The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit • Hacker News Board

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#231

Post by nerdponx » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:03 PM UTC

marstall wrote: post #222

smt88 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Signed content is the only way to get that. This does nothing to guarantee that the content was written or edited by a human. Because of the risk of key theft, it doesn't even guarantee that it was published by the human who signed it. It is physically, philosophically, and technically impossible to verify the authenticity of digital content. At the boundary between the analog world and the digital world, you can a…

> It is physically, philosophically, and technically impossible to verify the authenticity of digital content. Though there are many brands built on trust, whose domain name is very difficult to spoof, that are an exception to this. Hate on nytimes.com, but you have reasonable confidence the content on that site is written, fact-checked and edited by staff at the New York Times Company.

> brands built on trust, whose domain name is very difficult to spoof

Like Sports Illustrated? Oh, wait...

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#232

Post by tonymet » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

mo_42 wrote: post #192

Generally, I'm an optimistic about current approaches towards AI. I'm using ChatGPT daily for my work. I'm seeing the BS generated from it all the time but it provides many great ideas from which I create something useful (both writing and programming). The sinus example scares me. It's obviously wrong. But what about all the subtle errors that will be generated? Humanity's knowledge is bootstrapped from BS. But most…

You have to account for the amplification effect when a large number of people read false information so it becomes true.

“Truth” in the most practical sense is whatever most people believe and espouse.

Sure we’re all more sophisticated and intelligent to believe the actual truth, but do you have the willpower to fight that battle every day?

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#233

Post by Moru » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:05 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #178

pavel_lishin wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

the problem is that data tends to become less useful/relevant over time as opposed to iron that is still iron and fulfills the same purpose

Well, the AI generated data is only as usefull as the data it's based upon så no real difference there.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#234

Post by hyperthesis » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #101

peppermint_gum wrote: post #89

One aspect of the spread of LLMs is that we have lost a useful heuristic. Poor spelling and grammar used to be a signal used to quickly filter out worthless posts. Unfortunately, this doesn't work at all for AI-generated garbage. Its command of the language is perfect - in fact, it's much better than that of most human beings. Anyone can instantly generate superficially coherent posts. You no longer have to hire a co…

We should start donating more heavily to archive.org - the way back machine may soon be the only way to find useful data on the internet, by cutting out anything published after ~2020 or so.

~2020, the end of history

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#235

Post by plagiarist » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

gshubert17 wrote: post #40

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23

It's not going to get better. Maybe 5-10% of content is AI generated now. Wait until it's 90%. Wait as we keep piling more nines onto that number. How do we keep the internet useful to humans while this is going on? Maybe this is the new search engine challenge. Google rose to the top because, at the time, they were able to mine the links' references to each other to determine which were the best sites. If a search e…

Indeed, Neal Stephenson in _Anathem_ (2008), in describing an alternate world (in which his "reticulum" is our "network") wrote "Early in the Reticulum—thousands of years ago—it became almost useless because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading information." "So crap filtering became important. Businesses were built around it. ... " Generating crap "didn't really take off until the military…

The Ret getting filled with garbage and the arms race of production and filtering is real. I think 99.99% effective filtering was the sci-fi part, though I hope I am wrong on that.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#236

Post by orangesite » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:06 PM UTC

I hate to keep beating on this drum but is _anyone_ working on a search engine yet that filters out anything with ads and/or a tracker?

The root cause of the problem is content monetization so please let's just stop indexing anything that tries to monetize content and/or track readers.

And I'll say this for all the overly-capitalistic folk on here: the amount of money I'm willing to pay for access to a search engine like this has been going up every month since 2002 -- something that the other paid search engines clearly fail to understand.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#237

Post by NanoYohaneTSU » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

Being dismissive of AI while simultaneously embracing Google is a very hypocritical position. Google has trashed the internet by changing how results are generated so that your website is only successful by being 1. approved and 2. popular.

AI has brought back some of the fun from 2010~ because you can generate non-pre-approved content for fun and profit and have a big community to share it with.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#238

Post by ineptech » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

mtillman wrote: post #130

peppermint_gum wrote: post #89

One aspect of the spread of LLMs is that we have lost a useful heuristic. Poor spelling and grammar used to be a signal used to quickly filter out worthless posts. Unfortunately, this doesn't work at all for AI-generated garbage. Its command of the language is perfect - in fact, it's much better than that of most human beings. Anyone can instantly generate superficially coherent posts. You no longer have to hire a co…

LLM trash is one thing but if you follow OP link all I see is the headline and a giant subscribe takeover. Whenever I see trash sites like this I block the domain from my network. The growth hack culture is what ruins content. Kind of similar to when authors started phoning in lots of articles (every newspaper) or even entire books (Crichton for example) to keep publishers happy. If we keep supporting websites like t…

I understand the sentiment, but those email signup begs are to some extent caused by and a direct response to Google's attempts to capture traffic, which is what this article is discussing. And "[sites like this] is what ruins content" doesn't really work in reference to an article that a lot of people here liked and found useful.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#239

Post by Channel9877 » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

peppermint_gum wrote: post #89

One aspect of the spread of LLMs is that we have lost a useful heuristic. Poor spelling and grammar used to be a signal used to quickly filter out worthless posts. Unfortunately, this doesn't work at all for AI-generated garbage. Its command of the language is perfect - in fact, it's much better than that of most human beings. Anyone can instantly generate superficially coherent posts. You no longer have to hire a co…

Interesting point about the spelling and grammar. I wonder if that could be used as a method of proving you are a human..

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#240

Post by tonymet » Thu, Jan 11, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

trey-jones wrote: post #193

Before the "AI" takeover, it was already full of SEO-mandated human-generated bullshit, so we haven't actually lost that much in the last couple of years. I've been saying it for almost as long as I've been in the industry, which is well over a decade now.

If this is true it implies all news and history for the past 10 years is also human-generated bullshit. I’m not saying you’re wrong – just that you have to follow your beliefs to their conclusions.