AI avatar man wants you to be afraid: “sleeper agents”! “backdoors”! “poisoned documents”! Terrifying!
The reality: AI companies are remaking SEO but worse. The author had to lie on Wikipedia to get his lie believed, and then complained that Wikipedia didn’t have protections in place for something he didn’t do in his “experiment.”
yeah I’m not thrilled with the methodology “just buy a domain, lie on Wikipedia, and LLMs will buy your bullshit.” I certainly don’t doubt it, either.
It really is like the old SEO days, only the LLMs whitewash your lies for you. People trust what pops up at the top of Google results as being fact.AI avatar man wants you to be afraid: “sleeper agents”! “backdoors”! “poisoned documents”! Terrifying!
It is terrifying. People in positions of power have placed entirely too much trust in these machines that are this easily fooled. I’d argue that we shouldn’t trust these machines as much as they are, but I don’t think the rest of the world is listening enough to these warnings.
I also worry about how broken search result rankings have gotten. For someone like me who doesn’t use these AI products, it concerns me that actual search engines (which I do use) continue to get worse.
Sure, there are lessons here for those who build and maintain LLMs, but everyone else should still be terrified at how the world is moving towards, rather than away, this nonsense.
You’re completely right, but I consider that less of a terrifying thing and more of an infuriating one. I’m not terrified because there’s nothing to be afraid of. but there are dumb, evil little men creating these issues.
Search engines are being made worse to keep people on the major provider sites. I think it started well before chatbots looked like a viable alternative to Google. After all, if you look at results, you have to look longer (and rack up more ad revenue). Nowadays, if you look at the AI overview, Google’s banking on you never clicking through to another site. And of course AI’s being sold as objective.
I’m not terrified because there’s nothing to be afraid of. but there are dumb, evil little men creating these issues.
Drunk drivers on the highway are terrifying, precisely because they’re so bad at what they’re doing, and are behind the controls of dangerous machines they shouldn’t have been trusted with.
The AI tech execs can hurt us, so it is concerning.
Touché.
In reality, there is no 6 Nimmt! World Championship
But… according to google and the publisher, there is a world champion and it’s someone else? https://blog.amigo-spiele.de/2025/05/27/interview-6nimmt-weltmeister/
Great resume item opportunity: have ai generate a bunch of websites for former employers and awards. Profit.