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You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

newyorker.com

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Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#31

Post by doesnt_know »

shombaboor wrote: post #3
ishtanbul wrote: post #2

The outcome is that spaces which are prone to AI slop and spam will wither and lose real users, eventually collapsing on themselves. For the social media platforms, good riddance

Discord and heavily moderated forums are the future.

Yeah, small, invite-only "walled garden" style communities are definitely the future of the web.

There has always been those of course, but I think they will just end up becoming the default, rather then the fringes. And the thing with these smaller communities is that they are far less tolerant to their hosting platforms pulling dumb shit (like stating they will train AI's on the comunities content).

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#32

Post by zamadatix »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #9

> For the time being, though, avoiding A.I. is up to you. If it were as easy as posting a message of objection on Instagram, many of us would already be seeing a lot less of it. It's true that it is quite hard, but there are ways to reduce it for sure. Here is what I have done: 1. I've deleted accounts for websites that promote AI. I have already deleted LinkedIn, Github, Medium, and a few others. 2. I have stopped s…

A commendable effort (those are some serious sacrifices/actions - no videos!?) but it's a bit at odds with posting about it here which puts into question how much reduction in AI content specifically is occurring vs how much reduction in general consumption (which isn't necessarily a bad thing though). I.e. Y Combinator invests in hundreds of AI companies, >25% of the front page posts are regularly about AI, it was an original investor in OpenAI, users here regular post and discuss about how the latest AI models are even harder to catch. Even if you try to use the site in the most human way possible (filtering explicitly AI content, not engaging with comments referencing it, etc) it still seems like there would be a ton of AI content at a place that does more with AI than most of the companies listed.

All that isn't to scare you from Y Combinator or anything, it's just to get your thoughts on how much you think these actions have really changed your consumption ratio vs your overall consumption? And how have you come to any certainty in the measurement of e.g. whether an article you're about to click on has AI images or text (that would seem near impossible to do much of the time even after reading?)

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#33

Post by moron4hire »

ryandv wrote: post #8

This is just the practice of invasive data harvesting taken to its natural conclusion, which any tech savvy user or computer geek brought up in the pre-postmodern social media era of the Internet (before Facebook) could have seen coming decades in advance. The only winning move here is not to play, accepting the unfortunate consequence that you will need to "limit the reach of your profile just to avoid participating…

It's not possible to not play. Even if I chose to avoid social media, my kids' school insists everyone interest with their teachers through some crappy branded app.

Read the TOS. Didn't like what I saw. Told them I didn't want to install an app on my phone. Asked nicely if there was some way I could participate without it. They acted like I beat my kids.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#34

Post by _heimdall »

moron4hire wrote: post #33
ryandv wrote: post #8

This is just the practice of invasive data harvesting taken to its natural conclusion, which any tech savvy user or computer geek brought up in the pre-postmodern social media era of the Internet (before Facebook) could have seen coming decades in advance. The only winning move here is not to play, accepting the unfortunate consequence that you will need to "limit the reach of your profile just to avoid participating…

It's not possible to not play. Even if I chose to avoid social media, my kids' school insists everyone interest with their teachers through some crappy branded app. Read the TOS. Didn't like what I saw. Told them I didn't want to install an app on my phone. Asked nicely if there was some way I could participate without it. They acted like I beat my kids.

How do schools actually manage requiring this? Is it required that all students have access to smartphones, tablets, the internet in general, etc? If a student doesn't have a device to install the crappy branded app on, what does the school do?

I don't have kids yet though that time is likely coming, this goes firmly on the growing list of reasons why we'd choose to homeschool.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#35

Post by r0m4n0 »

ishtanbul wrote: post #2

The outcome is that spaces which are prone to AI slop and spam will wither and lose real users, eventually collapsing on themselves. For the social media platforms, good riddance

Or humanity will devolve into confusion over what is real or AI generated for the next decade until we learn to live alongside the monster we have created.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#36

Post by pessimizer »

moron4hire wrote: post #33
ryandv wrote: post #8

This is just the practice of invasive data harvesting taken to its natural conclusion, which any tech savvy user or computer geek brought up in the pre-postmodern social media era of the Internet (before Facebook) could have seen coming decades in advance. The only winning move here is not to play, accepting the unfortunate consequence that you will need to "limit the reach of your profile just to avoid participating…

It's not possible to not play. Even if I chose to avoid social media, my kids' school insists everyone interest with their teachers through some crappy branded app. Read the TOS. Didn't like what I saw. Told them I didn't want to install an app on my phone. Asked nicely if there was some way I could participate without it. They acted like I beat my kids.

> Asked nicely if there was some way I could participate without it.

You've done your duty with them. Now write a letter to the school board. Give them a little while to respond, and if they don't, start handing copies of the letter to other parents outside of the school gates.

If you can't get other parents to care, then you're in trouble. Try to claim a religious exception.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#37

Post by debugnik »

chrisjj wrote: post #29
vouaobrasil wrote: post #9

> For the time being, though, avoiding A.I. is up to you. If it were as easy as posting a message of objection on Instagram, many of us would already be seeing a lot less of it. It's true that it is quite hard, but there are ways to reduce it for sure. Here is what I have done: 1. I've deleted accounts for websites that promote AI. I have already deleted LinkedIn, Github, Medium, and a few others. 2. I have stopped s…

> 4. I do not click or read any articles with AI-generated images or text. How can you possibly know the articles you read have no AI-generated images or text?

So what if his criteria has false negatives? AI or not, ignoring noticeable slop will be a net positive.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#38

Post by rpgwaiter »

chrisjj wrote: post #29
vouaobrasil wrote: post #9

> For the time being, though, avoiding A.I. is up to you. If it were as easy as posting a message of objection on Instagram, many of us would already be seeing a lot less of it. It's true that it is quite hard, but there are ways to reduce it for sure. Here is what I have done: 1. I've deleted accounts for websites that promote AI. I have already deleted LinkedIn, Github, Medium, and a few others. 2. I have stopped s…

> 4. I do not click or read any articles with AI-generated images or text. How can you possibly know the articles you read have no AI-generated images or text?

Not OP, but it’s extremely easy to tell if an article uses AI images.

Are there vague images padding the article for SEO purposes?

If so, is there attribution to an artist? If they contain images and don’t attribute, I avoid the website. Either they use AI to make SEO bait, or they steal artwork. I’ll avoid in either case.

AI text is much harder to detect, not sure of a good way to avoid it at the moment.

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#39

Post by ishtanbul »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #22
kibwen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TikTok and Meta apps are definitely growing faster, in relative or absolute terms, than the New Yorker and the New York Times audiences are, paid or unpaid. Imagine the doctor walking into the room and saying "Congratulations! The tumor is growing faster than your legacy cells."

Yeah, I don't think this is a good thing. It's just to say that Kyle Chayka and this HN commenter don't offer any remedies. They go and complain and mock people's superstitious Instagram shitposts. If you care about narrative creative media, the best thing you can do is pay for it. Whatever that means to you. That is my remedy. The New Yorker isn't going to go out and promote Substack , and the deeper you think about…

I don’t have a remedy to offer for the problem at large, which is why I didnt suggest one, but on a personal level I would read the New Yorker, which is high quality content, imo

Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online

#40

Post by gruez »

rpgwaiter wrote: post #23
joe_the_user wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why having an LLM use my output in particular is problematic - I'm pretty sure OpenAI trained GPT-3+ on every single bit of data they could find, so they probably included a bunch of stuff I've written here already (though it is minuscule fraction of their vast corpus of course). Losing anonymity is something I'd be much more worried about overall (not that it's entirely separate I don't think it's the s…

There’s many good reasons, but for me it’s that I don’t want companies profiting off of my posts that have no intention of profit sharing. When I make a Youtube video and companies run ads on it, I get a piece of that pie (assuming I meet the requirements, etc.). That same video fed into Gemini so google can charge for AI video generation? I get nothing, Google makes bank. As a user I can pay for YouTube premium and…

>That same video fed into Gemini so google can charge for AI video generation? I get nothing, Google makes bank.

How do you feel about commenting on this site for free, which probably provides some benefit to ycombinator?

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