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The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

jordangoodman.xyz

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Re: The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

#61

Post by jstummbillig »

nxc18 wrote: post #28
jstummbillig wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely outcome seems to be that this period will be over very quickly, and we will have better writing than ever before, forever. We should probably put some more thought toward that part and what it will mean.

Why do you think that? We’ve had this exact problem since the GPT3 moment and it has not improved at all. Not even a little, unlike agentic coding. Why do we expect a horizontal line to suddenly go exponential? Also, it seems that writing encodes far more information about personality and mental state of the writer than it seems at first glance. A key problem is that machine-generated writing does not have this, it i…

What exact problem? Verbosity? Quality?

Re: The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

#62

Post by owebmaster »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #46
gonzalohm wrote: post #8

It's not just the internet, it's everything. Every document I read at work has been AI generated at some capacity. It's becoming so annoying that I have to use AI to create a summary. I don't know if anyone agrees, but AI generated documents are so verbose and explain things in an overcomplicated way that makes me exhausted after reading. Sometimes I don't even understand what AI is trying to explain

This can be improved. As AI grows it will be better at explaining. For sure people working on frontier models have identified this as a problem.

They didn't or they can't fix. Claude opus 5 writing is much worse than 4 years older models like gpt4

Re: The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

#63

Post by jsrozner »

gizajob wrote: post #19

If AI slop completely kills social media then that’ll only be a good thing. Bring it on down.

In the short term, I think AI may do something like this, but in the longer term, I fear that its capacity for propaganda and surveillance will produce something even worse than social media.

Re: The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

#64

Post by icedchai »

thejash wrote: post #56
harladsinsteden wrote: post #6

I don't know where this nostalgia is coming from. "The Internet" has never been this super perfect place on a pedestal some people make it sound like. The Internet is what you make of it. Not more, not less.

I was there in the early days (90's, early 2000's) It was categorically, undeniably better--that's where the nostalgia is coming from. There are lots of reasons why this happened (and those are interesting questions.) But simply denying that it was better doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.

I miss the early days. I made my first "telnet" connection in either 1990 or 1991. I remember exploring gopher, FTP, early web sites, the transition from BBSes to early ISPs. It was all so exciting and new.

The Internet of today is barely recognizable. The very thing that made it sustainable (commercialization) is also what led to its demise.

There are still sites (like HN!) that give me a taste of the old world. But they are few and far between.

Re: The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

#65

Post by harladsinsteden »

thejash wrote: post #56
harladsinsteden wrote: post #6

I don't know where this nostalgia is coming from. "The Internet" has never been this super perfect place on a pedestal some people make it sound like. The Internet is what you make of it. Not more, not less.

I was there in the early days (90's, early 2000's) It was categorically, undeniably better--that's where the nostalgia is coming from. There are lots of reasons why this happened (and those are interesting questions.) But simply denying that it was better doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.

It was better because it was, well, less.

Constraints tend to make you enjoy something more. I agree that a lot of the things that annoy me today weren't present back then. But a lot of other things that I take for granted these days also weren't present back then.

Was it better? No, I don't think so.

Re: The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

#66

Post by owebmaster »

sami7777 wrote: post #32

The never ending catastrophizing of every little thing is going to be the greatest cause of societal collapse. It's sucking the joy out of every aspect of life and it's usually some idiot hyperbolizing that most people don't grasp because most people don't even grasp sarcasm now because it's been so overused. It really wears on me and makes me think that Most people just want life to be horrible.

> It really wears on me and makes me think that Most people just want life to be horrible.

Yet you are the one that sounds miserable.

Re: The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

#68

Post by ahhssja »

nxc18 wrote: post #28
jstummbillig wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely outcome seems to be that this period will be over very quickly, and we will have better writing than ever before, forever. We should probably put some more thought toward that part and what it will mean.

Why do you think that? We’ve had this exact problem since the GPT3 moment and it has not improved at all. Not even a little, unlike agentic coding. Why do we expect a horizontal line to suddenly go exponential? Also, it seems that writing encodes far more information about personality and mental state of the writer than it seems at first glance. A key problem is that machine-generated writing does not have this, it i…

[dead]

Re: The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

#69

Post by Analemma_ »

harladsinsteden wrote: post #6

I don't know where this nostalgia is coming from. "The Internet" has never been this super perfect place on a pedestal some people make it sound like. The Internet is what you make of it. Not more, not less.

If people are being honest, the nostalgia comes from a time where people only had to interact with other high-income, high-education, broadly-cosmopolitan technology enthusiasts similar to themselves. The moment the internet become used by everyone, including the riff-raff, it suddenly become "not fun".

Re: The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great

#70

Post by m463 »

I like duckduckgo, I find the search assist to be useful, and afaict it doesn't harvest your data.

Why can't the post-ai internet include personal agents that work for you or at least don't make you the product?

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