From Bruce Schneier: "All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website:
Uncategorized
31
Posts
30
Posters
50
Views
-
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)
-
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.
-
@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?
-
@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...
-
@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.
-
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. 🙃
-
@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.
-
@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".
-
@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."
-
"Ned Ludd's in your datacentre, poisoning your training sets!"
@bearsong @emacsomancer Kill the beast and feast upon its sweet sweet silicon.
-
undefined swelljoe@mas.to shared this topic on
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
-
@kenobit
Aikido?
-
@hikingdude wait I wasn't aware that some VPS providers didn't allow the creation of snapshots. Really? 😩
-
@bianot Mi piacerebbe molto, ma per imparare dovrei andare in un posto dove si pratica e:
1) non ne ho uno vicino a casa
2) vorrei non spendere soldi(detto questo, è una vita che vorrei iniziare a praticarlo)
-
@snow OT ricordo che qualche anno addietro, c'era un programma per windows che metteva in collegamento le radioline pmr446. Ricordo che con mezzo watt ho parlato da Courmayeur a Napoli.
-
Make it shitty!
Geniale questo video del Norwegian Consumer Council che analizza il fenomeno dell'#enshittification.
In fondo è proprio così: si creano servizi digitali che all'inizio sono gratuiti o a pochissimo costo, sono utili, belli ma man mano per poter restare si peggiorano - non nel senso che diventano brutti - ma per avere servizi essenziale bisogna pagare.
-
@informapirata se non avessi messo il link ci varei pure creduto.
Signore e signori benvenuti nel Circo delle Pantegane.
-
@soatok @rusty__shackleford you're absolutely right
-
@cwebber @rusty__shackleford The "spell out the acronyms used in the filenames" part does gesture suggestively towards "AI"
The heel-turn on me allegedly not contacting them without an "You're absolutely right!" tells me that, even if it is AI, they at least edited the sycophancy out of it.
