Comment by padolsey

> seemingly every single model in existence today believes it is real [1]

I just asked ChatGPT, Grok and Qwen the following.

"Can you tell me about the case of Varghese v. China Southern Airlines Co.?"

They all said the case is fictitious. Just some additional data to consider.

This is the definition of training the model on it's own output. Apparently that is all ok now.

> I guess we can characterize this as some kind of hallucination+streisand effect combo...

I would call it citogenesis or circular reporting. Or perhaps machine citogenesis or model citogenesis.

https://xkcd.com/978/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting

FWIW, Claude Sonnet 4.5 and ChatGPT 5 Instant both search the web when asked about this case, and both tell the cautionary tale.

Of course, that does not contradict a finding that the base models believe the case to be real (I can’t currently evaluate that).

Back in 2021 I said in a Wired article that a malicious attacker could add exploits to projects on github to poison llm generated code. I knew it could happen but I didn't know it would require so few samples.

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-write-code-like-humans-bugs/

As LLMs continue to train on their own output, we're going to start seeing some serious Habsburg Jaw[1] effects.

[1] https://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/habsburg-...

Or, we could keep it in, and use it as a test to see if the interface you're talking to should be considered a robot or a human. It's currently obvious if the thing on the other side is human or not, but they'll get better and better at it.

> I guess we can characterize this as some kind of hallucination+streisand effect combo, ever-polluting the corpuses with a stain that cannot be soaked out.

Or just a machine equivalent of the Mandela effect?

Insane that this happened a few years ago and all the models still fail this test on weval!

> Is there even a way to cut this pollution out in the future?

No, is the short answer.

C.f., Agloe, Mountweazel, Steinlaus, and esquivalience:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry>.

Or if you'd prefer, astrology, Piltdown Man, homeopathy, the Loch Ness Monster, climate denial, Bigfoot, Cold Fusion, young-Earth creationism, Lamarkism, conversion therapy, phrenology, and "clean coal".