The internet is going to become bedlam and madness drowning in the noise of auto generated content.
This is just the beginning of the unfolding of an enormous set of unexpected consequences of AI.
FYI,I have written extensively on other disruptions that are likely coming
"We had hoped technology would replace monotonous tasks while leaving us more time for creative exploration. Instead we are getting exactly the opposite. It is replacing what humans love to do. Previously it had been thought that creativity would be the area untouchable by machines. Ironically, it seems to currently be one of AI’s most successful areas."
>The internet is going to become bedlam and madness drowning in the noise of auto generated content.
I'm less pessimistic, simply because this content is trash. It's not just that it's inaccurate, it's also that it's uninteresting and repetitive. Who will consume it? If no one will consume it, who will host it, and for what purpose?
I also keep thinking: If ChatGPT (etc.) can write such content, and I'm interested in it, then why won't I just ask ChatGPT for the information directly rather than going to someone's bloated website?
Try finding anything good on the internet when 99% of search results are dominated by AI-generated garbage alongside the SEO-generated garbage we already have.
The output of AI's is essentially lossy, so when you feed that back in as an autonomous loop you get the equivalent of a 100x re-saved jpeg, aka complete garbage.
I don't think we need any more useful data for the AIs to gobble up — we just need to make the architectures we train more data-efficient. In my mind, a few petabytes of text, images, audio, and videos from the pre-AI era should be more than enough to train an AGI, we just haven't figured out how to do it yet.
AI becomes ubiquitous, and provides media, information, and general assistance and is trained exclusively on content from before AI was on the web. This freezes pop culture in what, the late 90's through the 2020's? What are the implications for that moving forward? Do we stagnate? Do we become so reliant on it that innovation is dying?
It is a similar concept that I touch on a bit in the article I linked above.
In the section "AI dominance, stagnation and human skill debt" which mentions the idea that we could break the cycle of learning new information and skill where there is nothing to fill that void.
Makes you wonder whether the internet does something similar to our human minds. Too much information feedback and signal loss actually harming our ability to think and understand things deeply.
Which will make aggregators, filters, sifters all the more important.
Unfortunately the high quality solution is to throw humans in the mix and have their brains absorb the shrapnel, and they can approve what others should look at. Like techmeme.com and drudgereport.com
If I were substack I'd start figuring out how to ban AI generated content on their platform. Trust in content on certain platforms being non-AI seems like a significant selling-point going forward.
It is impossible. Reliable AI content detection does not exist. You could only implement some heuristics, like some unreasonable rate of content publications.
Authenticity is going to the make or break for this problem. However, I just haven't seen any promising solutions. Theoretically, there won't be solutions as the very intent of AI is to be human like in every way if achievable.
I think platform holders saying "AI content is unwelcome here", and loudly kicking off violators is more than enough to send the required signal.
The goal is not to have 0% generated content, it's to brand yourself as _the_ source for thoughtful, human writing. Having an occasional article slip under the radar is fine.
When you put a lot of effort into your own creation and then it is rejected because it is flagged as AI, then yes it will matter significantly. 50% of my own art I created is flagged as AI.
There may be an appeal process, but the point is AI will make verification of authenticity painful.
I mean, not to just be a jerk or trot out a tired cliche for the heck of it, the "internet" - particularly the web - has, IMO / IME, massively degraded in the past 5 - 7 years. And, unsurprisingly (given the nature of these sorts of processes, looked at either from a more "naive" statistical / distributional POV, or more mechanistically), the rate of degradation is swiftly / noticeably accelerating (i.e., d^2/dx^2 >> 0).
The flood of "AI" BS is just about the most apropos way to continue what's already in motion. A way that could hardly be more perfect - LLMs and the like can work 24/7/365 recursing infinitely until there's no information content left at all, just a "gray goo".
The dark hilarity of our "intelligence" is endlessly amusing to me (yet another stupid human).
I don't disagree, there isn't exactly a test for abstract terms of bedlam and madness. So to whatever degree it already exists, AI will accelerate that an order of magnitude. It is the perfect tool to continue out the self destruction from our attention addiction.
The decay of internet and digital communication has been undeniably accelerating but this will push it to a level previously thought physically impossible.
The hill we're rolling down continually steepens and indeed is now very steep, but we're about to ignite a 1,000,000 ft-lb rocket booster with the engine nozzle pointed directly at the sky.
1) Garbage replaced with garbage is still garbage.
2) spam replaced with spam is still spam.
3) artisanal writing will always be higher quality and demand higher premiums, viewership, margins, and stickiness.
4) generative AI can be used by humans to craft reasonable boilerplate and edited by humans to add value and depth. Similarly calculators can produce mathematical results but they’re only interesting the context of a humans agency and synthesis. The use of generative AI for writing is more like using a code completer or calculator and at no stage removes a human - the AI must be prompted and guided, and as is shown in the article must be edited and post processed to be appealing. The machine covers only a small part of the exercise. Unless you’re making garbage or spam, in which case see (1),(2)
My favorite passage: "Like the syndicated sports content that makes up much of Deadspin’s daily output, the presumption would be that AI-generated SEO articles like these would help pad the traffic stats of G/O’s sites. However, it’s safe to assume that Google is going to be fairly wary of this kind of useless content, especially since it’s full of inaccuracies and basic grammatical errors. The question quickly becomes “Who is this for?” and there doesn’t seem to be a good answer."
The answer is clear as daylight: this is for the shareholders. AI costs less than employee, we put employee money into our pockets instead, end of rationale.
The Capitalization of Everything is accelerating and it serves nothing but money.
The good news is that it works both ways! The content is terrible -> Google demotes and/or people stop reading -> shareholder value decreases -> company disappears.
Replacing workers with AI will cost you money if the wages you save are more than offset by the loss in business. Ultimately their business depends on people wanting to visit their sites.
I haven't been able to tell because most of the G/O sites I've frequented have been nothing but slideshows and "top X" lists for the past several months reaching new lows of Buzzfeed quality in the first place. Can they really go lower by switching to AI?
I think it's interesting that the comments from this are coming from James Whitbrook. I thought about writing a simple generator last month that would take any arbitrary movie, game or other media and write an outraged article based on the alignment with his personal political views. It really doesn't matter what the aligment is - it's simply predictable.
So what is the difference when the bot content comes from a human, or from a AI?
I'm mostly kidding here - but I think it's revealing exactly how devoid of value modern media is that some think that AI can replace it. I pay for NYT and WSJ - but the rest all seem to be little more then flame-bait ideology bubbles these days.
Wow, not only is this absolutely worthless content, but it's blatantly wrong. They don't even have someone doing a 30-second skim before they publish these.
I guess the faux "creatives" will have to actually be creative now. If the content these humans created was so much better than what's generated by AI there wouldn't be any competition.
In this same comment section we see the denial.
"The content it generates is trash" and "We can't distinguish the content generated by AI vs content generated by humans."
I think that tells us all we need to know. Instead of fighting the tide, rise with it.
The influx of AI-generated content on the Web is a given but I highly doubt it will have an adverse effect on any outlets that try to operate with a modicum of integrity and respect to their audiences with regard to the production of genuine, insightful material (authored by actual humans). I don't get the impression that G/O Media's assets have that in mind.
I am okay with the demise of the sort of outlets that they own from a quality perspective and the type of people I imagine frequent their assets in lieu of other outlets on average probably do not care. Most of what we read online that are "current events" or "news" are glorified press releases anyway, so what difference does it make how the information is generated? Feature stories and in-depth criticism is another matter, but I don't think that the sort of people in search for more substantial content are dependent on Gizmodo or Deadspin to get their fix today (I hope not, at least).
In short, I think decisions like this will be a good catalyst for adept, interested writers and publishers alike to forge better opportunities. The future of media has its promise in the dreadful decisions that corporations are making under the influence of late-stage capitalism. Isn't it a joy?
43 comments
[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 98.3 ms ] threadThis is just the beginning of the unfolding of an enormous set of unexpected consequences of AI.
FYI,I have written extensively on other disruptions that are likely coming
"We had hoped technology would replace monotonous tasks while leaving us more time for creative exploration. Instead we are getting exactly the opposite. It is replacing what humans love to do. Previously it had been thought that creativity would be the area untouchable by machines. Ironically, it seems to currently be one of AI’s most successful areas."
from https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-and-the-end-to-all-things
I'm less pessimistic, simply because this content is trash. It's not just that it's inaccurate, it's also that it's uninteresting and repetitive. Who will consume it? If no one will consume it, who will host it, and for what purpose?
I also keep thinking: If ChatGPT (etc.) can write such content, and I'm interested in it, then why won't I just ask ChatGPT for the information directly rather than going to someone's bloated website?
Leveraging AI to make your business more productive is a short term temporary evolution. Longer term most businesses will have no purpose.
"Per the report, over 141 "blue chip" — or internationally recognized — brands are unknowingly supporting hundreds of low-effort AI content farms."
https://futurism.com/content-farms-ai
(That’s unrealistically cynical… I hope.)
Next, AI will become your child's closest companion and they will bond with it greater than to their own parents.
The output of AI's is essentially lossy, so when you feed that back in as an autonomous loop you get the equivalent of a 100x re-saved jpeg, aka complete garbage.
AI's wont have any more useful data to gobble up.
AI becomes ubiquitous, and provides media, information, and general assistance and is trained exclusively on content from before AI was on the web. This freezes pop culture in what, the late 90's through the 2020's? What are the implications for that moving forward? Do we stagnate? Do we become so reliant on it that innovation is dying?
I find that idea interesting.
In the section "AI dominance, stagnation and human skill debt" which mentions the idea that we could break the cycle of learning new information and skill where there is nothing to fill that void.
Unfortunately the high quality solution is to throw humans in the mix and have their brains absorb the shrapnel, and they can approve what others should look at. Like techmeme.com and drudgereport.com
Authenticity is going to the make or break for this problem. However, I just haven't seen any promising solutions. Theoretically, there won't be solutions as the very intent of AI is to be human like in every way if achievable.
I recently tried a AI art detector while writing my latest - https://www.mindprison.cc/p/ai-art-challenges-meaning-in-a-w... - and found it to be abysmal. The false positives made it completely unusable.
I think platform holders saying "AI content is unwelcome here", and loudly kicking off violators is more than enough to send the required signal.
The goal is not to have 0% generated content, it's to brand yourself as _the_ source for thoughtful, human writing. Having an occasional article slip under the radar is fine.
There may be an appeal process, but the point is AI will make verification of authenticity painful.
My argument isn't "imperfect detection is fine".
I'm saying that _you don't need detection at all_.
Just make it very clear that AI content is unwelcome on your platform and loudly boot everyone who tries to "experiment" with your limits.
I mean, not to just be a jerk or trot out a tired cliche for the heck of it, the "internet" - particularly the web - has, IMO / IME, massively degraded in the past 5 - 7 years. And, unsurprisingly (given the nature of these sorts of processes, looked at either from a more "naive" statistical / distributional POV, or more mechanistically), the rate of degradation is swiftly / noticeably accelerating (i.e., d^2/dx^2 >> 0).
The flood of "AI" BS is just about the most apropos way to continue what's already in motion. A way that could hardly be more perfect - LLMs and the like can work 24/7/365 recursing infinitely until there's no information content left at all, just a "gray goo".
The dark hilarity of our "intelligence" is endlessly amusing to me (yet another stupid human).
The hill we're rolling down continually steepens and indeed is now very steep, but we're about to ignite a 1,000,000 ft-lb rocket booster with the engine nozzle pointed directly at the sky.
1) Garbage replaced with garbage is still garbage.
2) spam replaced with spam is still spam.
3) artisanal writing will always be higher quality and demand higher premiums, viewership, margins, and stickiness.
4) generative AI can be used by humans to craft reasonable boilerplate and edited by humans to add value and depth. Similarly calculators can produce mathematical results but they’re only interesting the context of a humans agency and synthesis. The use of generative AI for writing is more like using a code completer or calculator and at no stage removes a human - the AI must be prompted and guided, and as is shown in the article must be edited and post processed to be appealing. The machine covers only a small part of the exercise. Unless you’re making garbage or spam, in which case see (1),(2)
The answer is clear as daylight: this is for the shareholders. AI costs less than employee, we put employee money into our pockets instead, end of rationale.
The Capitalization of Everything is accelerating and it serves nothing but money.
Problem solved.
But in hindsight, reusing the name of the SEO trash parent was a terrible decision.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/buzzfeednews/buzzfeed-n...
Exactly, and at the moment an LLM might still be cheaper than human writers. If you're going to publish hot air you might as well automate it.
There are ways that AI can be additive, rather than stir up so much ill-will & controversy.
Rolling Stone, for example, experimented with AI openly & creatively in a way that builds connections between the writers and readers: https://www.businessside.co/p/rolling-stone-experiments-with...
So what is the difference when the bot content comes from a human, or from a AI?
I'm mostly kidding here - but I think it's revealing exactly how devoid of value modern media is that some think that AI can replace it. I pay for NYT and WSJ - but the rest all seem to be little more then flame-bait ideology bubbles these days.
There is no polite way to describe it. I would call it dog shit, but at least dog shit has some potential as fertilizer.
Might as well be AI.
In this same comment section we see the denial.
"The content it generates is trash" and "We can't distinguish the content generated by AI vs content generated by humans."
I think that tells us all we need to know. Instead of fighting the tide, rise with it.
Gizmodo also published their first AI story today,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36611668
And it's as insanely terrible as you'd imagine.
I am okay with the demise of the sort of outlets that they own from a quality perspective and the type of people I imagine frequent their assets in lieu of other outlets on average probably do not care. Most of what we read online that are "current events" or "news" are glorified press releases anyway, so what difference does it make how the information is generated? Feature stories and in-depth criticism is another matter, but I don't think that the sort of people in search for more substantial content are dependent on Gizmodo or Deadspin to get their fix today (I hope not, at least).
In short, I think decisions like this will be a good catalyst for adept, interested writers and publishers alike to forge better opportunities. The future of media has its promise in the dreadful decisions that corporations are making under the influence of late-stage capitalism. Isn't it a joy?