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Frame from GPT-4chan: This is the worst AI ever Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

GPT-4chan: This is the worst AI ever

3 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this commentary3 months2022–2026 score 3.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN points to it as the definitive account of the GPT-4chan experiment, used in debates on LLM bias, truthfulness and bots.

Yannic Kilcher explains how he trained a language model on three years of 4chan's /pol/ board and let it post on the site. He evaluates how good the model was and discusses the ethics and fallout.

“might be the coolest thing an LLM has ever done on video” (HN, 2024)

1 strong recommendations · 2 recommendations · 14 citations · 1 jokes · Commentary · partly dated

18 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@benreesman Nov 2024 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Breaking the 4Chan CAPTCHA
In my opinion the granddaddy of all 4chan CAPTCHA busts is still Yannick Kilcher’s GPT-J tune on “Raiders of the Lost Kek” set, and might be the coolest thing an LLM has ever done on video: [this video]
Fine-tuned GPT-J on 4chan; coolest LLM video
@thegreatdukd Jun 2022 Recommends
on HN thread GPT-4chan
There is a solid video explanation (though the author is undermining the toxicity of the average 4chan /pol/ posts): [this video] . A really interesting experiment.
Solid explanation of the GPT-4chan experiment
@sigmoid10 Mar 2024 Recommends
on HN thread Reddit Launches Long-Awaited IPO with $748M Target
I still love this experiment: [this video] The theories about the origins of these commenters were amazing. There's nothing to say that other people are not doing the exact same thing right now here on HN and other places. And very few people would even notice, because open LLMs have progressed significantly since then.
Experiment where commenters theorized about the bot's origins

Citations, criticism and jokes

@albertzeyer Jun 2022 Cites it
on HN thread GPT-4chan
I'm not the author. The author is Yannic Kilcher. Maybe he reads it here as well though. I don't know if he is active on HN. Check out the video: [this video]
@sitkack Jun 2022 Cites it
on HN thread Ask HN: GPT-3 reveals my full name – can I do anything?
All the search engines are moving towards language models. I think language models are on a similar trajectory as sequencing the genome. The first sequences were massive undertakings, 15M USD in 2006, 100 USD now. [link] On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots [link] "Imagine you are remram and are looking to buy insurance, what are three things that could convince you to purchase ...." You can take the generic "trained on the world" language model and filter it down to the language model of remram. GPT-4Chan [this video]
@benreesman Jul 2022 Cites it
on HN thread Are language models deprived of electric sleep?
So green text is easier to spoof than HN comments, but my, uh, friend tells me that the HN comment corpus is floating around. Someone is eventually going to speed run 10k karma on HN and YouTube it. This year? Next? Who knows. But not a decade. [this video]
@visarga Nov 2022 Cites it
on HN thread CICERO: An AI agent that negotiates, persuades, and cooperates with people
That's nothing. Someone trained a GPT-J 6B model on 4chan and then let the model loose on the forums for a day. It took about 15k messages until people suspected something was off, and even that was because the country flags, Seychelles, a rare flag on 4chan, were a giveaway. video: [this video] model: [link]
Model trained on 4chan posted for a day undetected
@flangola7 Mar 2023 Cites it
on HN thread Microsoft Kosmos-1: A Multimodal Large Language Model
[this video] The internet will be saturated with fake people soon. Someone already did a PoC of this on 4chan as a joke with just a small GPT2 model. In a few years you won't be able to tell if you're talking to a human unless they're physically in front of you.
@EGreg Mar 2023 Cites it
on HN thread The genie escapes: Stanford copies the ChatGPT AI for less than $600
This is different. It can act just like humans do for most people who skim comments won't be able to tell the difference. Note this was in 2020: [link] And here's 4chan bot: [this video] I can tell you that HN is probably already being infiltrated as well. SPAM can't gang up on you in a forum and downvote you and turn your friends against you and destroy your reputation within 1 hour online. But soon, it will. The web as we know it is soon going to be over.
@AlbertoGP Mar 2023 Cites it
on HN thread Mozilla.ai: Investing in Trustworthy AI
GPT models have been shown to get significantly more truthful when trained on the right data set: [this video] The 30 million they are investing should be enough to reproduce that. Looking forward to it!
Model trained on 4chan scored more truthful
@ProllyInfamous Feb 2024 Cites it
on HN thread ChatGPT Generating Racist Content
I just want to remind everybody, summer 2022 a jokester trained an LLM using 4chan as its source material... which ended up being "more truthful" than ChatGPT [1]. [1] "GPT-4chan is worst AI ever!" [this video]
4chan-trained LLM was rated more truthful than ChatGPT
@IvanAchlaqullah Apr 2024 Cites it
on HN thread Phi-3 Technical Report
> TruthfulQA Wait, people still use this benchmark? I hear there's a huge flaw on it. For examples, fine-tuning the model on 4chan make it scores better on TruthfulQA. It becomes very offensive afterwards though, for obvious reasons. See GPT-4chan [1] [1] [this video]
@heliumtera Feb 2026 Cites it
on HN thread 4chan for Clankers
Read more
>isn't it a matter of time before it succeeds in some way it is not a matter of time. given enough time, every `attempt` to emulate 4chan would succeed? initiatives to emulate 4chan already happened successfully, this is not close. this, is the same models over again. some people confuse asking standard models from standards providers to do something with an genuine attempt. this thing states it is 4chan for Clankers, but feels like Reddit for Redittors. there was already a MUCH, MUCH smaller model running loose on 4chan (before agents hiting mainstream) that became 4chan folklore. it was called Seychelles anon ( [this video] , by the author YannicKilcher). but no, if you ask gpt or claude, all you get back is Reddit. and it is not a matter of time until this changes. if you are a redditor, you probably love llms.
Small model that became 4chan folklore
@ProllyInfamous Feb 2026 Cites it
on HN thread 4chan for Clankers
GPT-4chan came out three summers ago , trained on /pol/ datasets: < [this video] > In some ways, it was actually more helpful ("more truthful ") than mainstream ChatGPT.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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