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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

#481

Post by [deleted] »

inigyou wrote: post #397
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.

[deleted]

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

#482

Post by chongli »

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…

We’re burning the new library of Alexandria on the altar to a new god.

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

#483

Post by zeryx »

baubino wrote: post #461
bonoboTP wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human workers also wreck these jobs horribly that come to bite your ass in the end. I think an intelligent person equipped with AI and common sense and real stake in the thing being well done (because it's their own, so they care) is better than whatever is possible to pay for or book in a realistic timeline from another human. Also, ask people in the trades to review each other's jobs. They will harshly criticize ea…

> Human workers also wreck these jobs horribly Yes, but with a human worker there is a chain of accountability. With AI, there is none.

Have you had an argument or dispute with a contractor before? It's better to just do it yourself when you can, and fix it when it breaks

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

#484

Post by gosub100 »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #359
post-it wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really good at writing code.

It’s good at all kinds of stuff that is search adjacent, “find amesent parks with water feature within 100 miles of me that have rv parking nearby”, etc

Rote classification doesn't require AI. You described a SELECT statement that was developed half a century ago

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

#485

Post by sgt »

neysofu wrote: post #267
armchairhacker wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi

Kagi is not immune to this (it's the substrate itself that's losing quality, not just search) but it's a decent antidote.

So.. how do we design a Kagi, or a parallel Internet, that is immune to this? There's clearly a market.

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

#486

Post by tome »

mike_hearn wrote: post #288
tome wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some downside of that to you? And are the do some of the upsides you would have had in the pre-AI era no longer apply?

A lot of blogging especially in the tech space is driven by recruiting (startup blogs), or establishing a reputation as a thought leader (personal blogging, LinkedIn). So there were upsides that are now gone.

Why are they gone?

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

#487

Post by tome »

account42 wrote: post #275
tome wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some downside of that to you? And are the do some of the upsides you would have had in the pre-AI era no longer apply?

Is there some downside to the slave who is housed and fed for free? Are there any upside he would have were he not property of another man?

I would be grateful if you could explain how that is related to my question.

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

#488

Post by pjc50 »

inigyou wrote: post #404
pjc50 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember from the MUD era there was a paper (possibly by Richard Bartle) on the "MUD lifecycle", and how they tended to last on average two years before the operators got bored / burned out / the community left / there was an Incident.

Someone showed me something about Old-School Runescape recently and it struck me how quickly the game evolved. I played it in high school for two years at most. If you rewind or fast-forward in two year increments at a time, a lot about the game is barely recognizable each time. I think if you rewound two years from my play time, there was unlimited free trade, no grand exchange, and two or three fewer skills, and if…

Oh yes, same for Warcraft, Ultima etc. Multiplayer games necessarily exist in a "dialogue" with their players. There's a tendency for players to optimize the fun out of games, as well. Someone discovers a dominant strategy, and then everyone feels they have to use it.

It is a bit risky, and I think the broader internet can make it worse. There's always the risk of a massive falling-out between players and developers which can sink the game. Latest example is probably the Love and Deepspace fiasco, but we've seen quite a few failed launches recently.

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

#489

Post by random_ind_dude »

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.

>There's definitely a risk of over-thinking things. Just do things. You're not likely to regret it.

Somebody probably gave Trump the same advice, and he took it to heart.

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

#490

Post by joenot443 »

Intralexical wrote: post #465
joenot443 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> This was my first exposure to any kind of outdoor plumbing, I'd never touched PVC before. I find it telling that the highest praise for LLMs comes from people using it for something where they admittedly have very little domain knowledge. Domain experts usually mention major caveats. I've been testing them on subjects where I already understand the problem well, and I've yet to see any outputs that would make me tr…

That's a good point - I've heard people make the same one whenever LLMs are brought up. I hope someday you're able to get more value from them.

Anyway, my pool's looking great and I gained some new skills. I probably could have gotten there with books and YouTube alone, but having another tool at my disposal made me a bit more confident.

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