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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

#201

Post by pcwalton »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #133
tkgally wrote: post #17

Both HN itself and prolific HN contributor simonw get shoutouts in the article: “The term [‘slop’] has sprung up in 4chan, Hacker News and YouTube comments, where anonymous posters sometimes project their proficiency in complex subject matter by using in-group language.” “Some have identified Simon Willison, a developer, as an early adopter of the term — but Mr. Willison, who has pushed for the phrase’s adoption, sai…

4chan has been calling things "slop" for literally so long I can't remember when it started. If you go to /g/ literally right now, ctrl F slop, 4 hits just on the front page previews. If anything, it originally started as calling things "goyslop", which you might be able to deduce is a portmanteau of "goyim" and "slop", the implication (given it's 4chan) of course being that it's low-quality stuff made by Jews that i…

> I assume it's kind of like Pepe? People see the cute frog or the edgy designation of things as "slop" not knowing that's kind of a minced version of how it's actually used on 4chan.

The way 4chan lingo seeps into mainstream Internet discourse is so annoying. It happened with "degenerate" too (which, of course, 4chan borrowed from the Nazis' Degenerate Art Exhibition).

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

#203

Post by cptcobalt »

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 - The horrendous mess that Quora became with technically correct in some ways but also misleading answers to historical content.…

Anything that is a response to classic "SEO manipulation" to get higher ranking on a search engine result page to create an appearance that the content is higher value, is more comprehensive, or took more effort to produce does create net-slop. And that's been going on for 10+ years.

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

#204

Post by 93po »

visarga wrote: post #183
cletus wrote: post #43

I'm a huge Neal Stephenson fan. Cryptonomicon is to this day one of my all-time favorite books. Years ago now I read Anathem. It wasn't as good but it had some really interesting ideas. One such idea was how the Internet was filled with garbage by all these agents (which were implied or stated were AI, I can't recall). They would subtly change things to be wrong. Why? Essentially to sell you a solution to this that f…

We can always rely on pre-2022 data. But I guess what you're saying is plausible, I see it becoming like the adversarial game of virus vs immune system, a constant arms race. We got to build our immunity. On the one hand AI can churn bullshit on command, on the other hand training on large datasets tends to cancel out many errors across the corpus. All the more reason to use local models and curated feeds from now on…

It's interesting how often I have to look at timestamps on content on the internet these days. I assume anything after 2022 that has the slightest whiff of ChatGPT wordiness is probably slop

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

#205

Post by noobermin »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #58
imabotbeep2937 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Content was the OG slop. Buzzfeed with monkeys on typewriters. The problem is that dopamine addicts generate outsized engagement. I know a literal crack mom who spends a solid 90+ hours a week watching accident videos to keep her brain triggered. The algorithm caters to her. Send promotional emails daily or more, constant notifications, recommend the same few videos over and over. Gotta get in there before she…

Hmm. An AI trained to maximize dopamine could be a very bad thing. (It won't be stated that way. It will be trained to "maximize engagement", but it amounts to the same thing.)

Too many people are worried about hallucinating AIs somehow taking over nukes instead of them juicing the dopamine machines

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

#206

Post by zrn900 »

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 horrendous mess that Quora became

Its not a horrendous mess for me. It works very well. Everything depends on what content you interact with as the algorithm heavily shapes your content depending on what you interact with. Its no different from any other social network.

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

#207

Post by hotdogscout »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #133
tkgally wrote: post #17

Both HN itself and prolific HN contributor simonw get shoutouts in the article: “The term [‘slop’] has sprung up in 4chan, Hacker News and YouTube comments, where anonymous posters sometimes project their proficiency in complex subject matter by using in-group language.” “Some have identified Simon Willison, a developer, as an early adopter of the term — but Mr. Willison, who has pushed for the phrase’s adoption, sai…

4chan has been calling things "slop" for literally so long I can't remember when it started. If you go to /g/ literally right now, ctrl F slop, 4 hits just on the front page previews. If anything, it originally started as calling things "goyslop", which you might be able to deduce is a portmanteau of "goyim" and "slop", the implication (given it's 4chan) of course being that it's low-quality stuff made by Jews that i…

"Goyslop" as an insult is less about anti-semitism and more about how Jews are allegedly injecting anti-white multiculturalism (ex: DEI) in entertainment.

So things that are woke get called goyslop (as opposed to Jewish as you imply).

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

#208

Post by sfp »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #133
tkgally wrote: post #17

Both HN itself and prolific HN contributor simonw get shoutouts in the article: “The term [‘slop’] has sprung up in 4chan, Hacker News and YouTube comments, where anonymous posters sometimes project their proficiency in complex subject matter by using in-group language.” “Some have identified Simon Willison, a developer, as an early adopter of the term — but Mr. Willison, who has pushed for the phrase’s adoption, sai…

4chan has been calling things "slop" for literally so long I can't remember when it started. If you go to /g/ literally right now, ctrl F slop, 4 hits just on the front page previews. If anything, it originally started as calling things "goyslop", which you might be able to deduce is a portmanteau of "goyim" and "slop", the implication (given it's 4chan) of course being that it's low-quality stuff made by Jews that i…

I got curious and first usage was apparently on 08 May 2019 ">Implying I care about what Goyslop companies do".

https://archive.4plebs.org/_/search/text/goyslop/order/asc/

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

#209

Post by hotdogscout »

pcwalton wrote: post #201
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4chan has been calling things "slop" for literally so long I can't remember when it started. If you go to /g/ literally right now, ctrl F slop, 4 hits just on the front page previews. If anything, it originally started as calling things "goyslop", which you might be able to deduce is a portmanteau of "goyim" and "slop", the implication (given it's 4chan) of course being that it's low-quality stuff made by Jews that i…

> I assume it's kind of like Pepe? People see the cute frog or the edgy designation of things as "slop" not knowing that's kind of a minced version of how it's actually used on 4chan. The way 4chan lingo seeps into mainstream Internet discourse is so annoying. It happened with "degenerate" too (which, of course, 4chan borrowed from the Nazis' Degenerate Art Exhibition).

Degenerate was never used to describe people in a non-hateful context though, even before it became /pol/'s favorite word.

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

#210

Post by asadotzler »

zrn900 wrote: post #206
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 horrendous mess that Quora became Its not a horrendous mess for me. It works very well. Everything depends on what content you interact with as the algorithm heavily shapes your content depending on what you interact with. Its no different from any other social network.

99% of people who use Quora don't use it as a social network, they click that top Google search result claiming to answer their question and then get frustrated at how fucked up Quora's website is and how rarely it actually answers their question.
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