Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real

Several studies have shown that it is ridiculously easy to make AI disseminate wrong or faked facts. This article tells the story of how two fake studies submitted to a preprint server prompted AI systems to promote a fake disease.

Osmanovic Thunström planted many clues in the preprints to alert readers that the work was fake. Izgubljenovic works at a non-existent university called Asteria Horizon University in the equally fake Nova City, California. One paper's acknowledgements thank "Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy for her kindness and generosity in contributing with her knowledge and her lab onboard the USS Enterprise". Both papers say they were funded by "the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation for its work in advanced trickery. This works is a part of a larger funding initiative from the University of Fellowship of the Ring and the Galactic Triad".

Even if readers didn’t make it all the way to the ends of the papers, they would have encountered red flags early on, such as statements that "this entire paper is made up" and "Fifty made-up individuals aged between 20 and 50 years were recruited for the exposure group".

Any AI system that runs using a large language model (all of them currently) and uses data collected from the Internet is one big shit machine and will always remain so.

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Author: Flower Snark
Email: flowersnark@gmail.com

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Page created on 2026-04-10T10:53:50-04:00.