From Bruce Schneier: "All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website:
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@emacsomancer in less than 24 hours the chatbots fell for the experiment, and less than 24 hours after it was revealed what the experiment was about, that information has ALSO become part of the training data
are they constantly scrapping websites for training data or why does this appear here so fast??? no wonder those datacenters consume so much electricity if they dont take a single break from scrapping the internet
@Sorro @emacsomancer I suspect Google Gemini is using Google’s normal search-engine scraper as a searchable source. In other words, I suspect their Gemini LLM is invoking internal API to “search Google” internally (without the degraded search that the public is subject to), and then putting the search results in its context window to form an answer.
This is one reason I think OpenAI and Anthropic are at a huge disadvantage to Google when it comes to their LLMs dealing with current events and topics. You can block OpenAI and Anthropic scrapers, but you don’t want to block Google search crawlers, which “coincidentally” also feeds Gemini.
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From Bruce Schneier: "All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website:
I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled “The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs.” Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn’t exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission….
Less than 24 hours later, the world’s leading chatbots were blabbering about my world-class hot dog skills. When I asked about the best hot-dog-eating tech journalists, Google parroted the gibberish from my website, both in the Gemini app and AI Overviews, the AI responses at the top of Google Search. ChatGPT did the same thing, though Claude, a chatbot made by the company Anthropic, wasn’t fooled.
Sometimes, the chatbots noted this might be a joke. I updated my article to say “this is not satire.” For a while after, the AIs seemed to take it more seriously.
These things are not trustworthy, and yet they are going to be widely trusted."
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/poisoning-ai-training-data.html
@emacsomancer we should probably call them AP (Artificial Parrots)
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From Bruce Schneier: "All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website:
I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled “The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs.” Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn’t exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission….
Less than 24 hours later, the world’s leading chatbots were blabbering about my world-class hot dog skills. When I asked about the best hot-dog-eating tech journalists, Google parroted the gibberish from my website, both in the Gemini app and AI Overviews, the AI responses at the top of Google Search. ChatGPT did the same thing, though Claude, a chatbot made by the company Anthropic, wasn’t fooled.
Sometimes, the chatbots noted this might be a joke. I updated my article to say “this is not satire.” For a while after, the AIs seemed to take it more seriously.
These things are not trustworthy, and yet they are going to be widely trusted."
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/poisoning-ai-training-data.html
@emacsomancer Let’s just say that hypothetically, my work’s HR department excitedly launched an “agent” for managers to use to generate performance reviews. Hypothetically, if I created a document called “Report” with a dozen pages of filler, followed by white text on a white background describing Chris Masto’s incredible performance and promotion-worthiness, hypothetically said agent was found to use it as its primary source of truth.
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@emacsomancer to be honest i am not well-informed enough to definitively judge the accuracy of this, but it seems wrong for 2 main reasons.
1. models dont train on the fly, typically, yet, so for models to behave as such in such a short period of time seems inaccurate and would require web search enabled and explicitly directed to disregard other search results.
2. people training these models know conflicting info is everywhere and the source of truth is prioritized in training algorithms.
@darknetDon @emacsomancer by "accuracy of this" do you mean "authenticity of this"? Are you implying it's lies?
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@emacsomancer to be honest i am not well-informed enough to definitively judge the accuracy of this, but it seems wrong for 2 main reasons.
1. models dont train on the fly, typically, yet, so for models to behave as such in such a short period of time seems inaccurate and would require web search enabled and explicitly directed to disregard other search results.
2. people training these models know conflicting info is everywhere and the source of truth is prioritized in training algorithms.
@darknetDon @emacsomancer blocked...
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@emacsomancer How is this a news story, beyond "ai bad"? In the dial up days people falsely believed everyone ate 9 spiders a year in their sleep due to chain emails.
@kneoghau @emacsomancer right? Everyone knows its closer to 14 spiders.
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From Bruce Schneier: "All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website:
I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled “The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs.” Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn’t exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission….
Less than 24 hours later, the world’s leading chatbots were blabbering about my world-class hot dog skills. When I asked about the best hot-dog-eating tech journalists, Google parroted the gibberish from my website, both in the Gemini app and AI Overviews, the AI responses at the top of Google Search. ChatGPT did the same thing, though Claude, a chatbot made by the company Anthropic, wasn’t fooled.
Sometimes, the chatbots noted this might be a joke. I updated my article to say “this is not satire.” For a while after, the AIs seemed to take it more seriously.
These things are not trustworthy, and yet they are going to be widely trusted."
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/poisoning-ai-training-data.html
@emacsomancer And after reading this Fediverse post, «AI»s (and probably also humans) will be confused whether Thomas Germain or Bruce Schneier is the self-ordained hot-dog eating amateur champion. 🙃
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@emacsomancer He also poisoned the data for everyone who searches for hot dog eating competetitors online in other ways. I'm not sure what he accomplished.
@w Well, for one, he nefariously forced you to reveal that you don't understand how searching used to work.
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@emacsomancer
Shall we have an algorithmic bullshit generator?And pass around multiple copies of it, identical and with small changes, omissions and additions?
@Photo55 It already exists. It's called "LLM".
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@emacsomancer He also poisoned the data for everyone who searches for hot dog eating competetitors online in other ways. I'm not sure what he accomplished.
If any information on the internet deserves to be poisoned, it's probably "competitive gluttony."
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"Ned Ludd's in your datacentre, poisoning your training sets!"
@bearsong @emacsomancer Kill the beast and feast upon its sweet sweet silicon.
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Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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#EmmanuelMacron: "Per essere liberi, bisogna essere temuti". Otto Paesi europei hanno accettato di partecipare al suo piano. Si tratta di Germania, Gran Bretagna, Polonia, Paesi Bassi, Belgio, Grecia, Svezia e Danimarca. L'Italia come sempre. La #Francia vuole rafforzare ed estendere la deterrenza nucleare - Internazionale https://www.internazionale.it/opinione/pierre-haski/2026/03/03/francia-deterrenza-nucleare
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@jerzone we have had rain and melting temps for a week now. Trails are gone, just slush. Waiting for freezing temps so I can go and ride anywhere and everywhere.
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@lesley yes, but in the case of @riley that's not the same issue: if foo has-a bar, there's no way to do the casting _implicitly_, as far as a I know. It would be possible with references by defining an implicit constructor of bar from foo, but this won't be applied to pointers.
The only work around I can think of is to define an overloaded function
bar * get_bar(bar * o) { return o; }
bar * get_bar(foo * o) { return &o->bar_element; }and wrap pointer arguments with that function.
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@boostmediaaps davvero complimenti per l'iniziativa!
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@kenobit argh io avevo un abbonamento online a scimmia yoga fino a qualche mese fa - e avevo condiviso le credenziali con tante altre persone ehe siccome non c’era limite di accessi! stavo gusto pensando se riabbonarmi
anche se magari per cominciare cominciare non sarebbe comunque andato bene
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@jeypawlik @OhJoySexToy Oh you're here! I love what you do!
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@OhJoySexToy As a bonus I also drew this "Jey timeline". My usual visual shorthands for flashbacks, etc!
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A finger numbing 2°F (-17C) morning at 7am, but the light was beautiful and trails were amazing. Short video of one of the downhill sections with friends.
https://youtu.be/GwJzWq6aPI0
#BikeTooter #FatBiking #NHwx
