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As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

thewalrus.ca

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Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#381

Post by jefftk »

frabcus wrote: post #250
jefftk wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that would be fine. I write primarily communicate ideas, not for credit or fame. Empirically, however, LLMs don't strip out the author: the big models know a lot about what I've written even with search disabled. Ex: https://claude.ai/share/8cbcdf88-a360-421a-8c06-ae7b7992e866

Sure they know about you if you ask, but generally they won't credit you if they cite an idea from their latent space that came from you.

That's fine! Humans who read my blog typically won't credit me if I help inspire them either.

(I was pointing out that "they'll train on a version that strips out you as the author" seems to be is incorrect about how training works)

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#382

Post by eloisius »

jfyi wrote: post #307
chrisjj wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how is any future viewer going to tell your images from "AI" fakes?

With photos, I could see a cryptographic solution. Of course it would still need some kind of centralized trust, but it's doable if people cared enough. It could be applied by cameras themselves.

This is already a thing. Leica cryptographically signs images. Useful for establishing trust for photojournalists I guess. I’m not sure how deep the chain goes. Do they have hardware attention down to the sensor? You could take a picture of a screen, but that would likely have some other tell-tales. Especially if Leica took another step like putting a depth sensor in the package and added its data to the signature.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#383

Post by gsinclair »

inigyou wrote: post #343
figassis wrote: post #336

I called this maybe 3y ago, but I think so did everyone else that was sane. Sure, we get immense value from AI, but indiscriminately injecting into everything, the one thing we know to be unreliable above the threshold we used to fire people for, is probably the greatest undoing of all the good companies like Google brought to the internet. I mean what a way to destroy your legacy of democratizing information. The am…

what value do we get from AI?

Answers to a lot of questions, with breadth, depth and nuance. And assistance in carrying out work on a lot of fields, not just programming.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#384

Post by inigyou »

slig wrote: post #70
amatecha wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there are times where DDG has like, literally three results. Yet, I know for an absolute fact, there are hundreds of pages on the web that contain the terms I specified. Web search is becoming utter garbage.

Try brave search.

Both DDG and Brave Search are front-ends for Bing.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#385

Post by wegwerf17377382 »

I'm calling the return of personal websites with link lists.

Not everyone will run them but we will find them and bookmark them.

Not because it's better but because we'll have to.

Try looking for help about pets. The internet is a cesspool of slop, not even trying to hide it. The domain names sound absolutely convincing but it's all stuffed with takeaway lists and checplay generated imagery.

Whenever I find a good page, I will make sure I remember the site.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#386

Post by jefftk »

gspr wrote: post #165
jefftk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the only visitors to websites are now LLM training bots then what incentive is there to publish anything new? I write because I have ideas I want to share, and whether that happens with LLMs as an intermediary isn't important to me.

> I write because I have ideas I want to share, and whether that happens with LLMs as an intermediary isn't important to me. Sure. But you can see that for some people (myself included), writing for peers is part of the joy? And that if instead a megacorp places an opaque computer program between the author and the readers, that joy might be ruined?

My parent wrote "what incentive is there to publish anything new?" and I described my motivation, but of course people vary a lot in what drives them.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#387

Post by GrinningFool »

penneyd wrote: post #71
paxys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the information Gemini surfaced was created with human effort and published on the internet with the expectation that humans would visit the website and the creator would get some reward - advertising dollars, bragging rights, popularity, subscribers or whatever else. If the only visitors to websites are now LLM training bots then what incentive is there to publish anything new? For how long can we continue to re…

Well in the example above the manufacturer still has incentive to provide the manual's and guides that describe how to use their products, and if that is subsequently served by an LLM that's totally fine. The only sites that LLM's would have a negative effect on are those that are only hosting content for the ad views.

> are those that are only hosting content for the ad views.

I might never blog/publish code again amidst all this. I never had ads on my sites. I am not alone in this.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#389

Post by duskdozer »

pshirshov wrote: post #333
bko wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really happy for you. It's disheartening how many people put off or choose not to have kids because they think some combination of climate disaster, famine, overpopulation, war or skynet will ensure a life of misery for their children. There's definitely a risk of over-thinking things. Just do things. You're not likely to regret it.

> some combination of climate disaster, famine, overpopulation, war or skynet will ensure a life of misery Are people living in/moving towards a saccharine utopia tough?

I suppose if you don't "over"think things
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