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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

#771

Post by avgDev »

rayiner wrote: post #562
KPGv2 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> People who long for the web of the 90s, I always feel like they must not be very interesting. Imagine complaining that we can't go back to libraries of the 1970s when the ones today have 3D printers, DVDs to rent, etc. because "there are too many teenagers" The Internet used to be a space for high-IQ people, and now it's filled with low attention span, low impulse control people. Tik Tok and Instagram are the worst…

I think we still have many high-IQ people on the web. Its just they are not making tiktoks. However, they are harder to find since the pool got bigger.

The ease of use introduced the average individuals to the web and online gaming. When I was younger and online gaming was gaining traction my "clan" hosted servers. This is how I started dipping my toes into programming and server configuration. Literally, everyone that was in the clan was quite intelligent. We had debates and discussions on IRC, forums and teamspeak.

Now, gaming and the web is just trash full of brain rotted individuals. Communities have been destroyed by lack of self hosted or self owned servers. Forums have been destroyed by discord. Games are being destroyed by microtransactions.

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

#772

Post by KPGv2 »

shimman wrote: post #704
flir wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not totally convinced about the printing press example (expensive, technical). The biggest presses, with the longest reach (daily newspapers) were often owned by the richest people. What's unique now is decentralized + extreme potential reach. Or it was. Now we have to consider bias in the algorithm that sticks stuff in front of us and is, I suspect, the modern equivalent of those daily newspaper presses.

This discounting how many of the 100s of worker owned newspapers/magazines that were in circulation. Not everything was controlled by a select few. How did you think labor movements in America during the 1800s collectively organized across the country sharing literal war stories?

"Oh those don't count as newspapers. Newspapers are professional. Those are just zines."

It's why I hate people looking down on fanfiction, too. Aliens was Alien fanfiction. The New Testament is OT fanfiction. Hell, nolan's The Odyssey is fanfiction.

The establishment uses terms to dismiss outsider art as less-than, and this isn't much different. (They of course get to decide what the "inside" is)

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

#773

Post by jmkr »

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.

Indeed, I also don't listen to music after 2024. I'm also not interested in anything my friends have made (with claude or others). Or how so much of creativity is now a prompt away.

A lot of our culture is disappearing before our eyes and people are defending it.

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

#774

Post by avgDev »

Finbel wrote: post #616
wpietri wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad it went well for you. But I run a not-for-profit pinball museum, and I have specifically had to ban volunteer repairpeople from using the chatbots because it will confidently propose idiotically wrong solutions. Which will then get proposed to me, or just directly applied, with equal confidence. At this point I'd rather hear, "My horoscope said..." than "ChatGPT said..." I expect that it's good for common us…

Two years ago it would have been insane to say that you got help from ChatGPT to fix your outdoor plumbing, people here would have been frothing at the mouth for merely suggesting it. Four years ago it wasn't even on the radar of future possibilities. The quality it is today, is the worst it's ever going to be.

We are in the golden age of AI. Things are going to get worse at some point. It happened to google, it will happen to AI.

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

#775

Post by sph »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #765
ryandrake wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is really stereotypical HN: You can't really post an unqualified generalization here, because someone will inevitably jump out of the woodwork with a canned "You said X is generally Y, but here is counterexample X0 which is not Y! Your post is incorrect!"

Yeah. It's all over on HN for sure. I associate it a lot with Reddit too

Upvote-based systems and their consequences have been a disaster for online discourse

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

#776

Post by Mabusto »

schaefer wrote: post #11

Kagi search today is better than Google search ever was. And it’s clear that Google’s Ad model ultimately created a priority inversion. The advertisers became the customer. I am so glad Kagi came along with a business model that is actually working.

I’ve been using Kagi for about a year now and I genuinely get worried that there are no alternatives if it goes out of business. The results are extremely good, especially in the last 4 months. I like their opt in AI summary as well, just add a question mark at the end.

I pay for a lot of things that are free from google/big tech, I’m happy to watch the advertisement driven web implode on itself so we can go back to the idea of a consumer paying a company for a quality product, monetizing peoples attention has been a huge detriment to society.

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

#777

Post by inknight »

bluebarbet wrote: post #690
inknight wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people who generate entire blogposts with claude probably do not care about substance, tho. before llms, people would have to put effort into what they write and be mindful about the things that they are saying. now it just generates the whole thing, the people who "signs it" barely reviews it fully most of the time, IF they review it at all, proceed to say "eh, good enough" and publishes it.

Ironic anecdote. Although I don't care about AI, I'm triggered by your own carefree attitude to orthography (no capitalization, unpronounceable words like "llms"). At least AI is easy to parse!

[flagged]

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

#778

Post by avgDev »

ryandrake wrote: post #766
joenot443 wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember this was brought up about a month or so on HN, in the context of describing how one person's experience using LLMs can be so vastly different than another person's: "LLMs seem good at things you are not good at." So, if you've never touched PVC before, LLM sounds plausibly competent--it may actually be or it may not be, but you'll walk away from it thinking you learned something. If you are a professional…

This sounds accurate.

I am not a mechanic by trade, but I know nearly everything there is to know about working on an ICE car. I did paint cars professionally for a bit.

LLMs are absolutely full of garbage advice, when I try to use it for troubleshooting. However, people who don't know anything about cars are telling me it helped them fix issues. I am assuming their issues were maybe surface level and something I would just know without even looking at any manuals, because when I use it for complex problems it just doesn't work for me.

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

#779

Post by chrisjj »

hamdingers wrote: post #720
chrisjj wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It could be applied by cameras themselves. And equally faked by bots.

If it were generally possible to forge cryptographic signatures we'd have bigger things to worry about than AI generated photos.

I agree, but this doesn't require a general capability. The suggestion is a camera could apply the signature. Cameras could be hacked.

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

#780

Post by order-matters »

davnicwil wrote: post #611
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 find it so interesting how many comments about AI start with a disclaimer that of course it's very useful, before pointing out a negative of any sort. I do it too so it's not a criticism, but I find it kinda interesting culturally. It's a reflection I think of the environment that we've created for ourselves, or has been created for us (or some combo) where somehow you can't point out an unqualified negative of thi…

i think its cognitive dissonance. everyone is using it pretty frequently and so to criticize it creates this tension like "if its not actually worthwhile then why am i using it so much?" and the most prolific response to that dilemma is to write it off as saying "well of course its useful in many ways" ... with the unspoken second half of that sentence being "it's useful in the ways i use it"
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