Earlier quoted context omitted.
Value != Effort: Infinite randomly generated slop + The Algorithm = Extremely personalized value delivered
A lot of effortful things deliver value, yet we call them slop. The Jurassic Park sequels, for instance. One of the common tropes anti-AI people fall into is calling all AI-enabled works low effort. I'm refuting that point here, but you're right in that there's a broader discussion to be had as to what constitutes value to different demographics, individual tastes, and subjectivities. There are highly discerning craf…
Very often I will find it valuable or entertaining and continue listening.
Conversely, when listening to a high production YouTube video, I'll often (about half the time these days?) spot a ChatGPTism and instantly lose respect for the person. (Even if the video was valuable!)
So I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. "Fully automated AI generated content pipeline" doesn't disgust me as much as it probably should, whereas "guy left cringe ChatGPT language in his script" my neurology registers as an unforgivable crime.
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Anyway the question of slop and effort is an interesting one. I've just spent several years working on a game and it's still shit. (Should have "iterated" more, apparently.)
Conversely, I often have the experience that I see some art that leaves me cold or that I actively dislike, but then I will discover that a heroic amount of effort went into making it (e.g. it's constructed out of a million individual toothpicks or something like that) and will suddenly think it's amazing.
My favourite story here is... a man in India spent 20 years carving a passage through a mountain by hand. By all accounts, it would have been much better if it were 20 minutes and a bit of TNT. But then he wouldn't be a legend, right?
Similarly I discovered an art page I enjoyed was fully AI generated. (Well, I don't know about the human involvement. Taste, maybe?) The art was still good, to my eye, but I noticed that I had been idolizing the artist — "how much toil it must have taken, to etch every stroke!" — and of course that part popped like a balloon.
I'll have to make due with the actual result, stripped of the glorious suffering!