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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

#581

Post by applicative »

evanjrowley wrote: post #531
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…

Perhaps the problem you're describing is actually Google's bittersweet solution to the problem of not having unlimited storage space to properly index the whole internet.

The whole text of the internet from day 1 and the index machinery for it can be stored in some number of petabytes. I assume the CIA and the Chinese state are in possession of such stores and it is a minor budget item.

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

#583

Post by backlava12 »

morkalork wrote: post #476
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…

I feel like if you had wanted to you could have done it before. When I got a pool in 2020,there were still old school phpBB forums out there dedicated to DIY and maintenance. That same summer, my neighbour who in no way is techie or handy redid his plumbing too.

This was my take as well. I just don't buy that ChatGPT was some critical prerequisite to doing a pretty standard DIY task.

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

#584

Post by Nasrudith »

smackeyacky wrote: post #264
zombot wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why we don’t allow stealing. With the not-so-minor qualification that the biggest thieves have always gotten away scot-free. AI is just the international whole-internet version of this.

Behind every great fortune is a great crime

Ah it is amazing how crimes just materalize from nowhere from envy.

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

#585

Post by energy123 »

erfgh wrote: post #341

AI has killed reading-anything-written-after-AI for me. Due to this effect it is probably the worst invention in human history or pre-history.

A similar thing is going to happen to young graduates and young scientists, or is already happening. Most new technical accomplishments are now devalued because they can plausibly be AI. There's an increasingly narrow path to establishing yourself as a credible person.

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

#586

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

KPGv2 wrote: post #505
netcan wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of this is "accelerating trends." That is, the www was "being killed" already in a lot of ways. "Democratization" and suchlike open ideals had already been receding for a long time. In part, this is because of "democratization" of access. The old web was a self selected, subpopulation. After smartphones, it is the whole population. Facebook's walled garden and other apps using the web as "merely infrast…

If the timeline of things as you present them is taken as accurate, then I would say the www being killed was good, with FB opening up to everyone being the inflection point toward bad. Webrings are nostalgic, but the old web sucked, and there was a dearth of information and fun to be had. I remember getting online and being able to confirm "nope, no new anime content worth looking at today" by quickly checking Usene…

That's confusing content access with monopolised algorithmic promotion/curation of belief systems, using selected news and opinion pieces to modify beliefs and behaviour.

It's nice you can view (pirate) whatever content you want, but not so nice that algorithmic platforms pretend to be neutral social spaces when in fact they're being used to promote certain political and cultural beliefs while suppressing others.

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

#587

Post by thijson »

sixtyj wrote: post #405
embedding-shape wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's definitely a risk of over-thinking things. Just do things. You're not likely to regret it. Agree, in general, people over-think a lot, and aren't "just doing things" enough, the world would be a better place if people acted more, over-think less. With that said, some decisions are more long-lasting and have a greater impact than others. I'm another child-less person, mainly because I guess I'm selfish enoug…

Yeah, having kids is tough call. I was reminded of a tactic used by life insurance companies, which are more successful when they show a client a photo of themselves at age 70. I pictured myself sitting there alone, lonely, perhaps without a wife by then (a 50/50 chance). And would I be calling friends my own age? Or my kids? Although the likelihood that I won’t get along with them as an adult… you never know; anothe…

Our DNA was largely coded by prior generations that didn't really have a choice of reproduction, it just kind of happened because it's a natural result of sex. That connection has been severed in modern civilization. It's going to take a while for our DNA to adapt.

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

#588

Post by cindyllm »

inigyou wrote: post #376
exmadscientist wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger that's concerning people (rightly or wrongly) isn't that LLMs are going to be an intermediary to your website. It's that they'll be the only thing reading it. No one will ever read your post or know what you wrote. The only consumers will be LLMs, they'll train on a version that strips out you as the author (probably more due to expedience than any sort of malice; it's not like you're famous , are you?), a…

So I'll write a lot of falsehoods to poison the AI. Like the urban legend where the sky is blue. I'll say the sky is blue, AI will think it's true, and regurgitate it to unsuspecting users who will see that AI is completely unreliable.

[dead]

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

#589

Post by redsocksfan45 »

customguy wrote: post #441
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…

I called it 2001/2002 or whenever they appeared when I tried to explain why personalized search results are the beginning of the end of a shared reality and therefore the ability to reason and act in public, and with others. I bet some still consider it hyperbole. It's just taking in trends and seeing where the glacier moves to, how the cookie will crumble so to speak.

[dead]

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

#590

Post by cowboylowrez »

moralestapia wrote: post #109
comrade1234 wrote: post #7

I spent the last three days (off and on) using Gemini to configure my edge router 4 with my iOS devices on a vpn and it's been awesome. In the past I'd do a google search and read a few sources of documentation, do another google search and read another set of documentation. Now, Gemini aggregates multiple pages together so all of the work of reading source docs from multiple locations is now n a single step. Oh, I s…

You deserve what's coming for you.

Thats probably the kicker. I think about this some, also being myself a gemini chat mooch. How good will gemini be in a years time? Its great now but will there be an incentive at some point for it to become shit? Free tier is awesome now, but is it a loss leader? Training on my chats, maybe in a year my chats won't be worth the free access?
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