AI is when it can look up existing text that you know already exists and apply it to your circumstances.

Wikipedia is the opposite of that. It is the existing text. AI Wikipedia would be the exact ouroburos of bullshitifying the Internet that experts have been warning about.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It could have some tangential uses, done responsibly. "Hey Claude, check the source material for all of these citations and find any that disagree with the way they're being used in the Wikipedia article."

    And then, critically, you have a human review that output.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    That last part is the real zinger lol

    The temptation to skim and feel like you've done all the hard work in looking it up and synthesizing after only just hitting the lazy button is wild. I use deep research functions a lot for work and I was super naive in my ability to grasp the underlying knowledge off reading that content let alone trusting it. Found my knowledge was super squishy or lacking depth to answer any questions or leverage it with any meaningful degree that i normally would have prior to this tech.

    Its been embarrassingly harder than I would like to admit in trying prevent myself from using it in that way other than just a fancy google search. The temptation is there like fast food ready to hit my veins - but I am getting better

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I’m the same. AI search is usually my first port of call these days because traditional search engines are so shit now. I’d estimate that its summaries are around 80% accurate. Yet, even knowing that, i still have to fight the temptation to just accept what it says and instead check the sources

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    I got certified for a software suite and at the end during Q & A the instructor just pulled up chat gpt with all the install manuals preloaded to answer people's hardware/version specific questions.

    Everyone acting like AI being useful is an outlier is coping. Rightfully so given the state of the world but still coping.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It's the dotcom boom and bust.

    The hype among corpos that AI is going to replace all labor is stupid. But when the bust happens and the hype dies down, we're still gonna be ordering pizzas online, Amazon will exist, and it'll be a thing we work with forever.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    What's different about this boom is that it's being used to fund purchases of land, computer hardware, and data centers. Unlike the dot com bust, where all the devalued companies left behind was mostly useless websites.

    So they'll be able to maintain their market dominance of AI, just under private ownership instead of the defunct public companies that went bust.

    This is a ball and cup game, more so a Ponzi scheme, than the fomo pump and dump that was dot com.

    Edit: It's Enron 3.0

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    So you’re saying there’s gonna be a glut of graphics card and RAM eventually?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Sadly probably not.

    This ball and cup game is basically Enron 3.0; where they use revenue they haven't earned yet, to pre-purchase ram/hardware that hasn't been made yet.

    Since all of them are in bed with each other I doubt us poors will see more than mere drips when everything gets liquidated.

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