AI-Generated Articles Prompt Wikipedia To Downgrade CNET's Reliability Rating (arstechnica.com) 54
Wikipedia has downgraded tech website CNET's reliability rating following extensive discussions among its editors regarding the impact of AI-generated content on the site's trustworthiness. "The decision reflects concerns over the reliability of articles found on the tech news outlet after it began publishing AI-generated stories in 2022," adds Ars Technica. Futurism first reported the news. From the report: Wikipedia maintains a page called "Reliable sources/Perennial sources" that includes a chart featuring news publications and their reliability ratings as viewed from Wikipedia's perspective. Shortly after the CNET news broke in January 2023, Wikipedia editors began a discussion thread on the Reliable Sources project page about the publication. "CNET, usually regarded as an ordinary tech RS [reliable source], has started experimentally running AI-generated articles, which are riddled with errors," wrote a Wikipedia editor named David Gerard. "So far the experiment is not going down well, as it shouldn't. I haven't found any yet, but any of these articles that make it into a Wikipedia article need to be removed." After other editors agreed in the discussion, they began the process of downgrading CNET's reliability rating.
As of this writing, Wikipedia's Perennial Sources list currently features three entries for CNET broken into three time periods: (1) before October 2020, when Wikipedia considered CNET a "generally reliable" source; (2) between October 2020 and present, when Wikipedia notes that the site was acquired by Red Ventures in October 2020, "leading to a deterioration in editorial standards" and saying there is no consensus about reliability; and (3) between November 2022 and January 2023, when Wikipedia considers CNET "generally unreliable" because the site began using an AI tool "to rapidly generate articles riddled with factual inaccuracies and affiliate links."
Futurism reports that the issue with CNET's AI-generated content also sparked a broader debate within the Wikipedia community about the reliability of sources owned by Red Ventures, such as Bankrate and CreditCards.com. Those sites published AI-generated content around the same period of time as CNET. The editors also criticized Red Ventures for not being forthcoming about where and how AI was being implemented, further eroding trust in the company's publications. This lack of transparency was a key factor in the decision to downgrade CNET's reliability rating. A CNET spokesperson said in a statement: "CNET is the world's largest provider of unbiased tech-focused news and advice. We have been trusted for nearly 30 years because of our rigorous editorial and product review standards. It is important to clarify that CNET is not actively using AI to create new content. While we have no specific plans to restart, any future initiatives would follow our public AI policy."
As of this writing, Wikipedia's Perennial Sources list currently features three entries for CNET broken into three time periods: (1) before October 2020, when Wikipedia considered CNET a "generally reliable" source; (2) between October 2020 and present, when Wikipedia notes that the site was acquired by Red Ventures in October 2020, "leading to a deterioration in editorial standards" and saying there is no consensus about reliability; and (3) between November 2022 and January 2023, when Wikipedia considers CNET "generally unreliable" because the site began using an AI tool "to rapidly generate articles riddled with factual inaccuracies and affiliate links."
Futurism reports that the issue with CNET's AI-generated content also sparked a broader debate within the Wikipedia community about the reliability of sources owned by Red Ventures, such as Bankrate and CreditCards.com. Those sites published AI-generated content around the same period of time as CNET. The editors also criticized Red Ventures for not being forthcoming about where and how AI was being implemented, further eroding trust in the company's publications. This lack of transparency was a key factor in the decision to downgrade CNET's reliability rating. A CNET spokesperson said in a statement: "CNET is the world's largest provider of unbiased tech-focused news and advice. We have been trusted for nearly 30 years because of our rigorous editorial and product review standards. It is important to clarify that CNET is not actively using AI to create new content. While we have no specific plans to restart, any future initiatives would follow our public AI policy."
The shills have it (Score:2, Insightful)
Wikipedia is nothing but a battleground for factions of shills. Any article that's in any way contentious, political, contemporaneous, or even just targeted by some power user with an agenda, is most likely worse than useless: it's lies, and usually the insidious sort that are only detectable if you're already knowledgeable on the topic.
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Re:The shills have it (Score:5, Interesting)
So you're saying it's just alike Slashdot?
Not really. Slashdot thrives on controversy because that's what generates engagements and clicks. So there are many contentious articles, and the summary is often inflammatory to egg on the arguments.
99% of Wikipedia articles are objective information. it's just that the other 1% gets more attention.
Re: The sour grapes have it (Score:5, Funny)
Wikipedia is nothing but a battleground for factions of shills. Any article that's in any way contentious, political, contemporaneous, or even just targeted by some power user with an agenda, is most likely worse than useless: it's lies, and usually the insidious sort that are only detectable if you're already knowledgeable on the topic.
Didnt accept your edits, eh?
Re: The sour grapes have it (Score:4, Insightful)
left-leaning viewpoints are preferred over right-leaning
It's that well known left wing bias of reality meshing with wikipedias bias towards correctness.
Yet, as shown in the recently released videos, the people inside the capitol were not vandalizing anything
A video showing no vandalism occuring does not imply that no vandalism occurred. There's plenty of evidence of vandalism.
I suppose the pictures of smashed up things, that guy trying to bear spray a police officer, the Proud Boy smashing the window, the assault of Office Daniel Hodges, etc that's all just reality ganging up on the right wing "viewpoint" that January 6 was just fine.
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"If 2000 people were running around smashing things there'd be a lot more damage than what happened."
How would you know? And who said 2000 people ran around "smashing things"?
"We are aware of about a dozen idiots worth of damage."
Who's "we"? And how do they assign "worth"? There is literally video...and convictions.
"Common sense has not prevailed."
Because you never had any.
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left-leaning viewpoints are preferred over right-leaning
It's that well known left wing bias of reality
Like how a man can be a woman by just saying so?
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Wikipedia says they were "mostly peaceful" and in the next breath says that police responded with violence and "street skirmishes." They say it was "93% peaceful" and then "96.3% involved no injuries and no property damage." But then admits they were the most violent and costly protests in US history, due to arson, property damage, oh, and at least 19 people murdered. They have an entire section labelled "Misinformation" including claiming antifa didn't operate at the protests but far-right militias did.
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Wow, couldn't even find data less than 25 years old for your troll?
Re: The sour grapes have it (Score:5, Informative)
Yet, as shown in the recently released videos, the people inside the capitol were not vandalizing anything;:
Which is why they broke [nbcnews.com] through [youtube.com] windows [latimes.com], stole [cbsnews.com] and damaged [nbcnews.com] government property. But of course the $30 million to repair [npr.org] all that not [vox.com] vandalized [dailycaller.com] anything [cnn.com] is just a fake money grab, right? All those pictures and videos of damage [nbcnews.com] done by those peaceful [imgur.com] terrorists are all fake, right? They were so peaceful there was no threat [tumblr.com] to elected officials safety, right?
Deliberate, selective editing is a bitch, huh?
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No one said there was no damage or no bad people were there.
The vast bulk of people went on a selfie tour and left as per security video. A relative handful of knuckleheads did stupid shit.
As far as the costs go, that $30m is a fake government number from the same people who pay $10 for a nail and $18000 for a toilet.
Painting an entire crowd as bad because a few were stupid is extremely intellectually dishonest.
BLM caused $2 billion in damage. Sounds like the left is 65x worse than the right if you want t
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Jan 6 riots. $30,000,000 damage, 2000 protestors: $15,000 per person. OK let's take your rather facile claim that all numbers you don't like are faked and account for that by saying teh gubbmint pays, say, 10 times more than necessary for anything, That's still $1,500 per person.
BLM (using the most pessimistic estimates): $2,000,000,000 damage, 13,000,000 protestors: $154 per person.
Using the most pessimistic estimates from BLM and just inventing flattering numbers for Jan 6, the Jan 6 rioters were still 10
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are you seriously trying to say that 2 BILLION dollars worth of damage is not worse than 30 MILLION, because when you break it down to the per-person damage, its less?
i know you are nothing but a worthless troll, but holy fuck is that completely illogical.
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Do you THINK that writing in CAPITALS supports your POINT more STRONGLY?
BLM was a huge movement, at least 10,000 times bigger than the insurrection. Any numbers associated with it will likely be larger because that's what you get when you multiply things by 10,000. Do you not understand scale, or do you think any large movement is inherently evil simply because it's big. It seems you think that.
I am absolutely arguing that the Jan 6 rioters were much much worse people than the BLM protestors. Each one of th
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"No one said there was no damage or no bad people were there."
FALSE, plenty of Republicans said it. What NO ONE said is that there were 3000, that's what you refuted.
"The vast bulk of people went on a selfie tour and left as per security video. A relative handful of knuckleheads did stupid shit."
You know there's video evidence, right?
"As far as the costs go, that $30m is a fake government number from the same people who pay $10 for a nail and $18000 for a toilet."
So NASA did the repairs.
"Painting an entire
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You're correct, but people don't want to hear it. Especially not boomers whose source of truth is late night talk shows and 24/7 TV news networks.
Re:Pot/Kettle? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikipedia is exactly as reliable as its sources. So, what happens here is just Wikipedia trying to improve its reliability. Nothing bad in it.
Re:Pot/Kettle? (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia is exactly as reliable as its sources.
Well, not exactly. The article is a summary of the sources, theoretically written by consensus, but in practice often dominated by a few editors.
Wikipedia is decent if you check the article history and the sources. Unfortunately, for some articles the sources are books that are not easily available.
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Wikipedia is exactly as reliable as its sources.
Well, not exactly. The article is a summary of the sources, theoretically written by consensus, but in practice often dominated by a few editors.
Wikipedia is decent if you check the article history and the sources. Unfortunately, for some articles the sources are books that are not easily available.
I'd say Wikipedia is mostly reliable, but on contentious political stuff, I wouldn't accept it as a source as say, a teacher handing out an assignment. If a kid were doing a short paper on the Ford Model T, then sure, I'd take the Wikipedia page as a source. But nothing recently political.
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Wikipedia is exactly as reliable as its sources.
Wikipedia is, at best, as reliable as its sources
FTFY
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Oh the Irony (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh the Irony (Score:5, Informative)
one of the most unreliable sources
The reliability of Wikipedia has been studied by researchers selecting articles at random, fact-checking them, and verifying the sources.
Wikipedia has more errors per article but has much longer articles with more detailed information. Researchers have found that Wikipedia is at least as reliable as other encyclopedias when normalized for article length. Researchers have also found that the reliability of Wikipedia is improving.
Reliability of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
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one of the most unreliable sources
The reliability of Wikipedia has been studied by researchers selecting articles at random, fact-checking them, and verifying the sources.
Wikipedia has more errors per article but has much longer articles with more detailed information. Researchers have found that Wikipedia is at least as reliable as other encyclopedias when normalized for article length. Researchers have also found that the reliability of Wikipedia is improving.
Reliability of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Although I have never scrutinized Wikipedia in details, my impression seem to go along with what you say at least from simply consulting it.
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Reliability of Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Oh the Irony, indeed :-)
"not actively using AI" (Score:3)
It is important to clarify that CNET is not actively using AI to create new content.
"The person in charge of running that software is on vacation and IT is upgrading the PC."
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"At the time I am writing this sentence the rest of the team is in the bathroom".
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Looks like someone asks for a free pentest...
We'll publish the results right here for your convenience and everyone's entertainment, ok?
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So you're one of Putin's useful idiots...
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"Anyone who disagrees with my world view is an idiot and a Russian paid traitor because I live in a bubble and don't have a real response. Everything is like Twitter to me. I'd post a stupid animated gif meme if that was supported".
FTFY.
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Anyone who disagrees with my world view is an idiot
When one's worldview is that the weird Putin propaganda is not an accurate reflection of reality, then yes, anyone who disagrees with that world view is an idiot.
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That's a pretty good replacement for virtually everything you post. You should save it and just paste it in from now on.
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Cool, another easily triggered clown. I love you guys who crawl out of the wood work to take pot shots then vanish back into the dark crevices of your safe spaces.
You make me laugh. It's people like you that keep me coming back every day. Thanks for your logical, fact based, and meaningful input!
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"deep state"
So you're one of Putin's useful idiots...
If you think a deep state doesn't exist, then you're a fool. It doesn't take "Putin's useful idiots" to be wary of its reach. Because everyone in Washington fears it:
Do U.S. Politicians Need to Fear Our Intelligence Agencies? [aclu.org]
FTA:
"We know that the security establishment is enormously bloated, that it abuses its secrecy powers to advance its own interests, and that it engages in abuse of whistleblowers and others who challenge it. We know that it sometimes wantonly violates the law, and that it has a frightening degree of surveillance power. But what these reports hint at is that these powers have become a dangerously independent and significant force within our democratic system."
"Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you." - Sen. Chuck Schumer
And that's just the Intel agencies. Your life is in this country is governed by a veritable army of alphabet agencies that seek to rule you from top
Is the deep state just the civil service? (Score:2)
It's never been explained to me the difference between the alleged "deep state" and the federal civil service. The Pendleton Act of 1883 [wikipedia.org] shifted the civil service from a "spoils system," where the incoming administration conventionally fires everyone appointed by the opposite party, to one based on merit. This caused the civil service to gain the same sort of institutional memory [wikipedia.org] as any other group of people that survives changes in leadership. Is that all "deep state" means, or is there more than that?
AI destroys your credibility (Score:5, Informative)
It's that simple. Even if you have mediocre editors, they're still better than handing that job over to AI for one simple reason: AI cannot even determine whether a story is baloney. That may not matter to you when you're routinely inventing and exaggerating stories anyway for eyeballs. So yes, a lot of US media companies could as well replace their storytellers, sorry, editors with AI without any loss of credibility or quality. They didn't have any to start with.
But if you pretend to have "quality" journalism, AI is the death spell to your credibility. Because sooner or later, AI will "hallucinate" a story together and your credibility takes a hit. That may work once with a proper apology. Maybe twice. After that, you're squarely in the Fox News bin.
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*Unsupervised* AI destroys your credibility.
We should view AI like we view a teenage office assistant. They can do useful things and can handle many chores, but you wouldn't trust them to make important or difficult business decisions. Under the supervision of a good manager, they can be very helpful.
Same goes for AI.
Will Wikipedia get rid of their own AI articles? (Score:2, Troll)
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They also use AI to revert vandalism which has a notorious false positive rate
Do you have anything to back up using "notorious" here? You can look at Cluebot_NG's reverts and see this kind of thing [wikipedia.org]. AI doesn't have to be great when humans are this dumb.
and serves to enforce their clique of hierarchy. Then there are all the notability nuts that destroy all the human generated articles.
You wrote an article and it was deleted? The first rule of "Complain about Wikipedia Club" is never to give any specifics!
I did some cnet work years ago (Score:3)
They were very big on applying tech to everything even when pointless. Had a large dev team write their own applications in house to replace as much third party app/SaaS as possible even when that had no ROI and resulted in inferior internal tools. Hired and promoted writers and editors with no/little experience in any field much less their assigned topics.
It has always amazed me that not only have they thrived but people have ever taken them seriously as a source even before AI.
Ymmv.