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We're losing our voice to LLMs

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Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#131

Post by Uehreka »

Aurornis wrote: post #96
ricardo81 wrote: post #6

I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago and my Twitter one yesterday. It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. Who gets rewarded, the content creators and the platform. Engaging with it just seems to accentuate the problem. There needs to be algorithms that promote cohorts and individuals preferences. Just because I said to someo…

> Just because I said to someone 'Brexit was dumb', I don't expect to get fed 1000 accounts talking about it 24/7. It's tedious and unproductive. I’m not the biggest Twitter user but I didn’t find it that difficult to get what I wanted out of it. You already discovered the secret: You get more of what you engage with. If you don’t want to hear a lot of Brexit talk, don’t engage with Brexit content. Unfollow people wh…

> You get more of what you engage with. If you don’t want to hear a lot of Brexit talk, don’t engage with Brexit content.

The algorithm doesn’t show you “more of the things you engage with”, and acting like it does makes people think what they’re seeing is a reflection of who they are, which is incorrect.

The designers of these algorithms are trying to figure out which “mainstream category” you are. And if you aren’t in one, it’s harder to advertise to you, so they want to sand down your rough edges until you fit into one.

You can spend years posting prolificly about open source software, Blender and VFX on Instagram, and the algorithm will toss you a couple of things, but it won’t really know what to do with you (aside from maybe selling you some stock video packages).

But you make one three word comment about Brexit and the algorithm goes “GOTCHA! YOU’RE ANTI-BREXIT! WE KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THAT!” And now you’re opted into 3 bug ad categories and getting force-fed ragebait to keep you engaged, since you’re clearly a huge poltical junky. Now your feed is trash forever, unless you engage with content from another mainstream category (like Marvel movies or one of the recent TikTok memes).

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#133

Post by ctoth »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #46
whatever1 wrote: post #16

It’s ok. Most of our opinions suck and are unoriginal anyway. The few ones who have something important to say they will, and we will listen regardless of the medium.

The liberal idea that the best ideas win out in the marketplace turned out to be laughably wrong.

The marketplace is a terrible mechanism for truth-finding except for all the others. What's your proposed alternative that doesn't just relocate the problem to whoever gets to be the arbiter?

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#134

Post by anonymouskimmer »

tucnak wrote: post #119
AstroBen wrote: post #67

There's something unique about art and writing where we just don't want to see computers do it As soon as I know something is written by AI I tune out. I don't care how good it is - I'm not interested if a person didn't go through the process of writing it

> There's something unique about art and writing where we just don't want to see computers do it Speak for yourself. Some of the most fascinating poetry I have seen was produced by GPT-3. That is to say, there was a short time period when it was genuinely thought-provoking, and it has since passed. In the age of "alignment," what you get with commerical offerings is dog shite... But this is more a statement on Americ…

> Personally, I'm looking forward to the age of computational literature, where authors like me would be empowered to engineer whole worlds, inhabited by characters ACTUALLY living in the computer.

So you want sapient, and possibly sentient, beings created solely for entertainment? Their lives constrained to said entertainment? And you'd want to create them inside of a box that is even more limited than the space we live in?

My idea of godhood is to first try to live up to a moral code that I'd be happy with if I was the creation and something else was the god.

If this isn't what you meant, then yes, choose your own adventure is fun. But we can do that now with shared worlds involving other humans as co-content creators.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#135

Post by bachittle »

If you give an LLM enough context, it writes in your voice. But it requires using an intelligent model, and very thoughtful context development. Most people don't do this because it requires effort, and one could argue maybe even more effort than just writing the damn thing yourself. It's like trying to teach a human, or anyone, how to talk like you: very hard because it requires at worst your entire life story.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#136

Post by exasperaited »

thundergolfer wrote: post #21
WD-42 wrote: post #5

Where are these places where everything is written by a LLM? I guess just don’t go there. Most of the comments on HN still seem human.

Ironically this post is written in a pretty bland, 'blogging 101' style that isn't enjoyable to read and serves just to preach a simple, consensus idea to the choir. These kinds of posts regularly hit the top 10 on HN, and every time I see one I wonder: "Ok, will this one be just another staid reiteration of an obvious point?"

True, but one of the least-explored problems with AI is that because it can regurgitate basic writing, basic art, basic music with ease, there is this question:

Why do it at all if I won't do better than the AI?

The worst risk with AI is not that it replaces working artists, but that it dulls human creativity by killing the urge to start.

I am not sure who said it first, but every photographer has ten thousand bad photos in them and it's easier if they take them at the beginning. For photographers, the "bad" is not the technical inadequacy of those photos; you can get past that in the first one hundred. The "bad" is the generic, uninteresting, uninspiring, underexplored, duplicative nature of them. But you have to work through that to understand what "good" is. You can't easily skip these ten thousand photos, even if your analysis and critique skills are strong.

There's a lot to be lost if people either don't even start or get discouraged.

But for writing, most of the early stuff is going to read much like this sort of blog post (simply because most bloggers are stuck in the blogging equivalent of the ten thousand photos; the most popular bloggers are not those elevating writing).

"But it looks like AI" is the worst, most reflexive thing about this, because it always will, since AI is constantly stealing new things. You cannot get ahead of the tireless thief.

The damage generative AI will do to our humanity has only just started. People who carry on building these tools knowing what they are doing to our culture are beneath our contempt. Rampantly overcompensated, though, so they'll be fine.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#137

Post by TeMPOraL »

> Social media has become a reminder of something precious we are losing in the age of LLMs: unique voices.

Social media already lost that nearly two decades ago - it died as content marketing rose to life.

Don't blame on LLMs what we've long lost due to cancer that is advertising[0].

And don't confuse GenAI as a technology with what the cancer of advertising coopts it to. The root of the problem isn't in the generative models, it's in what they're used for - and the problem uses aren't anything new. We've been drowning in slop for decades, it's just that GenAI is now cheaper than cheap labor in content farms.

--

[0] - https://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#138

Post by anon191928 »

ricardo81 wrote: post #6

I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago and my Twitter one yesterday. It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. Who gets rewarded, the content creators and the platform. Engaging with it just seems to accentuate the problem. There needs to be algorithms that promote cohorts and individuals preferences. Just because I said to someo…

on the opposite site, you know what they say, "there is no algo. for truth"

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#139

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #110
isoprophlex wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorting the feed by "recent" at least gives you a randomized assortment of self aggrandizement, instead of algorithmically enhanced ragebait

Better suggestion: Ignore the feed if you don’t like it. Don’t visit the site unless you have a reason to, like searching for jobs, recruiting, or looking someone up. I will never understand these posts that imply that you’re compelled to read the LinkedIn feed unless you delete your account. What’s compelling you people to visit the site and read the feed if you hate it so much? I don’t understand.

[deleted]

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#140

Post by stuartjohnson12 »

alt227 wrote: post #98
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that some folks dislike it, but Bluesky and atproto in particular have provided the perfect tools to achieve this. There are some people, largely those who migrated from Twitter, who mostly treat Bluesky like a all-liberal version of Twitter, which results in a predictably toxic experience, like bizarro-world Twitter. But the future of a less toxic social media is in there, if we want it. I've created my own f…

I personally dont feel like an ultra filtered social media which only shows me things I agree with is a good thing. Exposing yourself to things you dont agre with is what helps us all question our own beliefs and prejudeces, and grow as people. To me, only seeing things you know you are already interested in is no better than another company curating it for me.

I think it's less about content topic and more meta content topic. EG I don't want to remove pictures of broccoli because I don't like broccoli, I'm trying to remove pictures of food because it makes me eat more. Similarly, I don't want to remove Political Takes I Disagree With, I want to remove Political Takes Designed To Make Me Angry. The latter has a destructive viral effect whose antidote is inattention.

Echo chamber is a loaded term. Nobody is upset about the Not Murdering People Randomly echo chamber we've created for ourselves in civilised society, and with good reason. Many ideologies are internally stable and don't virally cause the breakdown of society. The concerning echo chambers are the ones that intensify and self-reinforce when left alone.

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