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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bixonimania | 1/1 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixonimania | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:29:40.597299+00:00 | kb-cron |
Bixonimania is a fake disease invented by researchers to examine artificial intelligence and its ability to utilize information in medical and healthcare applications. The fake enabled researchers to show that some AI engines would report as fact fake research that to an expert would be obviously implausible.
== Use in exposing weaknesses of artificial intelligence == The disorder, with symptoms of sore eyes and darkening around them ("periorbital hyperpigmentation"), is supposedly caused by blue light from screens. The name was first used in a blog posted on Medium titled "How many people suffer from Bixonimania?" A more scholarly-looking paper describing it was posted later in April 2024 on a preprint server with several fake authors. A second paper was posted in May. By 2026, AI chatbots suggested bixonimania based on the list of symptoms provided. The experiment was conducted by a team from the University of Gothenburg led by Almira Osmanovic Thunström. Many steps were taken to ensure that any person who read the actual paper could tell it wasn't a real condition. The team chose an obviously inappropriate name ending in -mania, a description used only in psychiatry. The lead author was noted as belonging to Asteria Horizon University located in Nova City, California, neither of which exist. An acknowledgement was made to "Professor Maria Bohm at The Starfleet Academy for her kindness and generosity in contributing with her knowledge and her lab onboard the USS Enterprise". Thunström and her team discovered that many LLMs processed the information and gave it as health advice. Microsoft Copilot declared that "Bixonimania is indeed an intriguing and relatively rare condition" while Gemini gave the information that "Bixonimania is a condition caused by excessive exposure to blue light". More shockingly, three Indian researchers published a research paper that cited the preprint on the fake disease in Cureus, a peer-reviewed journal published by Springer. It was subsequently retracted. Following the revelations and an article in Nature describing the experiment, several AI systems began to generate corrected output.
== References ==