The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful • Hacker News Board

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#141

Post by HarHarVeryFunny » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

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.

Not just ads - there is TONS of AI-generated YouTube shorts now, and the quality is so good that it's tough to always tell whether it's real as long as it's plausible (which not all of it is).

It's annoying because the whole point of a lot of this stuff is that it's real, and one can be informed, entertained or have an emotional response to it. When you distrust everything because it's maybe fake, then the fun of the internet as a window into human nature and the rest of the world just disappears.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#142

Post by heddycrow » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #55

In other words, many new people now get to know the "using an internet dating service as a woman" experience.

If that's what people wanted, they could have created a woman account or a western white male account on a rest-of-the-world dating site.

If it's not? Oh well, suffer. It's still better than the "average western male on a dating site" experience.

Note: I really like the metaphor. My apologies if I abused it or stretched it to far or in the wrong direction.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#143

Post by projektfu » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

My screening inbox is full of the same exact form of engagement, almost identical to the one mentioned in the article. "I'm curious..." and then some interval later a follow up and then a "I don't seem to be reaching you" e-mail and by that point I have noticed and blocked them. It is fine for me, I have a system to handle it, but my receptionists often forward me these things from their inbox which bypasses my controls.

It's not just that it is 0 effort, it also sucks, and it is increasingly not relevant because their agents are just scooping up stuff to reach out about and they aren't even selling something that you would need to buy.

I just wish that we could go back to the old way. There should be a cost to attempt to get a sales lead.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#144

Post by hexator » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:14 PM UTC

The cost to create content is not zero. People across the board are underestimating the cost to run AI.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#145

Post by AndrewKemendo » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

heddycrow wrote: post #131

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the reason Human biological limits prevent the realization of stable equilibrium at the scale of coordination necessary for larger emergent superstructures Humans need to figure out how to become a eusocial superorganism because we’re past the point where individual groups don’t produce externalities that are existential to other groups/individuals I don’t think that’s possible, so I’m just building t…

This resonates with me. I'd love to see the machine version or hear more of your thoughts about what goes into it.

If you’re really interested at the furthest depth then take a look at my paper:

https://kemendo.com/GTC.pdf

If that resonates further let me know at my un on icloud domain

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#146

Post by aarondf » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

hexator wrote: post #144

The cost to create content is not zero. People across the board are underestimating the cost to run AI.

I think you're conflating the cost to consumers to use AI and the cost to run AI. Sure, it's a house of cards, but the cost to consumers still rounds to zero.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#147

Post by heddycrow » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

m0llusk wrote: post #135

heddycrow wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to keep reading your thoughts on this. How can I get more or can you source your influences?

Probably best to start here with the original paper and then search for related material as the idea has been kicked around for a while: http://www.marketingvp.com/download/mer-data.pdf

Thanks for that!

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#148

Post by hexator » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

From reading some of the reactions to this post, this quote comes to mind by Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

There are a lot of people here who have spent a lot of time, money, and effort building AI products. And they may be good and worthwhile! I'm literally one of them. But you still see some people totally underestimate this public-facing trust collapse and the growing anti-AI sentiment in general.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#149

Post by pron » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:20 PM UTC

ajaisjsbbz wrote: post #20

pron wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that too many people just don't know how to weigh different probabilities of correctness against each other. The NYT is wrong 5% of the time - I'll believe this random person I just saw on TikTok because I've never heard of them ever being wrong; I've heard many stories about doctors being wrong - I'll listen to RFK; scientific models could be wrong, so I'll bet on climate change being not real etc.

Trust is much more nuanced than N% wrong. You have to consider circumstantial factors as well. ie who runs The NY Times, who gives them money, what was the reason they were wrong, even if they’re not wrong what information are they leaving out. The list goes on. No single metric can capture this effectively. Moreover, the more political a topic the more likely the author is trying to influence your thoughts (but not…

> You have to consider circumstantial factors as well

This, too, goes into the probability of something being right or wrong. But the problem I'm pointing out is an inconsistent epistemology. The same kind of test should be applied to any claim, and then they have to be compared. When people trust a random TikToker over the NYT, they're not applying the same test to both sides.

> It’s also why things like calling your opponents dumb, etc is so harmful.

People who don't try to have any remotely consistent mechanism for weighing the likelihood of one claim against a contradicting one are, by my definition, stupid. Whether it's helpful or harmful to call them stupid is a whole other question.

Re: The trust collapse: Infinite AI content is awful

#150

Post by quantummagic » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 4:20 PM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #109

cantor_S_drug wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said a quote expressing a concern about the future impact of AI on information credibility. The exact quote is: "I foresee the day where AI become so good at making a deep fake that the people who believed fake news as true will no longer think their fake news is true because they'll think their fake news was faked by AI."

I wish people who believed that kind of fake news had this piece of critical thinking. I don't think they do though, they'll take whatever confirms their views and reject everything else as faked by AI with no logic or proof whatsoever.

Almost everyone believes they're thinking critically, that's just how it feels to think at all. As an aside, I wonder about the average person who extols critical thinking, and how proficient he actually is himself; in my experience they're often conformist and susceptible to uncritically accepting consensus positions.

The truth is, for those of us with lower IQ, it doesn't matter how critically we think, we lack the knowledge and mental dexterity to reliably arrive at a nuanced and deep understanding of the world.

You have to stop dreaming of a world where everyone can sort everything out for themselves, and instead build a world where people can reliably trust expert opinion. It's about having a high-trust society. That requires people in privileged positions to not abuse their advantage in a short term way, at the cost of alienating, and losing the trust of the unwashed masses.

Because that's what has happened, the experts have been exploited as a social cudgel, by the psychopathic and malignant managerial class, in such an obvious and blunt way, that even those of us who are self-aware of our limitations, figure we're as likely to get it right ourselves, as to get honest and correct information from our social institutions.