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The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

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Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#151

Post by CaptainFever »

branon wrote: post #5

Never thought I'd say this, but in times like these, with clearnet in such dire straits, all the information siloed away inside Discord doesn't seem like such a bad thing. Remaining unindexable by search engines all but guarantees you'll never appear alongside AI slop or be used as training data. The future of the Internet truly is people - the machines can no longer be trusted to perform even the basic tasks they on…

I can't really see a relevance between "we should spend more time with trusted people", which is an argument for restricting who can write to our online spaces, and "we should be unindexable and untrainable", which is an argument for restricting who can read our online spaces.

I still hold that moving to proprietary, informational-black-hole platforms like Discord is a bad thing. Sure, use platforms that don't allow guest writing access to keep out spam; but this doesn't mean you should restrict read access. One big example: Lobsters. Or better-curated search engines and indexes.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#152

Post by bombcar »

bee_rider wrote: post #43
7thaccount wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how the old web worked, but something decentralized makes sense to me.

It was a bit annoying, you just kind of wandered around aimlessly until you stumbled upon something interesting. Google was a breath of fresh air.

Google was powerful because it found those "something interesting" - you'd be searching for details on how to configurate and obligator and the answer would be on an entire forum dedicated to obligators that you didn't even know about - and then you'd spend time there learning and reading. You'd use Google to find interesting places and then you'd colonize them.

Now Google is used for strategic shots - you are interested in one piece of information, you find it, and you quickly retreat to your safe havens.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#153

Post by codexb »

Lets be honest, the internet has always been full of Dogshit.

Teachers have long warned us about using Wikipedia as a source. Fake news has always existed. Real news has been diluting itself with questionably true clickbait for years. The mass scramble by companies to hastily use AI is just further diluting and tainting the standard information outlets we've used.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#154

Post by asylteltine »

j0hnyl wrote: post #127
asylteltine wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true. I thought I missed the internet before ClosedAI ruined it but man, I would love to go back to 2020 internet now. LLM research is going to be the downfall of society in so many ways. Even at a basic level my friend is taking a masters and EVERYONE is using chatgpt for responses. It’s so obvious with the PC way it phrases things and then summarizes it at the end. I hope they just get expelled.

I don't see how this points to downfall of society. IMO it's clearly a paradigm shift that we need to adjust to and adjustment periods are uncomfortable and can last a long time. LLMs are massive productivity boosters.

It’s only a boost to honest people. Meanwhile grifters and lazies will be able to take advantage. This is why we can’t have nice things. It will lead to things like reduction in remote offerings like remote schooling or work

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#155

Post by riversflow »

jprete wrote: post #143
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A work-friend and I were musing in our chat yesterday about a boilerplate support email from Microsoft he received after he filed a ticket, that was simply chock full of spelling and grammar errors, alongside numerous typos (newlines where inappropriate, spaces before punctuation, that sort of thing) and as a joke he fired up his AI (honestly I have no idea what he uses, he gets it from a work account as part of some…

Grammar, spelling, and punctuation have never been _proof_ of good communication, they were just _correlated_ with it. Both emails are equally bad from a communication purist viewpoint, it's just that one has the traditional markers of effort and the other does not. I personally have wondered if I should start systematically favoring bad grammar/punctuation/spelling both in the posts I treat as high quality, and in m…

I’ve been trying kinda hard to relax on my spelling, grammar and punctuation. For me it’s not just a habit I learned in childhood, but one that was rather strongly reinforced online as a teenager in the era of grammar nazis.

I see it now as the person respecting their own time.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#156

Post by tempest_ »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #146
cauliflower99 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting idea. Could there be a market for pre-AI era content? Or maybe it would be a combination of pre-AI content plus some extra barriers to entry for newer content that would increase the likelihood the content was generated by real people?

> Could there be a market for pre-AI era content? Like the market for pre-1940s iron resting at the bottom of seas and oceans, unsullied by atmospheric nuclear bomb testing.

That was the first thing that came to mind for me as well

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#157

Post by CaptainFever »

unglaublich wrote: post #68
theonlybutlet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see how being used as training data has anything to do with this problem. Being able to differentiate between the AI slop and the accurate information is the issue.

Differentiation becomes harder the better AIs perform, which is currently bound by data availability and quality.

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/810/

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#158

Post by mingus88 »

BizarreByte wrote: post #144
pawelmurias wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI spam bots will invade discord.

Mods will ban them and new users will be forced to verify via voice/video chat/livestream.

We already have AI generated audio and video. This is a stopgap at best.

Maybe the mods will have to trick the AI by asking it to threaten them or any other kind of “ethical” trap but that will just mean the AI owners abandon ethical controls

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#159

Post by SleepilyLimping »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #96
macNchz wrote: post #87

Search has been steadily headed this direction for a long time, but recently (in just the last couple of months) I’ve started to notice a big uptick in obvious ChatGPT content in places that have otherwise been less egregiously SEO’d: StackOverflow answers, a real person’s personal Medium blog, comment sections on blogs that have good discussions, Github issues, etc. Unfortunately I have to imagine this is only going…

Before that though, it already felt like a lot of those outlets - blogs, SO, comment sections - were either bot or low-value, almost automatic comments. And of course, low wage content writers who get paid by the word to write "where do I find this item" guides for video game websites, somehow managing to change "it's in this chest in this region" to ten paragraph articles.

"Now, potions are traditionally a good way of getting healing in RPGs. Potions were first introduced in..."

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#160

Post by nicbou »

branon wrote: post #5

Never thought I'd say this, but in times like these, with clearnet in such dire straits, all the information siloed away inside Discord doesn't seem like such a bad thing. Remaining unindexable by search engines all but guarantees you'll never appear alongside AI slop or be used as training data. The future of the Internet truly is people - the machines can no longer be trusted to perform even the basic tasks they on…

I strongly disagree. I've been answering immigration questions online for a long time. People frequently comment on threads from years ago, or ask about them in private. In other words, public content helps a lot of other people over time.

On the other hand, the stuff in private Facebook groups has a shelf life of a few days at best.

If your goal is to share useful knowledge with the broadest possible audience, Discord groups are a significant regression.

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