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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

#391

Post by expedition32 »

bko wrote: post #314
sixtyj wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just do it for yourself. I stopped worrying about who’s gonna use it. 20 years ago I thought that we will wait to have kids as “a war will come”. I was overthinking and I am happy now that I changed my mind :) Is it useful or does it make you happy? Or it might even make some money? Nice. Do it. My life is easier.

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.

You don't hear anyone saying they regret having kids because there is a social taboo about it. Ofcourse CPS and therapists know the truth.

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

#392

Post by andrepd »

gsinclair wrote: post #383
inigyou wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

breadth, depth and nuance

If ever there were three adjectives which do NOT apply to generative AI...

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

#393

Post by inigyou »

sevenzero wrote: post #221
keiferski wrote: post #208

The concept of an almanac seems relevant again: a yearly printed book with verified, accurate information. No manipulation at a later date, no AI hallucinations, etc. The most famous one was probably Benjamin Franklin’s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Richard%27s_Almanack Paper encyclopedias might make a comeback for the same reason.

> a yearly printed book with verified, accurate information Seems difficult to produce nowadays as even well researched topics are constantly attacked. Climate change papers as a small example.

It seems relevant that it's a one-way communication. If someone reads a social media thread about climate change they will also see all the comments from idiots. But if someone reads a book about climate change they don't. It isn't as strong an effect any more as people will discuss the book on social media and they will have already seen the idiot comments before reading the book anyway.

So many former regular Fox News viewers have reported changing their mind when confronted with some alternative information sources for a while. News is also one-way, and most Fox victims aren't people who discuss issues with all sides.- they're in bubbles.

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

#394

Post by joenot443 »

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?

Last month I rebuilt my pool's plumbing system with the help of YouTube and GPT. I was quoted $6k and it ended up costing me about $1k of materials and a few days of work. This was my first exposure to any kind of outdoor plumbing, I'd never touched PVC before.

It's unlikely I would have had the confidence to do it from YouTube alone, specific diagnostic help and a full diagram to work off of was extremely helpful. I had it prepare an SVG of the whole assembly with all the measurements and parts labeled.

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

#395

Post by GrinningFool »

gagan2020 wrote: post #377

One word - Ouroboros I wrote about it almost 1 year ago in Aug only. The AI Ouroboros: How Artificial Intelligence is Eating Its Own Tail – And Reshaping Our World

Ironically in context of this discussion, when I search Google for "AI Ouroboros" your result is quite far down the list. Higher up are several ’24 and early '25 posts, many of them slop.

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

#396

Post by inigyou »

jbm wrote: post #41
ElProlactin wrote: post #19

There's too much going on in this article and while I think some of the points are valid, others go too far. A lot of the "cultural record" the author refers to is just digital junk. Random digital content that very few people care about, if we're being honest. Trying to hoard every bit of digital information ever produced is not the same thing as preserving "culture". Case in point: > Even the increasing use of ephe…

While I dislike Instagram reels and stories, I do feel like there is almost certainly scientific studies on radicalization that would benefit from actual histories of dumb memes. I feel like that about a lot of things, really. There probably are some important hidden discord groups that would explain the origin of many political positions. Unlike smokey meetings in scummy bars, that exists now and is on a database so…

4chan archives are almost certainly relevant. But the advertisement poster for every single club night in Berlin probably is not - a representative sample is enough. More complete data is probably more useful, at least slightly, but it quickly runs into diminishing returns. The distinction is that certain 4chan posts have outsized influence (power law distribution of influence?), but club nights are all the same. It is conceivable that a certain poster could be important and not recognized as important in the moment, but not as likely.

And that's public announcements. Do we really need to archive more than a few of the "I'm in this city, look at me I'm so rich and beautiful" short videos?

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

#397

Post by inigyou »

JohnMakin wrote: post #132

we built extremely powerful plausible bullshit machines targeted toward and trained on an electorate and population that has historically bad education and reading levels, built on top of an already fraught and fragile web which was also built off predatory basically unregulated behavior with a shaky relationship with “truth” and are surprised people have no idea what’s going on? This was the whole point of it all an…

I think it's also brainwashed the people in power. Half of them have no idea about anything and got their positions by luck.

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

#399

Post by inigyou »

flinux wrote: post #32

I see only one simple solution (though we should discuss the more complex ones): if Google directly answers a search query, then it must be held accountable for it, for better or for worse, and therefore assume all the benefits and (legal) liabilities that this entails

Already happened: https://www.dw.com/en/german-court-holds-google-liable-for-f...

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

#400

Post by inigyou »

monster_truck wrote: post #284

I just don't care man. Did these people just log on yesterday or something? The MUDs and MMOs I grew up with disappeared. The IRC networks, and especially forums I learned so much from are gone (these were largely killed for something even worse than AI: commercial blogs!). Effectively every social network I've ever cared about has been ruined, failed, or sold. Even games have become bottom line chasing, live service…

Libera (formerly Freenode) and Rizon are still around, moderately lower in absolute numbers, drastically lower in percentage of total internet usage.
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