AI ingesting AI slop and falling apart is not dissimilar to boomers ingesting rightwing slop and falling apart.
If I had the money and a computer able to handle the amount of stuff I’d be throwing at it with a local model, I would have a giant website full of AI generated nonsense purely for the purpose of letting AI gobble it up to help the AI incest problem.
Imagine if a whole metric ton of “websites” did this. The thieving AI companies would either have to start blocking all of these sites or deal with an issue they don’t wanna because they’re too stingy and will probably just have their AI try ( and fail ) to fix the problem.
That was certainly cool. Now I wish I could use tools like that nepenthes on my neocities page.
Ffs, neural networks and LLMs have their place and can be useful, but setting up datacentres that snort up the entire internet indiscriminately to create a glorified chatbot that spews data that may or may not be correct is insane.
I predicted this. It is similar to a photocopy of a photocopy that eventually ends up a mess of garbage noise.
Human society does the same thing.
We’re ok when we talk about what we saw.
Less so when we talk about what somebody else saw.
Crazier and crazier when we talk about what somebody said about what somebody said about what somebody saw. Which is arguably the internet.
Another problem I’ve realized today, is the proliferation of data that was originally hallucinated by AI.
I was discussing an issue on a software with a coworker and he asked an AI for help configure around it. He then sent me “apparently we can try changing this setting to this value”. I told him to first validate if that setting really existed because AI tends to make up things like that when it’s what you would want to hear and running a test would take us 20~30 minutes.
He found some discussions about that setting not working as people expected. “ok at least it exists then” and we tried it. It didn’t work. I later cloned the source of that software and checked, the setting didn’t exist - ever.
I love that you even specifically said, “Yea, let’s check to make sure that setting exists to begin with.” To which instead of actually fucking checking, they proceed to google more about the setting and use someone else’s ‘discussion’ online of it not working as proof that it does exist, even though they were likely having that discussion because the setting didn’t exist.
This is also how I can tell this story is 100% true.
I don’t miss working support at all and am reminded of it like this daily
The benefit of working with open source code bases or being able to check the source for existing features.
It’s very common for there to be hidden settings, with open source one can look at the code based but with closed source a search may be one’s only hope.
Good. Eat yourself you technological prion disease.
This is a rare insult and I like it
The silver lining of AI slop filling the WWW
I’ve been predicting this for a while now and people kept telling me I was wrong. Prepare for dot com burst two, electric boogaloo.
I hope it crashes but what if the market completely embraces feels-based economics and just says that incomprehensible AI slop noise is what customers crave? Maybe CEOs will interpret AI gibberish output in much the same way as ancient high priests made calls by sifting through the entrails of sacrificed animals. Tesla meme stock is evidence that you can defy all known laws of economic theory and still just coast by.
Removed by mod
Garbage in, garbage out.
Who could have possibly predicted that?
This has always been true, but LLMs have expedited the process by taking the garbage out and sticking it right back into the input.
The recycling industry begs to differ. Well, exceptions prove the rule.
Depends what materials you’re recycling. Glass and plastic both require virgin material, else you’d get garbage out.
Paper works up to 6 times at best, if someone is able to track the same batch. But recycling paper uses more energy than using virgin, and if virgin paper sourced from a sustainable place like Canada, then recycled paper is actually worse for the environment because of the energy thing and de-inking water waste. Also the timber is cut for housing actually and only the edges of the logs are used to make chips for making paper. So trees aren’t being cut solely for paper (from sustainable countries). Until we meet again (insert Skeletor running away)
Glass and plastic both require virgin material, else you’d get garbage out.
Everything I’m reading suggests the problem with glass recycling is contamination, and that once that’s accounted for what’s left over can be infinitely recycled without quality loss.
Source? Ive never found a factory that does this in practice. They all add virgin material
Unfortunately I’m not finding much explicit information on the specific processes, just that it’s possible.
- Wikipedia says it’s infinitely recyclable
- So does this waste disposal place
- The Australian CSIRO also says it’s “endless”
- Alternatively, this PDF from a state government here says it’s often mixed in with virgin materials, but doesn’t mention why.
Now of course just because it can be recycled indefinitely, doesn’t mean it is in practise. Could be contamination, colouring, or just plain cost.
I don’t think infinitely recyclable doesn’t mean it doesn’t need virgin material. I don’t know what that would be called
Good. Poison the AI well. Rot this shit to the ground.
Aww boo hoo, did someone generate a degenerative feedback loop? Yeah? Did someone make a big ol’ oppsy whoopsy that’s gunna accelerate in hallucinations and slop as it collapses in on itself? How’s the coded version of a microphone whine going to go, you silly buttholes?
People are putting AI generated pitfalls to guard their content.
They reference nonsense links that usually cannot even be seen by normal users, the AI reads the pages and finds more garbage links even as more are generated by the site.
It’s just so unfortunate that, in causing AI to delve down these winding paths, to propagate these slopfest feedback loops, the computers that are running the AI are burning real resources, polluting our atmosphere.
Unfortunate is not the right word to describe the deep lament I feel, to cause such destruction for so little, if any, gain at all. My heart is heavy with regret for us all. Not just you and I, but for beast, bird, plant as well. Such a shame.
So, reading this article, it’s not about model collapse, but about RAG - letting the AI model google the question essentially. The problem is, the first 10 pages of google search results are all low effort adfarming slop sites, because of course it is, which is making the answers from the AI worse, as these slop sites often have incorrect or otherwise unproofed articles, which biases the AI to fork out the wrong answer.
I’m sure the major AI services will try and fix this with some slop site detection routines.
I’m sure the major AI services will try and fix this with some slop site detection routines.
Which will be run by AI 🙃
Don’t forget! A lot of the slop on those first few pages of results is AI-generated.
Ouroboros is a very apt moniker for this phenomena.
We need a new, stronger name for this. Like shit ouroboros, or shouroboros. Yes, AI eating it’s own shit and then regurgitating it is shouroboros.
Mad AI Disease.
some slop site detection routines.
Why would they? I mean how are their incentives different from that of the search engine operators themselves?
I can see a future when the internet is degraded to a point where if you try to find out how to peel an apple, you will get back word salad and 25 different porn ads.
Yesterday, there was the usual slew of artificial computer-generated news stories on YouTube about GM closing down all factories in north america (happens about once a month).
Well I typed in “is GM closing down in the US” in Google and the Gemini generated answer said “Yes, GM has announced the closure of all plants in the US” and put up those fake YT videos as reference…
I’m sure the major AI services will try and fix this with some slop site detection routines.
They already do this through data determination routines in LLMs, unfortunately they suffer from the same type of infection as the data itself.
You probably would get better results from literally any other AI Gemini is routinely the worst. I don’t know what Google are playing at surely they could actually put some real effort into this but they just seem to be doing it in the most naive way possible.
It comes to something when the Chinese are been the most innovative.
I’m sure the major AI services will try and fix this with some slop site detection routines.
No they will not, because this will harm their short term bottom line, which is always, “add short term value for the shareholder”
Unless the shareholder also owns the search slop site, it’s competition to revenue and in good interest to filter out.
Plus, it’s not an easy task.
It’s very tempting to have schadenfreude about this failure but also disgusting that so much has been invested in it that should have been put to better use.
It’s just another example of a system whose narrow definition of success is taking human and environmental value and using it to extract more. It’s not aimed at solving worthwhile problems or making things better, which is why people are becoming more miserable and the planet is getting wrecked.
You could say that it’s the system we live in which is the AI, feeding on itself and becoming more sick.
The schadenfreude is what we’re here for! We can’t do anything about the waste of investors’ money. They could’ve spent it all on fireworks instead. That probably would’ve been more fun!
As for the system? I prefer not to think about it. Too much systemic thinking is bad for mental health. Much better to enjoy some schadenfreude and save your serious thinking energy for things you have the power to change, especially where they can make life better for you and those around you.
I agree with all your points! What I will add though is that what we think of as ‘investors money’ is actually value that has been extracted from the environment and from workers.
In my case it’s not so much schadenfreude as just wanting this nightmare era to end as quickly as possible. The sooner this LLM shit dies the sooner we can start to recover and move on, in terms of stopping the senseless waste of water and energy and maybe starting to rebuild some kind of useful internet.
