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A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

nytimes.com

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Re: A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

#21

Post by GaggiX »

duxup wrote: post #14

Slop seems like a good term for unwanted AI generated content. But I wonder how much this is AI and how much we've sort of curated a slop pattern even before AI: - Video game tips web pages with massive chunks of text / ads before you get to the inevitable answer of "hit A when X happens". - The horrendous mess that Quora became with technically correct in some ways but also misleading answers to historical content.…

We also had the term "slop" before and it's not strictly related to AI but "content or media of little-to-no value".

Re: A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

#22

Post by tananaev »

duxup wrote: post #14

Slop seems like a good term for unwanted AI generated content. But I wonder how much this is AI and how much we've sort of curated a slop pattern even before AI: - Video game tips web pages with massive chunks of text / ads before you get to the inevitable answer of "hit A when X happens". - The horrendous mess that Quora became with technically correct in some ways but also misleading answers to historical content.…

That's a result of natural selection forced by search engines. I think that's why I like ChatGPT so much. You can ask it very specific things and it will tell you exactly what you need. It does also output verbose answers by default, but you can control it by promoting for a short answer.

Re: A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

#23

Post by duxup »

tananaev wrote: post #22
duxup wrote: post #14

Slop seems like a good term for unwanted AI generated content. But I wonder how much this is AI and how much we've sort of curated a slop pattern even before AI: - Video game tips web pages with massive chunks of text / ads before you get to the inevitable answer of "hit A when X happens". - The horrendous mess that Quora became with technically correct in some ways but also misleading answers to historical content.…

That's a result of natural selection forced by search engines. I think that's why I like ChatGPT so much. You can ask it very specific things and it will tell you exactly what you need. It does also output verbose answers by default, but you can control it by promoting for a short answer.

Good point.

I do find myself sometimes even prompting for a shorter answer after it hits me with a blob of text ;)

Re: A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

#24

Post by skydhash »

fullshark wrote: post #20

I see no alternative if people are unwilling to actually pay for content. It's just going to be individualized slop feeds on every advertising based media app until they get tired of that (zero sign of that coming). Maybe the algorithms will be so good, and enough creative people will use these tools to generate truly exciting content that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise but it just looks totally dire to me…

People wants to pay for content, but publishers are either not working on content worth paying for or don’t want you to purchase, they want you to rent instead.

Re: A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

#25

Post by rini17 »

fullshark wrote: post #20

I see no alternative if people are unwilling to actually pay for content. It's just going to be individualized slop feeds on every advertising based media app until they get tired of that (zero sign of that coming). Maybe the algorithms will be so good, and enough creative people will use these tools to generate truly exciting content that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise but it just looks totally dire to me…

The subscription usually comes in a package and people hate to pay for something they disagree with, even if it's just one author of several, or the occassional mistake.

Might not be the main reason, just that these unsatisfied users are so vocal, idk.

Re: A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

#26

Post by wdutch »

duxup wrote: post #14

Slop seems like a good term for unwanted AI generated content. But I wonder how much this is AI and how much we've sort of curated a slop pattern even before AI: - Video game tips web pages with massive chunks of text / ads before you get to the inevitable answer of "hit A when X happens". - The horrendous mess that Quora became with technically correct in some ways but also misleading answers to historical content.…

I think you're right. Since LLMs went mainstream, I've seen a lot of my colleagues' presentations and thought "was this written by ChatGPT?" but I've come to wonder if it's just given me the frame of mind to identify low-effort slop that lacks any original insight but uses all the right sorts of words and phrases, regardless of if it was authored by a human or not.

Re: A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

#28

Post by duxup »

skydhash wrote: post #24
fullshark wrote: post #20

I see no alternative if people are unwilling to actually pay for content. It's just going to be individualized slop feeds on every advertising based media app until they get tired of that (zero sign of that coming). Maybe the algorithms will be so good, and enough creative people will use these tools to generate truly exciting content that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise but it just looks totally dire to me…

People wants to pay for content, but publishers are either not working on content worth paying for or don’t want you to purchase, they want you to rent instead.

Chicken and the egg there as far as "worth paying for" although I'd argue that's not really any different than "don't want to pay".

Re: A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

#29

Post by barfbagginus »

fullshark wrote: post #20

I see no alternative if people are unwilling to actually pay for content. It's just going to be individualized slop feeds on every advertising based media app until they get tired of that (zero sign of that coming). Maybe the algorithms will be so good, and enough creative people will use these tools to generate truly exciting content that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise but it just looks totally dire to me…

False. False. False.

1. People could forcibly seize and redistribute content already made in years 1980-2020. Even that would be better than slop.

2. People could read only those - like scientists or open source and public domain authors - either funded by the state or otherwise willing to publish their works for free at high quality without the monetization slop text. The content exists, but monetized slop hides it.

3. Actually good AI can compress multiple slop articles into useful, non-sloppy content.

I'd be perfectly fine if the internet consists of just math textbooks and science papers, and actually good articles automatically distilled from slop.

It has the potential to give us what we need.

The problem is that slop hides all that!

Re: A new term, ‘slop’, has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material

#30

Post by threetonesun »

duxup wrote: post #14

Slop seems like a good term for unwanted AI generated content. But I wonder how much this is AI and how much we've sort of curated a slop pattern even before AI: - Video game tips web pages with massive chunks of text / ads before you get to the inevitable answer of "hit A when X happens". - The horrendous mess that Quora became with technically correct in some ways but also misleading answers to historical content.…

The signal to noise being so bad on the web today is AI's most compelling use for me, it's better at getting a pretty-close-to-right answer than searching the web, with much less crap I have to block along the way.

But, consider that all that crap ended up on the web for a reason, and wonder how long before AI just injects it itself into its own results.

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