corbinWikipedia has banned AI-generated text, with two exceptions
Saved you a click:
After much debate, the new policy is in effect: Wikipedia authors are not allowed to use LLMs for generating or rewriting article content. There are two primary exceptions, though.
First, editors can use LLMs to suggest refinements to their own writing, as long as the edits are checked for accuracy. In other words, it’s being treated like any other grammar checker or writing assistance tool. The policy says, “ LLMs can go beyond what you ask of them and change the meaning of the text such that it is not supported by the sources cited.”
The second exemption for LLMs is with translation assistance. Editors can use AI tools for the first pass at translating text, but they still need to be fluent enough in both languages to catch errors. As with regular writing refinements, anyone using LLMs also has to check that incorrect information hasn’t been injected.
AIbros: we’re creating God!!!
AI users: it can do translation & reformating pretty well but you got to check it’s not chatting shit
The takeaway from all LLM-based AI is the user needs to be smart enough to do whatever they’re asking anyway. All output needs to be verified before being used or relied upon.
The “AI” is just streamlining the process to save time.
Relying on it otherwise is stupid and just proves instantly that you are incompetent.
the user needs to be smart enough to do whatever they’re asking anyway
I’m gonna say that’s ideal but not quite necessary. What’s needed is that the user is capable of properly verifying the output. Which anyone who could do it themselves definitely can, but it can be done more broadly. It’s an easier skill to verify a result than it is to obtain that result. Think: how film critics don’t necessarily need to be film*makers*, or the P=NP question in computer science.
But if the output has issues, what’re you going to do, prompt it again? If you are only able to verify but not do the task, you cannot correct the AI’s mistakes yourself.
At the risk of sounding like an overly obsequious AI… You know what, you’re completely right. I’m honestly not sure what use case I was imagining when I wrote that last comment.
RedjardYou were thinking logically about a normal production chain. In that case, QA or whoever says “This is wrong, rework it and correct the issue” and that’s that. With AI, it does the whole thing over again and may or may not come back with the same issue or an entirely new one.
I can’t draw, but I could probably photoshop out some minor issues in an AI-generated image.
If you’re unable to brute-force verification (research, testing, consulting the ancient texts), there’s where you stop what you’re doing, and take a breath. Then, consult an expert. Just like the film critic analogy, it’s easier to verify than to create, so you’re saving the expert time and effort while learning about something that you were obviously already passionate enough about to have started this endeavor.
As someone who codes, it’s not always easier to verify than to create.
As someone who codes, I specifically didn’t say “always” because of course it’s not always true. Especially in the cases of “garbage in, garbage out.”
But there’s still an argument to be made for mental load and context, for which I’d argue that planning solutions and then writing the code generally is more taxing than someone handing you suggested solutions with semi-complete code or pseudo-code, and then identifying road blocks.
On the other hand, if someone you trust unexpectedly hands you hallucinated garbage, then you’re likely to spin your wheels trying to identify what they did.
Relying on it otherwise is stupid and just proves instantly that you are incompetent.
Relying on it in any circumstances (though medical stuff is understandable if you’re simply too poor or don’t have access) while it is exhausting water supplies and polluting the planet is stupid and instantly proves that you are stupid and inconsiderate.
Fucking hate those anti human filth pushing slop into everything. I want to take one apart with power tools.
Paranoid FactoidIt holds up better than any movie from the late 90s that I can think of.
Yaaah, but I’ll need you to come in this weekend though. Yaaaahhhh…
I don’t think AI users would say it does reformatting either (if they’re honest): If you tell a chatbot to reformat text without changing it, it will change the text, because it does not understand the concept of not changing text. It should only take one time for someone to get burned for them to learn that lesson.
Seems pretty reasonable to use it as a grammar checker. As long as it’s not changing content, just form or readability, that seems like a pretty decent use for it, at least with a purely educational resource like Wikipedia.
🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞Liar. I already read the article before opening the comments. YOU SAVED ME NOTHING.
;-)
Wikipedia probably wants to sell access to LLMs to train. It’s only valuable if Wikipedia remains a high-quality, slop-free source.
I think even AI zealots think there should be silos of content to train from that are fully human generated. Training slop on slop makes the slop even worse.
AI already trains on Wikipedia.
The content is CC licensed, but they are trying to block AI scraping because it overloads their servers. They have a paid API that uses a lot less compute for both Wikipedia and the AI, as well as being a revenue source for Wikipedia.
Yes, but…
en.wikipedia.org/…/Wikipedia%3ADatabase_download
That’s because viewing the page uses server resources, as done API access. If you want the data you can download the database directly.
This was only done because the editors pushed to minimize AI involvement. There’s a comment here already mentioning that:
lemmy.world/comment/22826863
FauxPseudo Seems like there should be a third exception. For those occasions where the article is about LLM generated text. They should be able to quote it when it’s appropriate for an article.
That is a reasonable exception to no-AI policies in research papers and newspaper articles, but not for Wikipedia. As a tertiary source, Wikipedia has a strict “no original research” policy. Using AI to provide examples of AI output would be original research, and should not be done.
Quoting AI output shared in primary and secondary sources should be allowed for that reason, though.
Eh, that’s not quite original research. There are plenty of other examples of images and sound files created for Wikipedia. A representative example isn’t research, it’s just indicating what something is.
The Wikipedia article on AI slop and generative AI has a few instances of content that’s representative to illustrate a sourced statement, as opposed to being evidence or something.
It’s similar to the various charts and animations.
To save you another few clicks: this is the discussion (RfC) that implemented the changes, and the policy is linked at the top.