dauwheJun 24, 2024
Baldur Bjarnason

Been digesting the rise of the term "slop" for "AI" garbage for a bit and found I had to write about it:

"‘Slop’: the rhetorical gambit of framing failure as partial success"

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/slop-framing-failure-as-success/

'Slop': the rhetorical gambit of framing failure as partial success

Rob Horning’s essay Born Sloppy has been on my mind for the past week or so. Fixating on slop as a form of content, as a kind of necessary evil, a shipwreck that is invented with the ship, helps naturalize the inevitable proliferation of “AI” technology that doesn’t serve to improve the lives of most of the people exposed to it.

Baldur Bjarnason
Jun 24, 2024 at 11:50amWeb
Show threadCarl-EricJun 24, 2024

@baldur LLMs and other GenAI things working in similar ways are *at best* mediocrity generators.

In practice they perpetuate the biases of rich white prudes.

Show threadJed BrownJun 24, 2024

@baldur This is great to hear

> [..] the abysmal mediocrity that is “AI” output has become such an identifiable phenomenon that popular radio personalities here in Iceland can use the phrase “it’s a bit AI” (“þetta er svolítið gervigreindarlegt”) in their banter and not only do their listeners – possibly the least tech-savvy demographic available – immediately get what they mean, it even has very specific connotations for exactly what specific smell and flavour – vibe – of mediocrity they mean.