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The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

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Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#571

Post by krick »

emsign wrote: post #315
pavel_lishin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I won't even bet on archive.org to survive. I will soon upgrade my home NAS to ~100TB and fill it up with all kinds of information and media /r/datahoarder style. Gonna archive the usual suspects like Wikipedia and also download some YouTube channels. I think now is the last chance to still get information that hasn't been tainted by LLM crap. The window of opportunity is closing fast.

> ~100TB

That's a lot, compared to mine. How do you organize replication and do you make backups on any external services? I kinda do want to hoard more, but I find it complicated to deal with at large scale. It gets expensive to back-up everything, and HDDs aren't really a solid media long-term. Now, I can kinda use my judgment of what is important and what is essentially trash I store just in case, but losing 100TB of trash would be pretty devastating too, TBH.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#572

Post by krick »

datagram wrote: post #405
letitbeirie wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be like salvaging pre-1945 shipwrecks for their non-irradiated metal.

It's funny, I made the same analogy the other day: https://twitter.com/gramofdata/status/1736838023940112523 I think something interesting to note is that once we stopped atmospheric nuclear testing steel radiation levels went back down and are almost at normal background levels. So maybe the same thing will happen if we stop using GenAI.

It was quite limited set of entities that did atmospheric nuclear testing. Same cannot be said about LMMs.

Mine post-apocalyptic scenario I half-jokingly predicted some 5-10 years ago was that all general-purpose computing hardware, which is common and relatively cheap now will be abandoned and possibly outlawed in the end. People will use non-rootable thin clients to access Amazon, which will have general-purpose hardware, but it will be heavily audited by government entities.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#573

Post by rightbyte »

protortyp wrote: post #351

I doubt that the dogshit is so much worse than it used to be. Unfortunately, I also contributed to this. When I was 13 or 14, I scripted a little tool that allowed me to write one tech news blog post and generate multiple versions of it by simply swapping phrases, adding practically zero value. You'd be surprised (or not) how much of a tech news blog is repetitive wording, mainly to fill yet one more adsense banner a…

Interesting. How long ago was this? It is obvious it happens now alot, but at what time did you think it started?

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#574

Post by rightbyte »

mingus88 wrote: post #199
codexb wrote: post #153

Lets be honest, the internet has always been full of Dogshit. Teachers have long warned us about using Wikipedia as a source. Fake news has always existed. Real news has been diluting itself with questionably true clickbait for years. The mass scramble by companies to hastily use AI is just further diluting and tainting the standard information outlets we've used.

How old are you? Xillenial here and the internet was a utopia when I first explored it. Everyone you interacted with was similarly curious and interesting. All the content was some flavor of passion project. I’ve recently been getting into ham radio because it has a similar feel to me as the early internet. You need a license and an outlay of equipment and everyone else is a hobbyist also. It’s not an app anyone can…

> I think we’ll see a backlash at some point where people abandon these app-driven spaces and we go back to grass roots communities.

To some extent is has already happened. I've seen some upswing in niche forum use but nowhere close to the heyday. Sadly, most people seem to move into private chat channels.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#575

Post by WesSouza »

bombcar wrote: post #169
Eisenstein wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about 'internet content which is dependent on ad-revenue inevitably turns anything associated with it to dogshit'?

I have a sneaking suspicion that at some point in the distant future advertising will be banned simply because it's so associated with the tragedy of the information commons.

And I have a skepticism that capitalism will never allow that.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#576

Post by fennecbutt »

It's become more and more full of human bs as well, a la Taboola "articles", misinformation/fake videos, etc.

As always, the problem is not the tool but the people using the tool. Unfortunately we can't stop them whether they write crap themselves or have AI do it but the latter certainly creates more pollution than ever before.

As long as someone clicks on a "you wouldn't believe this secret Android feature that makes you money!" then this will continue.

Doesn't really matter tho, people have been curating their view of the web via platforms and individual creators/sources for ages now.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#577

Post by fennecbutt »

grungydan wrote: post #370
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…

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 d…

Humans will use whatever means available to us to spout bullshit, misinformation and peddle snake oil.

The Internet has just made it easier for us to communicate, in doing so it has made the bad easier, but it has also made the good easier too. And fortunately there's still a lot more good than bad.

So I totally disagree with you there, bettering communication only benefits our species overall.

Gay rights is a great example, we only got them because of the noise and ruckus, protests, parades, individuals being brave and coming out. It's easy to hate a type of person if you've never been exposed to or communicated with them. But sometimes all it took to change the opinion of a homophobic fuck was finding out their best friend, their child, their neighbour who helps out all the time, was gay. Then suddenly it clicks.

Though certainly the Internet is slightly at odds with our species; we didn't evolve to communicate in that way so it's not without its challenges.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#578

Post by monkeynotes »

jstarfish wrote: post #344
monkeynotes wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is hyperbole, and similar to various techno fears throughout the ages. Books were seen by intellectuals as being the downfall of society. If everyone is educated they'll challenge dogma of the church, for one. So looking at prior transformational technology I think we'll be just fine. Life may be forever changed for sure, but I think we'll crack reliability and we'll just cope with intelligence being a n…

> If everyone is educated they'll challenge dogma of the church, for one. But this was a correct prediction. It took the Church down a few pegs and let corporations fill that void. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, and this time they aren't making the mistake of committing doctrine to paper. > we'll just cope with intelligence being a non-scarce commodity available to anyone. Or we'll just poison the "intellig…

> But this was a correct prediction.

And yet the sky didn't fall.

> Or we'll just poison the "intelligence"

We really don't know how that will pan out. All I have is history to inform me, and even the most radical revolutions have worked out with humans continuing to move forward with increased capacity and better living conditions overall. The new boss is way better than the old.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#579

Post by monkeynotes »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #413
monkeynotes wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is hyperbole, and similar to various techno fears throughout the ages. Books were seen by intellectuals as being the downfall of society. If everyone is educated they'll challenge dogma of the church, for one. So looking at prior transformational technology I think we'll be just fine. Life may be forever changed for sure, but I think we'll crack reliability and we'll just cope with intelligence being a n…

> Books were seen by intellectuals as being the downfall of society. If everyone is educated they'll challenge dogma of the church, for one. Now, let me tell you about this man, his 95 theses and a thirty years war. Europe did emerge better from it all, but the cost was high, very high.

Yes, this is the nature of major disruption. I doubt it will be a smooth ride, but I also doubt we will suffer until we are wiped out.

Re: The Internet Is Full of AI Dogshit

#580

Post by worldsayshi »

wharvle wrote: post #496
stcredzero wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when the angry mob, lead by the Penny Arcade guys came after Scott McCloud for advocating the end of the ad funded Internet in favor of a micropayment driven one. Turns out, he was right!

I don't think micropayments can work, either. The vast majority of Internet content—and I mean stuff that does get seen, not obscure sites with a dozen visits a years—isn't even worth a penny to most (not all, but most) of the people who "consume" it, but is worth a lot more than micropayment-amounts to some smaller set of people. Enforcing micropayments wouldn't, for nearly all sites that rely on ad revenue now, res…

I think micro-payments could work in many different ways and with much different results depending on which model becomes prevalent. But the issue is mostly that it has to both "work" once there's enough users and it has to have a mechanism for adoption even before it is "big enough".

Example of alternative for micro-payment model: You pay $20 to an intermediary each month. You upvote web pages/domains. Pages you visit knows you pay $20 each month but not whether you upvote them. At the end of the month, the $20 gets equal split between web pages you upvoted.

It's a very imperfect model that probably wouldn't get spontaneously adopted. But there's many ways it could be varied. And saying it won't work feels a bit too categorical because are we really saying no possible variant of this will ever work?

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