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Knitting bullshit

katedaviesdesigns.com

151–160 of 221 posts

Re: Knitting bullshit

#151
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? Headcount went from 300 to 8, number of podcast per day went up and apparently listenership went up.

This only works if there are people willingly listening to crap. Perhaps there are.

they said, podcasts had 12 million downloads. 750k weekly at the moment.

They get people listening. And when you download you don't know it will be crap AI slop.

I now get a bunch of this in youtube - just endless drivel about some theme I am interested in. They create so much crap it's hard to see which one is real. I started banning the accounts that are making AI crap, but there are so many now.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#152
post #73
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious when you connect anti-AI sentiment to anti-science sentiment? To me, they are opposite sentiments, and my experience discussing AI with others supports this. The most pro-AI people I meet are very far removed from science, and my research colleagues are definitely more critical of AI than not.

> Are you serious when you connect anti-AI sentiment to anti-science sentiment? I don’t believe that the current state of things represents peak-AI problems. AI is for now weak both in its capability and its impact, and also just new. Speculatively, if things go really bad, in a couple of decades there will be a huge swath of population without jobs nor high-flying education. They, perhaps rightly, will blame AI for…

Calling current AI "weak in its capability" is very disconnected from the reality. Their capabilities in many areas and on many tasks are incredibly strong. The disconnect seems to come from completely unrealistic expectations, e.g. imagining the AI as a sort of omniscient oracle which should never make mistakes.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#153
post #108

Increasingly, 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…

I don’t think it’s intentionality.

It’s style.

A lot of people regard technical measures as the signal of quality. The most realistic painting, the most expensive purse, the most technical flip on a skateboard, the most well drawn AI art.

It’s a cheap way to judge quality because you don’t have to understand what makes something good.

AI is really showing this divide.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#155
I think AI is the final nail in the coffin of meaningless slop that started pervading our lives after covid.

I see people tiring of this brain rot, especially Gen Z, there are more offline events - music festivals, day time raves, running events, people are appreciating more things analog - LP records, cassettes, younger people getting turned off by social media.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#156
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, but you have to realize we are on the losing side of this war. The armies of bullshit now have an incredible advantage that actual art can never have. At least in the past, there was some equilibrium. Bullshit was cheaper to make than art (or any other quality product), but now it has become infinitely cheaper to produce, and much more expensive for us to separate from the bullshit. Think about this for a momen…

>How can we possibly hope to separate the wheat from the chaff?

Categorize, curate, and share. The war is only for your attention. I have favorite creators now, and they would cease to be favorite if they suddenly started sloppin' it up. The best of them recommended cool things made by other people, who in turn recommended more things, and so on.

If instead you peddle bullshit, it won't take long to be identified as a bullshit vendor, even if you have 1000x the bullshit of the next leading brand.

Not everyone will get the message especially if you mainly consume algorithmic feeds - we all seem to have that relative who thinks you would enjoy being sent an AI Jesus image every other week.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#157

Increasingly, 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 feels like I will forever mourn the totally self-inflicted loss of the Internet. I feel like I will never get over it, so much so that I wish I had never experienced its (brief) moment of brilliance. I feel sorry for my younger self for thinking it was here to stay.

It was a very special time when the Internet was full of people's open, personal gardens. I feel fortunate for having experienced that because it showed me what's out there if I look, and I want to cultivate the pleasure of finding such things and sharing them with people I care about.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#158

> one of the most pernicious things about this particular kind of bullshit is the way it casts any form of critical scrutiny as a terrible failure of sensibility. What a great line. And you'll probably notice this technique being used by very skilled bullshitters and master manipulators: any request for rigor or scrutiny is met by something like genteel condescension. You're treated as if you've committed a breach of…

Great point. This happens on forums too. For example if Kate opposes knitting bullshit, a common strategy is to characterize Kate as 'hostile', 'overheated', 'overreacting', etc. Kate's actual argument doesn't need to be addressed. We just rule that Kate isn't posting content, she's causing conflict or experiencing an unfortunate emotional state.

This strategy also indirectly helps overworked moderators by penalizing disagreement, which in turn discourages flame wars.

Kate's critics can even say they support Kate. They just want to help her deal with her emotional overload.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#159

Increasingly, 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 feels like I will forever mourn the totally self-inflicted loss of the Internet. I feel like I will never get over it, so much so that I wish I had never experienced its (brief) moment of brilliance. I feel sorry for my younger self for thinking it was here to stay.

It's not self-inflicted at all. Users didn't enshittify the sites we used to enjoy.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#160
post #148
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

Being the devil's advocate, it sounds like no one involved see any value in that exchange, therefore they don't care . In that sense AI slop is a symptom, not a disease. But perhaps also a catalyst. I really wonder if there is a sort of silver lining here, and in the long term low value activities will be filtered out of society. Though that borders on the AI maximalist view which I don't fully agree with. Of course…

"silver lining"

agree. if internet is so filled with slop. people will move away from it, start to read books, walk, hang out with each other again?

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