3 ms·

> This has been a problem for years. Hah, yep. I used to build tools to detect it at an adtech startup. A common approach at the time was to take someone else'

by paulgb 3y ago

> This has been a problem for years. Hah, yep. I used to build tools to detect it at an adtech startup. A common approach at the time was to take someone else's text and use naive thesaurus replacement so that it would be just barely comprehensible but statistically look like english. So “You can catch the mouse” might become “you jar trap the rodent”. Glad to see how far technology has progressed! /s

seanp2k2 3y ago
yay the arms race between ROI and computational power required to generate spam vs ROI and computational power required to tell if something is indeed spam, the inescapable cat-and-mouse game between users just trying to find something that isn't garbage while a million hawksters attempt to dupe them into buying their garbage products
duskwuff 3y ago
And, unfortunately, it's still an ongoing problem. Some of it even ends up getting published by IEEE, e.g. [1]. There was some research a few years ago [2] into just how widespread this issue was in scientific publishing. The situation has likely only gotten worse with the introduction of higher-quality text generation LLMs. [1]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8597261 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8597261 [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.06751 https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.06751
TechBro8615 3y ago
I've noticed this sometimes where it replaces proper nouns with a synonym, e.g. "Bill Gates" becomes "Invoice Gates." Unfortunately that pattern only applies to the most bottom-of-the-barrel SEO spam. I expect ChatGPT output will be more subtle, but if a lazy spammer doesn't obfuscate it enough, there will still be some tells - e.g. the five paragraph essay format with a conclusion beginning with "overall..."
- vintermann 3y ago
  Language models have seen enough of this genre of gibberish already that they can imitate it flawlessly. https://twitter.com/janellecshane/status/1280915484351754240 https://twitter.com/janellecshane/status/1280915484351754240
- stef25 3y ago
  Amazon here in Europe is overrun with those kind of wrong translations, input by product sellers that just run everything through google translate. Still amazing that a player as big as Amazon accepts all this content, which is just 1 step above gibberish.

by paulgb 3y ago

seanp2k2 3y ago

yay the arms race between ROI and computational power required to generate spam vs ROI and computational power required to tell if something is indeed spam, the inescapable cat-and-mouse game between users just trying to find something that isn't garbage while a million hawksters attempt to dupe them into buying their garbage products

duskwuff 3y ago

And, unfortunately, it's still an ongoing problem. Some of it even ends up getting published by IEEE, e.g. [1]. There was some research a few years ago [2] into just how widespread this issue was in scientific publishing. The situation has likely only gotten worse with the introduction of higher-quality text generation LLMs. [1]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8597261 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8597261 [2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.06751 https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.06751

TechBro8615 3y ago

I've noticed this sometimes where it replaces proper nouns with a synonym, e.g. "Bill Gates" becomes "Invoice Gates." Unfortunately that pattern only applies to the most bottom-of-the-barrel SEO spam. I expect ChatGPT output will be more subtle, but if a lazy spammer doesn't obfuscate it enough, there will still be some tells - e.g. the five paragraph essay format with a conclusion beginning with "overall..."

vintermann 3y ago
Language models have seen enough of this genre of gibberish already that they can imitate it flawlessly. https://twitter.com/janellecshane/status/1280915484351754240 https://twitter.com/janellecshane/status/1280915484351754240
stef25 3y ago
Amazon here in Europe is overrun with those kind of wrong translations, input by product sellers that just run everything through google translate. Still amazing that a player as big as Amazon accepts all this content, which is just 1 step above gibberish.