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ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

castlebridge.ie

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Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#21

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

lubujackson wrote: post #17

If you think of the knowledge base of the internet as a living thing, ChatGPT is a like a virus that now threatens its life. This is the same process SEO spam caused for search - it hampers the nature by which things function and the river needs to reroute (pagerank then usage metadata) to replace the lost signal. ChatGPT is more of an existential threat because it will propagate to infect other knowledge bases. Luke…

> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources.

This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica… alas, it’s a brave new world out there… nowhere to run to nowhere to hide, see that Wiezenbaum post also on the homepage now, as another commenter quotes[0]:

> Writing of the enthusiastic embrace of a fully computerized world, Weizenbaum grumbled, “These people see the technical apparatus underlying Orwell’s 1984 and, like children on seeing the beach, they run for it”

> a point to which Weizenbaum added “I wish it were their private excursion, but they demand that we all come along.”

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34546689

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#22

Post by gtirloni »

lubujackson wrote: post #17

If you think of the knowledge base of the internet as a living thing, ChatGPT is a like a virus that now threatens its life. This is the same process SEO spam caused for search - it hampers the nature by which things function and the river needs to reroute (pagerank then usage metadata) to replace the lost signal. ChatGPT is more of an existential threat because it will propagate to infect other knowledge bases. Luke…

Lots of content on Wikipedia is already created by bots but they are mostly doing maintenance so the blast radius is much smaller.

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#23

Post by wprl »

> AI can experience the same rabbit-hole effect as your idiot cousin who has watched too many of the algorithmically suggested videos on Youtube and now believes that aliens conspired with a time travelling Elvis to kill Hitler using a bullet made of Yeti teeth. And they only went online looking for TellyTubbies videos.

LOL Thank you, I needed a good laugh!

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#25

Post by lsy »

The TLDR of the article is essentially that any time a ChatGPT conversation strays to the factual (in this case a list of data ethics books), the quality of the data (whether those books exist and are written by the stated authors) is extremely low.

Ultimately this is where ChatGPT and similar projects seem most likely to hit a wall. Text generators are statistical machines, but the relationship between statistics and truth is merely probabilistic and not identical. There is no way to train ChatGPT to say things that are true, because the number of true and false statements in the world are far too numerous and too specific to ever reliably delineate. At best, we will be stuck fact-checking ChatGPT using enormously complex knowledge bases and asking it to try again until something doesn't raise a red flag, at which point it may still not be true.

For most business purposes this is unacceptable. We will have machines that can generate untruths in a way that contravene common sense, so long as those untruths don't obviously contradict whatever local database is being consulted for grounding. And the mechanisms required to re-ground the GPT output even to that unhappy state will be so complex in their own right that businesses might as well just implement a similarly complex system to handle the issue directly, without calling out to a complex, licensed GPT. Not sure whether there is a way around this.

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#26

Post by tablespoon »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #21
lubujackson wrote: post #17

If you think of the knowledge base of the internet as a living thing, ChatGPT is a like a virus that now threatens its life. This is the same process SEO spam caused for search - it hampers the nature by which things function and the river needs to reroute (pagerank then usage metadata) to replace the lost signal. ChatGPT is more of an existential threat because it will propagate to infect other knowledge bases. Luke…

> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources. This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica… alas, it’s a brave new world out there… nowhere to run to nowhere to hide, see that Wiezenbaum post also on the homepage now, as another commenter quotes[0]: > Writing of the enthusiastic embrace of a fully computerized world, Weizenbaum grumbled, “These people see the techn…

>> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources.

> This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica...

And they were right. If "they" were wrong about anything, it was the assumption that the masses would prioritize quality over cost, but it turns out that cheap wins every time. When it comes to information, it's like most people's taste buds don't work, so they'll pick free crap over nutritious food.

Edit: Another thought came to mind: stuff like ChatGPT may contribute to killing off Wikipedia: Wikipedia is currently the cheapest and fastest way to find information (that's often crap). However, if something like ChatGPT can get information to people faster (even if it's crappier, just as long as it's minimally acceptable), Wikipedia will become much less popular and could end up just like Britannica.

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#27

Post by ru552 »

bitcurious wrote: post #24

ChatGPT is the bell announcing the death of anonymity on the web. Anonymous content will be generated content, real discussion will shift to gated communities with either paywalls or proofs of identity.

GeoCities banner communities are back baby! Webring where you at?

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#28

Post by mountainb »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #21
lubujackson wrote: post #17

If you think of the knowledge base of the internet as a living thing, ChatGPT is a like a virus that now threatens its life. This is the same process SEO spam caused for search - it hampers the nature by which things function and the river needs to reroute (pagerank then usage metadata) to replace the lost signal. ChatGPT is more of an existential threat because it will propagate to infect other knowledge bases. Luke…

> All signs point to this strengthening the value of curation and authenticated sources. This is what they said about Wikipedia viz. Britannica… alas, it’s a brave new world out there… nowhere to run to nowhere to hide, see that Wiezenbaum post also on the homepage now, as another commenter quotes[0]: > Writing of the enthusiastic embrace of a fully computerized world, Weizenbaum grumbled, “These people see the techn…

It's true though, Wikipedia really is terrible and full of fake citations that lead nowhere. It's an anti-knowledge base that sometimes has good information.

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#29

Post by sillysaurusx »

ru552 wrote: post #27
bitcurious wrote: post #24

ChatGPT is the bell announcing the death of anonymity on the web. Anonymous content will be generated content, real discussion will shift to gated communities with either paywalls or proofs of identity.

GeoCities banner communities are back baby! Webring where you at?

I'll bring the ff7 walkthrough! Someone grab a Runescape login.

Re: ChatGPT and the Enshittening of Knowledge

#30

Post by _fat_santa »

lubujackson wrote: post #17

If you think of the knowledge base of the internet as a living thing, ChatGPT is a like a virus that now threatens its life. This is the same process SEO spam caused for search - it hampers the nature by which things function and the river needs to reroute (pagerank then usage metadata) to replace the lost signal. ChatGPT is more of an existential threat because it will propagate to infect other knowledge bases. Luke…

Were going to have shady agencies in 5 years advertising: "get ChatGPT to respond to questions with your content for only $199"
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