You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
newyorker.com
You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
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Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
#2The 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
Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
#3The 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.
Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
#4The 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
We can only hope
Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
#5The 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.
IRC still is around. Pretty sure most of the user base is human still.
Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
#6Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
#7The 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
If that was true Twitter would be collapsing. The vast majority have been too passive to leave. I no longer think there's a threshold of worsening that will disrupt Twitter, Reddit, etc.
Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
#8This 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 in the new technology" - because nothing on the Internet is ever forgotten, and can (and will) be used for any purpose.
Adding a few magic words to bewitch the AI into not scraping your profile is the new superstition of the digital era, a cousin to the pseudolegal "no copyright intended" incantation often seen on pirated YouTube videos of yesteryear. You cannot have your cake and eat it too, for there is a fundamental tradeoff between privacy and convenience as popularized by Schneier, 11 years ago. [0] You must stop using the platform and do something other than continue to consume vapid social media nonsense; yet no one ever listens or cares, for the revealed preference of the masses is to continue to not be users of the system but to be used in exchange for "free" access to these platforms.
[0] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/trading_priva...
Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
#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 supporting businesses that use AI/support ones that are against AI. For example, the company behind the Procreate iPad app is 100% against AI so I support them. Also, in my professional life, I have already refused to collaborate with three separate companies due to their promotion and use of AI.
3. I've deactivated any tools that could be AI based like assisted writing tools in Gmail.
4. I do not click or read any articles with AI-generated images or text. Nor do I watch any videos any more.
5. I am reconnecting with friends and share with them through email and other means.
In my opinion, the internet has gotten WAY worse with the introduction of generative AI. Generative AI itself is not the root cause of course: the aggressive capitalistic takeover of the internet is, but AI is the apex tool for that and it makes the internet a rather horrible place.
Re: You Can't Opt-Out of A.I. Online
#10The 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
What I'd give to see the user retention stats at DeviantArt ever since they allowed it to be filled absolutely wall-to-wall with the most boring AI art you've ever seen. Not just allowed but encouraged by jumping on the bandwagon and integrating their own generator. Anecdotally it feels like there's not just an insane glut of AI slop drowning out everything else, but also less "everything else" over time due to user attrition.
It really can't be overstated just how much it's come to dominate the entire site, skimming the frontpage now I immediately spotted a generic Midjourney-core image and the creator has posted 4100 pieces to date after joining... two months ago. 68 uploads every day on average.