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The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

arnon.dk

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Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#111

Post by m0llusk »

everdrive wrote: post #7

Doesn't matter. We must keep building more and more technology no matter the cost. Have an idea for a business? Build it. Does your business make the lives of people worse? Doesn't matter, keep pushing. Could some new technology ruin the lives and relationships that people have? Doesn't matter, just build it. We always need more, need to do more. Every experiment is valid, every impulse must be followed. More complex…

This is ignoring the Marketing to Engineering ratio. For most recent history technology companies have had to spend at least as much on marketing as engineering in order to survive, and two to ten times as much spent on marketing as engineering is common for successful companies. Who is going to buy the thing is the most important question and without solid answers there is nothing, no matter how much technology was engineered.

Now this formula has been complicated by technological engineering taking over aspects of marketing. This may seem to be simplifying and solving problems, but in ways it actually makes everything more difficult. Traditional marketing that focused on convincing people of solutions to problems is being reduced in importance. What is becoming most critical now is convincing people they can trust providers with potential solutions, and this trust is a more slippery fish than belief in the solutions themselves. That is partly because the breakdown of trust in communication channels means discussion of solutions is likely to never be heard.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#112

Post by robin_reala »

erpigna wrote: post #39
renegat0x0 wrote: post #35

I use RSS to follow these I want to hear. I do not follow recommendation, since RSS reader is my window to the world. I follow even AI slop via reddit RSS. I control however what comes in.

I'm looking for a practical and possibly Open Source way to filter noise from RSS feeds, have you got any recommendation?

Delete noisy feeds. I’m not joking: RSS only becomes a truly great experience when actively curated.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#113

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

symfoniq wrote: post #16
bgwalter wrote: post #5

It is becoming unbearable. YouTube now has "AI" slop ads for Freenow (Lyft brand in the EU) with fake cars that move without the wheels turning and "AI" "actors" that look like plastic. This of course means that Freenow is now on the personal blacklist. People should not engage with companies who advertise with "AI" slop.

Agreed. I’m increasingly using the presence of AI slop as a primary signal about whether to avoid a company and its products.

Youtube is intentionally blunting this signal by making many videos look slightly slop-y, I mean "enhancing low-res content with AI upscaling"

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/08/youtu...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/youtube-dismisses-cre...

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#114

Post by AndrewKemendo »

vesche wrote: post #105
everdrive wrote: post #7

Doesn't matter. We must keep building more and more technology no matter the cost. Have an idea for a business? Build it. Does your business make the lives of people worse? Doesn't matter, keep pushing. Could some new technology ruin the lives and relationships that people have? Doesn't matter, just build it. We always need more, need to do more. Every experiment is valid, every impulse must be followed. More complex…

Relevant: https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/07/05/are-w...

Oooh I recognize this, he’s entering his midlife crisis. Smart guy I wish him well, and hope he comes out the other side groovy.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#115

Post by avhception »

vesche wrote: post #105
everdrive wrote: post #7

Doesn't matter. We must keep building more and more technology no matter the cost. Have an idea for a business? Build it. Does your business make the lives of people worse? Doesn't matter, keep pushing. Could some new technology ruin the lives and relationships that people have? Doesn't matter, just build it. We always need more, need to do more. Every experiment is valid, every impulse must be followed. More complex…

Relevant: https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/07/05/are-w...

> You better maximize engagement or you will lose engagement this is a red queen’s race we can’t afford to lose! Burn all the social capital, burn all your values, FEED IT ALL TO MOLOCH!

Wow. A new profile text for my Tinder account!

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#116

Post by honkostani »

drakythe wrote: post #26
everdrive wrote: post #7

Doesn't matter. We must keep building more and more technology no matter the cost. Have an idea for a business? Build it. Does your business make the lives of people worse? Doesn't matter, keep pushing. Could some new technology ruin the lives and relationships that people have? Doesn't matter, just build it. We always need more, need to do more. Every experiment is valid, every impulse must be followed. More complex…

Turns out the Torment Nexus was just democratizing Venture Capital's desire for infinite growth.

[dead]

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#117

Post by AndrewKemendo »

arnon wrote: post #59
heddycrow wrote: post #51

I wish we were talking about what's next versus what's increasingly here. How can infinite AI content be strictly awful if it forces us to fix issues with our trust and reward systems? Short term, sure. But infinite (also) implies long term. I wish I had a really smart game theorist friend who could help me project forward into time if for nothing other than just fun. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to reduce the…

I suggest we go back to before and be human about things - and build trust in-person.

Unfortunately there’s no “roll back to last stable” - the current version is actually still the most stable

If you try to “go back” you’ll just end up recreating the same structure but with different people in charge

Meet the New boss same as the old boss - biological humans cannot escape this state because it’s a limit of the species

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#118

Post by ssalka »

everdrive wrote: post #7

Doesn't matter. We must keep building more and more technology no matter the cost. Have an idea for a business? Build it. Does your business make the lives of people worse? Doesn't matter, keep pushing. Could some new technology ruin the lives and relationships that people have? Doesn't matter, just build it. We always need more, need to do more. Every experiment is valid, every impulse must be followed. More complex…

Eric Weinstein refers to this as an Embedded Growth Obligation (EGO), whereby organizations and economies at large assume perpetual growth, and that things really start to unravel when that growth inevitably slows. It is pretty mindblowing how we have basically accepted growth as the default state, it is not at all a given that things always grow and get better.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#120

Post by Applejinx »

AaronAPU wrote: post #58
Applejinx wrote: post #37

I'm already seeing this. I very much fall into the category of 'delete all email offers' as I'm a small youtuber, big enough to be targeted by AI sponsor deals, so I'm just buried with it. The last five times I've looked at something in case it was a legitimate user email it was AI promotion of someone just like in the article. Their only way to escalate, apart from pure volume, is to take pains to intentionally emul…

YouTubers and other social media influencers are a sort of royalty now, getting to decide by fiat which companies live or die. But you can’t really even make the case to them anymore because like you said they can’t/won’t even read your email. What mostly happens is they constantly provide free publicity to existing big players whose products they will cover for free and/or will do sponsored videos with. The only rea…

Or know people personally. There's two people I promote because they actively helped me do my own work, pitched in open source code and did development to support my project. There's another guy who lives in my town, so he gets some mention just because of that (his work's good, but that's my angle for mentioning it). And a microphone company got a shout out not because they give me microphones, but because the guy running the company noticed and liked my ethos and did a repair for free for me. That counts as a form of sponsoring so I talked him up, am already a fan of his work.

Make friends and work with people where possible. I get that some of this only works for us open source types, but the microphone guy isn't, he just did good work. I initially heard of his company through a pro sound engineer website, and ran with it when the advice turned out to be good.

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