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The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

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Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#361

Post by seabass-labrax »

bombela wrote: post #347
Aurornis wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although I agree with the title, I also don't think the internet is that significantly different from before GPTs 4, 3, or 2. I feel the same way. I'm sure some corners of the internet have incrementally more spam, but things like SEO spam word mixers and blog spam have been around for a decade. ChatGPT didn't appreciably change that for me. I have, however, been accused of being ChatGPT on Reddit when I took the t…

I failed a remote technical interview by writing a bad abstraction and mudding myself with it. After the interview I rewrote the code, and sent an email with it and a well written apology. The company thought the email and the code was chatgpt! I am still not sure how I feel about that.

I think you might have missed a big-old .303 bullet there. If a company isn't able to recognise the value of going back and correcting your mistakes, even with the help of LLMs, it doesn't sound like a very nice working environment.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#362

Post by salad-tycoon »

I was recently looking up passion fruit seeds to see if they were edible. One of the first results had various wrong warnings of adverse health effects.

But the best part was it said to be careful to avoid the seeds when you have a fever because it could cause explosions in your mouth.

It’s gotta be AI right? Who else could be as dumb as dogshit.

See section “how to pick a healthy and…”

https://cookingtom.com/are-passion-fruit-seeds-edible/

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#363

Post by sureglymop »

orangesite wrote: post #236

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…

Regarding the last sentence: The problem is that capitalism knows no limits. Sure, it would be nice to pay a monthly subscription for genuinely good and desirable content/search results...

But what if the CEO of the service provider needs another $5m bonus? What if the stock needs to go up so that the shareholder gamblers can get more dividend paid? What if all of a sudden the service gets bought out?

The truth is that what you are seeking is more likely to come from someone who is just passionate about it with not that much motivation based on profit. That doesn't mean that this entity or person can't be financially supported but it gets problematic when profit is the _main_ incentive.

For a good example of an interesting search engine built by a single guy, see Marginalia: https://search.marginalia.nu/

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#364

Post by rurp »

taberiand wrote: post #336
indigochill wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You no longer have to hire a copywriter, as many SEO spammers used to do. I used to do SEO copywriting in high school and yeah, ChatGPT's output is pretty much at the level of what I was producing (primarily, use certain keywords, secondarily, write a surface-level informative article tangential to what you want to sell to the customer). > At some point it may become impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.…

They find a way to validate the utility of the information instead of the source. It doesn't matter if the training data is AI generated or not, if it is useful.

The big problem is that it's orders of magnitude easier to produce plausible looking junk than to solidly verify information. There is a real threat that AI garbage will scale to the point that it completely overwhelms any filtering and essentially ruins many of the best areas of the internet. But hey, at least it will juice the stock price of a few tech companies.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#365

Post by cratermoon »

klyrs wrote: post #300
willcipriano wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the long run I don't see any company being able to build a moat around AI Why do you think they are screaming about "the dangers of AI"? So they can regulate it and gain a moat via regulatory capture.

>> If we've got AI that can generate any games that people actually want to play then we don't need game companies at all. > Why do you think they are screaming about "the dangers of AI"? Perhaps it's those of us who enjoy making games or are otherwise invested in producing content that are concerned about humanity being reduced to braindead consumers of the neverending LLM sludge, who scream the loudest.

Yes, but we don't get to sit in Congressional committee hearings and bloviate about Existential Risks.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#366

Post by kbrkbr »

zeruch wrote: post #341
indigochill wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You no longer have to hire a copywriter, as many SEO spammers used to do. I used to do SEO copywriting in high school and yeah, ChatGPT's output is pretty much at the level of what I was producing (primarily, use certain keywords, secondarily, write a surface-level informative article tangential to what you want to sell to the customer). > At some point it may become impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.…

I think you are generally correct in where things will likely go (sometimes correct goop) but the problem I think will be far more existential; when people start to feel like they are in a perpetual uncanny valley of noise, what DO they actually do next? I don't think we have even the remotest grasp of what that might look like and how it will impact us.

That is an interesting thought. Maybe the problem is not the ai generated useless noise, but that it is so easy and cheap to publish it.

One possible future is going back to a medium with higher cost of publication. Books. Handchiseled stone tablets. Offering information costs something.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#367

Post by flatline »

salad-tycoon wrote: post #362

I was recently looking up passion fruit seeds to see if they were edible. One of the first results had various wrong warnings of adverse health effects. But the best part was it said to be careful to avoid the seeds when you have a fever because it could cause explosions in your mouth. It’s gotta be AI right? Who else could be as dumb as dogshit. See section “how to pick a healthy and…” https://cookingtom.com/are-pas…

That sounds like a bad human translation from Chinese. AI mistakes are a different category.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#368

Post by rs999gti »

indigochill wrote: post #321
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…

> You no longer have to hire a copywriter, as many SEO spammers used to do. I used to do SEO copywriting in high school and yeah, ChatGPT's output is pretty much at the level of what I was producing (primarily, use certain keywords, secondarily, write a surface-level informative article tangential to what you want to sell to the customer). > At some point it may become impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.…

> You no longer have to hire a copywriter

Has anyone tested a marketing campaign using copy from a human copywriter versus an AI one?

I would like to see which one converts better.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#369

Post by __loam »

chongli wrote: post #241
bluefirebrand wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the camp where I want AI and automation to free people from drudgery in the hope that it will encourage the biggest HUMAN artwork renaissance ever in history. I don't want AI to be at the forefront of all new media and artwork. That's a terrible outcome to me. And honestly there's already too much "content" in the world and being produced every day, and it seems like every time we step further up the "content…

The AI that generates 1000 games eventually gets bought by a company That seems like only a temporary phenomenon. If we've got AI that can generate any games that people actually want to play then we don't need game companies at all. In the long run I don't see any company being able to build a moat around AI. It's a cat-and-mouse game at best!

> In the long run I don't see any company being able to build a moat around AI.

This feels like a fantasy.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#370

Post by grungydan »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #206
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?

I'm in the camp where I want AI and automation to free people from drudgery in the hope that it will encourage the biggest HUMAN artwork renaissance ever in history. I don't want AI to be at the forefront of all new media and artwork. That's a terrible outcome to me. And honestly there's already too much "content" in the world and being produced every day, and it seems like every time we step further up the "content…

I'll go one further, though I expect to receive mockery for doing so: I think the internet as we conceive of it today is ultimately a failed experiment.

I think that society and humanity would be better off if the internet had remained a simple backbone for vetted organizations' official use. Turning the masses loose on it has effectively ruined so many aspects of our world that we can never get back, and I for one don't think that even the most lofty and oft-touted benefits of the internet are nearly as true as we pretend.

It's just another venue for the oldest of American traditions at this point: Snake Oil Sales.

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