AI companies and users of AI are littering all aspects of public space with “AI slop”, but does this term reflect what it really is? We have terms like visual pollution, sound pollution, etc. In a way, "AI pollution " seems a proper term, but AI also pollutes meaning, like with AI generated text. Is AI pollution a new form of “microplastics”? Everywhere and in everything?

  • ghost_laptop@lemmy.ml
    154·
    3 days ago

    capitalism is bothering you, not ai. there’s nothing inherently wrong with ai, this “slop” is just the many forms capital can take. it is not much different from terrible film productions created only with the purpose of capital accumulation.

    • Melobol@lemmy.ml
      9·
      3 days ago

      I like to believe that LLMcan be used the right way.
      I believe there is a genuine use for them.
      The fact hhat now you can probably buy an AI powered trash can or toilet seat, is not the AI’s fault.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
          4·
          3 days ago

          You could’ve said the exact same thing about the internet in the early 2000s when the bubble was at its peak and you had a bunch of companies trying to make products that made no sense. But when the hype died down, and the bubble popped, we got a lot of very useful tech out of it. The situation with LLMs is exactly the same.

          While LLMs are stochastic in nature, that doesn’t in any way make them useless. There are plenty of scenarios where they work extremely well. For example, just last week, I wanted to figure out how to decode RAW files from my camera. I have a Nikon, and it uses NEF format which is proprietary and has no open source decoder right now. I threw an LLM at decompiling a binary and tracing it in memory as it was doing the decoding. After a few days, the LLM managed to write the code that decodes the images. This is absolutely not something I would’ve been able to do on my own. And the fact that there aren’t any open source drivers yet, shows that it’s a very difficult task to accomplish. That’s just one real world example.

        • Melobol@lemmy.ml
          3·
          3 days ago

          The problem with the current technology, that the future technology will never be worse than what we have freely available. If you check the last 3 years of development where it was and where it is now - it is worrisome and awesome at the same time.

          And human slop isn’t better than AI slop. If you put the same effort in a human product (literally 2 sentence to prompt the AI for results) - the outcome is predictable.

          I believe the expression is: shit in - shit out.

          So if you are able to spend the time to write an article, ask the ai to proofread it and telling it to show you what it needs to change (you can even adk for ourside links and can verify one by one) - then you will be able manually edit your own document - without any AI slop dripping in.

          Is it extra work? Nope - if you get a human proofreading done - you still have to do these changes yourself. And you will be responsible for what you do with the information.

          The thing is that we expect AI to do those last steps and making editoral decisions - is our mistake and laziness.
          That’s the human slop.

            • Melobol@lemmy.ml
              3·
              3 days ago

              Agreed. Human brains are not good with AI because we get su mich praise from them And they keep the engagement going with even more praise.
              I actually made sure that every model I use don’t fo those, not referencing itself as a person.
              It is really addictive to “just ask one more question”.
              People will develop emotional bonds to brands “ohh Gemini is so funny!”, “Claude is such a sarcastic asshole”.
              And let’s not start on getting lazy. Laziness is evolutionary trait. Using AI is as lazy as it can be.

                • Melobol@lemmy.ml
                  3·
                  3 days ago

                  There were outliners already who were happy with their waifus, marrying their body pillow - and so on.
                  AI just make it way easier to cut those pesky human connections that require actual effort.