GPT might be an information virus (2023)

I think it is an information virus, but differently - it's homogenized everything, and made people dumber and lazier. It's poisoned public and professional discourse by reducing writing and thinking from the richness of humanity to one narrow style with a tiny latent space, and simultaneously convinced people that this is what good writing looks like. And it's erased thought from board classes of endeavor. This virus is much worse than the relatively benign symptoms described in the article.

Re: GPT might be an information virus (2023)

#6

Post by anthk » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:57 PM UTC

There are public sources of information such as a curated WIkipedia, open content from Kiwix, Gutenberg Math books and OpenStreetMap for maps. Better, you can download offline and curated version of these so anyone can have a working snapshot anytime. That's good to avoid future AI tamperings. As long as these as AI free, we are potentialy in the right direction.

Re: GPT might be an information virus (2023)

#7

Post by anthk » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 9:58 PM UTC

hayden_dev wrote: post #2

"might"

You are right. The web it's already rotten. There are tons of AI generated articles on supposed serious news sites. These will be worse over time.

Re: GPT might be an information virus (2023)

#8

Post by ayaros » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 10:04 PM UTC

We're going to have to go in the opposite direction and rely on directories or lists of verified human-made/accurate content. It will be like the old days of yahoo and web-indexes all over again.

Re: GPT might be an information virus (2023)

#9

Post by 4b11b4 » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 10:07 PM UTC

virus is a good way to think about the effect radius

Re: GPT might be an information virus (2023)

#10

Post by resters » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 10:12 PM UTC

It’s a method of storing information that makes it far more useful than previous methods.

Sure we can idealize feats of the human brain such as memorizing digits of pi. LLMs put more human behavior into the same category as memorizing digits of pi, and make the previously scarce “idea clay” available to the masses.

It’s not the same as a human brain or human knowledge but it is still a very useful tool just like the tools that let us do maths without memorizing hundreds of digits of pi.