Their dialogue on "substituting truth and validity with a register of emotional validation" is pretty prevalent across the entirety of US culture right now. The first thing that comes to mind for me are Christian groups that do a lot of celebrating during services or events with absolutely no goodwill, volunteering, or donating at all. They're real good at making you feel righteous, but awful at actualizing it. Hate the hollowing out of traditions that used to make communities and people great.
Knitting bullshit
101–110 of 221 posts
Re: Knitting bullshit
#102The economist in me immediately asks: Where is the financial incentive to do this? Just the same way the programmer would ask what the stack is. Some possibilities: 1) Money laundering - large content farm someone can argue makes xyz in revenue to hide an alternate source of revenue. 2) Ad fraud - leading up podcast charts or SEO results to attract clicks to sell ads. Bot farms could also be making clicks to pretend…
I don't understand your question, are you asking what's the financial incentive to AI-generate thousands of podcasts a week? Isn't it obviously the income from streams and/or ads?
Re: Knitting bullshit
#103Increasingly, my reaction to AI-generated content of basically all types is simply a deep, resonant sadness. The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb - there is an initial shock of sadness, an initial dose of loss, an initial sense of what has been taken away. But then for months and years afterwards, the daily occurrence of some other little humdrum experience, and only at the moment of the encounter does…
It seems like Black Mirror's "Joan is Awful" is here, but instead of a quantum computer generating personalized content, we just have an endless parade of meaningless slop.
Re: Knitting bullshit
#104Am I to believe that those 700K+ downloads are organic traffic? Who's listening to all this stuff?
I listened to a podcast a while back (human authored I'm pretty sure) about low-quality gutter level streamer content and how popular it is, speaking of personalities like asmongold and a vast number of even worse imitators. This content is made by humans but is pointless grindingly stupid filler spiced with a dash of obviously performative offensiveness. You're basically listening to a complete loser (or someone LAR…
One of the real costs of the end game attention economy is that when your "car" crashes, noone is going to stop to help. When the market you engage in gets swallowed up, everyone will buy the swill that outcompetes you on perceived surface level value. Communities get fractured. Organizations that used to be community pillars (church) become self serving. All these things create a positive feedback loop of intellectual degradation.
Re: Knitting bullshit
#105The economist in me immediately asks: Where is the financial incentive to do this? Just the same way the programmer would ask what the stack is. Some possibilities: 1) Money laundering - large content farm someone can argue makes xyz in revenue to hide an alternate source of revenue. 2) Ad fraud - leading up podcast charts or SEO results to attract clicks to sell ads. Bot farms could also be making clicks to pretend…
Did you read the article? Headcount went from 300 to 8, number of podcast per day went up and apparently listenership went up.
Re: Knitting bullshit
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's been years, but I seem to recall that Crowley specifically is very proud about making sure some motorway project got botched, because the continual drip of suffering from the accumulated jams and road rage makes him look really good in the spreadsheets even though he's not much for the classical showy stuff. Millions of little instances of suffering adding up year on year, instead of a handful of incidents of re…
Yes, I think you’re right. And if I recall correctly, near the end he’s trying to get somewhere but gets stuck in traffic by the same problem he caused.
In all fairness, he gets stuck trying to do something good, which is not the standard "evil trapped by its own design" moral.
Re: Knitting bullshit
#107The economist in me immediately asks: Where is the financial incentive to do this? Just the same way the programmer would ask what the stack is. Some possibilities: 1) Money laundering - large content farm someone can argue makes xyz in revenue to hide an alternate source of revenue. 2) Ad fraud - leading up podcast charts or SEO results to attract clicks to sell ads. Bot farms could also be making clicks to pretend…
Did you read the article? Headcount went from 300 to 8, number of podcast per day went up and apparently listenership went up.
I think the question he's asking is this: is it an ad ouroboros, or is there some other (nefarious?) intentionality behind it?
My hot take: porque no los dos?
Re: Knitting bullshit
#108Increasingly, my reaction to AI-generated content of basically all types is simply a deep, resonant sadness. The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb - there is an initial shock of sadness, an initial dose of loss, an initial sense of what has been taken away. But then for months and years afterwards, the daily occurrence of some other little humdrum experience, and only at the moment of the encounter does…
To me it had, in a way, the opposite effect - I started appreciating non-AI content more.
Good art has something that is difficult to reproduce if one isn't already an artist who is just using AI as a medium - it's intentionality.
Take for example Floor796[0]. Every little detail counts and while you could use AI to generate single characters or even the whole thing, you'd inevitably find details which have no reason to be there. You could then remove them manually or modify your prompt or input image so that those you know about won't appear, but AI being AI will keep sneaking in new ones.
The longer your prompt, the more intentional everything becomes, effectively making it the art piece.
Re: Knitting bullshit
#109I can absolutely recommend the book On Bullshit, it's a tiny read and makes an excellent gift. Kate's article summarizes it very well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit This reddit comment puts it perfectly: "What’s it about? Frankfurt tries (successfully) to define bullshit (rather academically). In short, a bullshit artist is solely focused on persuasion and making an impression, not caring about truth. Par…
I'm from Texas and we use bullshit & tall-telling as an entertainment art (this is my background; I do t think it's specific!). This definition of bullshit is spot on; I'm pretty proud of my ability to bullshit-for-entertainment, so AI bullshit really grinds my gears... it's so bad.
Re: Knitting bullshit
#110Am I to believe that those 700K+ downloads are organic traffic? Who's listening to all this stuff?
Other bots? Dead Internet Theory. AI produced, AI downloaded. No humans in the loop.
There was one of those "memes" a few years ago that is just a screenshot of someone's Twitter post that was essentially:
"My wife is a teacher, she used AI to help create an assignment, all the kids used AI to complete it, and now she's using AI to grade it. Nobody learned anything, nobody really did anything. What's happening?"