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?

  • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    AI slop is called that because it’s meant to be consumed as slop has always meant mediocre food served to the masses. Pollution is not meant to be consumed since it’s a byproduct of consumption.

  • everett@lemmy.ml
    25·
    3 days ago

    When naming something, not only should you make sure it clearly describes the thing but doesn’t describe anything else. “AI pollution” sounds just as much like something that pollutes AI (for example, training it with false information), much like how “air pollution” is stuff that pollutes air.

  • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
    15·
    3 days ago

    I think slop is a good word, its funny and condecending. Pollution just doesnt hit the “fuck you and your shitty product” spot the same way slop does.

  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
    15·
    3 days ago

    Information pollution.

    Saying “AI pollution” would be like saying “microplastics pollution” – we generally refer to the thing being polluted, not the pollutant.

  • 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.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
    82·
    3 days ago

    Ironically, I see far more visual pollution from people whinging about AI slop than actual AI slop at this point. People will incessantly complain about AI everywhere, derailing conversations and adding noise. If somebody spots an em dash somewhere then a whole thread turns into a discussion of whether something written by an LLM or not, and whether it’s acceptable for humans to use em dashes. It’s frankly exhausting.

    • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
      5·
      3 days ago

      To be fair, I think this is a Lemmy issues moreso than the broader internet. I could be totally off base there, though. It just seems in my experience that Lemmy is particularly anti AI, while the rest of the Internet seems to be fairly neutral towards the technology as a whole, and potentially upset about the environmental impact and increasing prices for computer components.

      Again, I may be off base, though, as Lemmy is the only social media I use, so I’m not tapped into that side of things.

      I will say, if I notice people use the word “quietly” (as in “it will quietly revolutionize X” or “this has quietly changed my habits”) I do immediate assume it’s Chatgpt. Lol. And for what it’s worth, I’m not against AI in general, I think it’s great as a brain storming tool, a useful way to collect your thoughts, to bounce ideas off of, and to use when stuck on a project. But it’s uses are so limited compared to what it’s billed as that it is in no way this magical gift from on high like some think, but nor is it a completely and totally useless thing. The problem is that it’s being shoved down the throat of every website, device, and user of the Internet at such incredible rates that we’re choking on it. And the fact that it can “talk” like a person means people are anthropomorphizing it and that is very, very dangerous long term to the mental health of humans as a whole.

      My $0.02, anyway

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
        1·
        3 days ago

        Yeah that’s definitely my impression as well. Fediverse as a whole has become a place where people love to come to rant about LLMs now.

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
    4·
    3 days ago

    I feel like this is another example of a topic title with a different question than the body.

    I interpreted the title ask asking something like whether “AI slop” is good enough. Or asking if “AI slop” is where the technology peaks. (As in, is AI slop enough, or can we do more with AI models?)

    • everett@lemmy.ml
      2·
      3 days ago

      I feel like it’s yet another a thinly-veiled rant disguised as a question. Which is not to say I disagree with their premise, but there has to be a better community for this soapbox stuff.

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        2 days ago

        They should’ve just made the topic more obvious. I don’t have a problem if people want to have a circlejerk around hating AI, even in this community, but make it clear that’s what it is.

        “Should we be calling it something worse than “AI slop”?”

        Then everybody who’s into that kind of fun will join, and anybody who’s not interested can move on, lol

    • TheOrcWhoWrites@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      I think AI is still in its infancy and we have yet to know it’s full potential. Nevertheless, I have a love-hate relationship with AI.

  • jh29a@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    2·
    3 days ago

    I think this is an interesting philosophical question, because I would guess that because I think AI slop and AI pollution are the same thing, I react the same way to either of the spellings. But I can also immediately see how AI pollution sounds worse because it’s connected to pollution. In conclusion, I should not think of myself as more “rational” than I am, where by rational I really mean “able to control the meaning categories that my brain uses”.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    We might want two separate terms: one for the personal ways that AI slop infects and manipulates your mind, and another for the way it makes the wider cultural landscape difficult to navigate by adding noise and intercepting your attempts to find the original sources of concepts or artifacts which might bring you into a community (and the fact that these communities are now all playing defense because of the everlasting scraping DDoS).

    I’m concerned about the former because I think it might make doing anything at all much more difficult.

    But I’m concerned about the latter because we… don’t really know how much pollution culture can withstand before collapsing. We may already be in the early stages of something like Kessler Syndrome but for communications.