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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

#971

Post by inigyou »

qznc wrote: post #892
Cipater wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Discord is one of the worst things to happen to the web. So much useful, interesting content gets walled off and locked away. It's not public, not searchable, not linkable, not indexable. I'm never going to stumble across an interesting tidbit of information on Discord while browsing the web. And even when you do have access to a particular server, you'll often struggle to find something posted a while back,…

Yes, I share your hate. Unfortunately, the open web is apparently too hostile now for any sizeable open community.

All you really need is a community specific question on the sign up screen and a button for admins to turn off new signups.

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

#972

Post by inigyou »

sgt wrote: post #665
Retr0id wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most hobby communities in my spheres of interest have been subsumed into Discord. It is yet another silo, but it does feel lively. I don't think I'm contradicting you here, I just feel less negatively about it.

I don't think I've ever tried Discord. Is it like IRC? Or more like a forum

It's like IRC but it works on phones and has emoji reactions and GIFs which are necessary to attract gen alpha.

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

#973

Post by inigyou »

NoGravitas wrote: post #613
inigyou wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Popular wikis such as Minecraft and Runescape have successfully migrated away from Fandom. Note that Fandom leaves behind the outdated old wiki and refuses to allow deletion because it drives their revenue. After a few years, the Fandom wiki is severely out of date and loses traffic. What we actually need is a browser that filters out bullshit.

I really wish Memory Alpha would migrate off of Fandom.

Be the change you want to see - make a mirror.

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

#974

Post by inigyou »

mschuster91 wrote: post #631
spiderfarmer wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ChatGPT goes bust, they'll find another ChatGPT, not another Google. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll see a popular competitor from China in the years to come. TikTok already took social media by storm, something nobody thought that was possible either.

> I wouldn't be surprised if we'll see a popular competitor from China in the years to come. TikTok already took social media by storm, something nobody thought that was possible either. Tiktok is cheap to run. AI however, it needs absurd amounts of power, RAM and GPU compute capacity to run... and there's serious constraints everywhere.

DeepSeek Flash.

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

#975

Post by inigyou »

apothegm wrote: post #621
sgt wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would not describe it as Kagi being indirectly Russian. What do you mean? That Kagi is directly Russian? Paying a russian provider isn't against the law and at some point we need to bring Russia back into the warmth of the West.

Perhaps “at some point” is not “while they’re still waging a war of aggression”, though.

Is it only Russia that we don't pay, or is it any country that does a war of aggression?

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

#976

Post by inigyou »

backlava12 wrote: post #654
Good4boothee wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that effort totally redundant? As in - plenty of people are already filling entire internet with slop for SEO purposes? And LLM slop by default is a mix of facts with few plausible but made up facts - it might be harder to craft such perfect poison on purpose.

Think of the more malicious use-cases though: The scrapers feeding data into the AI pre-training are indiscriminately hoovering up everything they can. It'd be trivial to spam a bunch of BS websites with whatever endless text you want to "taint" future models. Post tons of examples of insecure code, publish package.json files pointing to some malicious library, etc...

I like how current AIs believe the urban legend that the sky is blue. Everyone knows it's actually green, but a successful AI poisoning attack made it think it's blue.

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

#977

Post by inigyou »

tru3_power wrote: post #859
nunez wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Almost all of the top results I get from my searches are AI-generated garbage if the content was published after 2025. It's essentially guaranteed now. Whatever; let the people have what they asked for. At least there's an infinite supply of old books.

Who asked for this? Lol

Billionaires

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

#978

Post by tmtvl »

throw0101d wrote: post #517
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…

> 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. People have been DIYing swimming pools for decades with the help of… books: * https://www.amazon.com/COMPLETE-GUIDE-SWIMMING-CONSTRUCTION-... Where do you think ChatGPT got its information from?

The internet at large, including all those posts where someone responded 'that's wrong, it's actually' but as an algorithm can't actually make sense of that it will happily regurgitate misinformation.

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

#979

Post by erfgh »

embedding-shape wrote: post #743
erfgh wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing you can really walk back from. Time flows one-way.

I mean if I decide to go to the beach, but I arrive there and don't like it, I just go home again, tomorrow looks the same regardless probably. Deciding to have a child, or other more "long-lasting" decisions, definitely impacts how your tomorrow most likely looks.

Deciding not to have a child also impacts your future. You might change your mind in the future and be unable to have a child or have other health problems that make raising a child difficult. You might reach old(er) age and be alone. Regrets are a thing.

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

#980

Post by apothegm »

inigyou wrote: post #975
apothegm wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps “at some point” is not “while they’re still waging a war of aggression”, though.

Is it only Russia that we don't pay, or is it any country that does a war of aggression?

Ideally any, and yes, I’m aware that that currently includes the US. Being located there (though very much opposed to said war) it’s a bit difficult for me to boycott, personally.
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