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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
Bruce Schneier merely referred to a BBC article of Thomas Germain:
@Yendolosch @emacsomancer The use of "hacked" in that headline is a bit self-aggrandizing?
, 
) & Bon-Bon (
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) @lyrabon@equestria.social@emacsomancer Automated culture jamming.
@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 we should probably call them AP (Artificial Parrots)
@w@mountains.social@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 it's not really a new thing Russians are already using this technique to poison training data:
Edit: there is some newer reporting on that matter, but I can't find it right now/don't have it anywhere at hand
"Ned Ludd's in your datacentre, poisoning your training sets!"
Bearsong played at Bomba last Sunday.
We had a great time, it was so much fun.
this song is called Tales Told, it's about legends, and Luddites
@forthy42@mastodon.net2o.de@emacsomancer It's on the Internetz, so it must be true!
AI is able to replace about half of humanity if making the same errors counts.
@emacsomancer we should start drawing more penises then...