Erin6h ago

Stack Exchange Inc should be dissolved and everyone making the decisions to pivot them toward AI should be dissolved too.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/410975/labs-experiment-launch-stackoverflow-ai

They just keep. wanting. chatbot. and somehow, per the answers, this one is worse than existing chatbots in terms of "will this reproduce information from the SE network for me?"

Show threadmcc
@ChateauErin before it would let me look at this website it put me through a six second cloudflare check to see if I was a human and then the page loaded and it explained the website was not made by humans anymore. if the website isn't humans then why do the website viewers need to be humans. what are we doing here
4:37amTusky
Show threadmcc5h ago
@ChateauErin They should design an AI that uses AI and then the AI can use the AI so the humans don't have to, and then the humans will be free to use computers and look at websites and such because we won't be busy dodging AI anymore. Meanwhile Microsoft will get paid twice as much, because the companies are paying them to run the AI and also the AI that uses the AI. Everyone wins.
Show threadWulfy5h ago

@mcc @ChateauErin

Yeah, it's happening.
There are AI teachers now, teaching AI.

Working hard at making humans obsolete. Imagine all the return on investment the billionaires will have!
They will be able to sit on their pile of trillions in zeroes and ones and not have to share it with anyone!!!

#eattherich

Show threadPseudo Nym5h ago

@mcc @ChateauErin

Wait a minute. Did you just invent "agentic AI"? Aren't they already doing that?

Show threadmcc5h ago
@pseudonym @ChateauErin no agentic AI is just another thing humans are forced to use. What im imagining is an AI that uses an AI *instead* of a human
Show threadmcc5h ago
@pseudonym @ChateauErin if anything it could be called disagentic AI because it acts but not at the behest of a human. It's only there to increase the corporation's AI usage stats so they don't need to extract AI usage stats from humans
Show threadPseudo Nym5h ago

@mcc @ChateauErin

Reminds me of an old windows "game" circa 2000 I think called "progress quest".

It completely automated the FRPG mechanics of kill monsters, takes their stuff, sell it, buy better stuff, repeat.

You just gave your character a name and a class/species (I think I was a Gyro Gnome enchanted motorcycle) and hit go, and you could watch the events scroll by with no further interaction as your points went up.

Checking Wikipedia, my guess was close. 2002

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest

Progress Quest - Wikipedia

Show threadRobin Adams15m ago
@pseudonym @mcc @ChateauErin Yup. Invented as a joke, it started a whole genre of "idle RPGs". Turns out human beings do like just watching computers play games for them.
Show threadJason Petersen (he)5h ago
@mcc @ChateauErin this feels like something Slavoj Zizek would propose
Show threadRatsnake Games1h ago
@mcc @ChateauErin They should make an AI that argues with annoying AI evangelists, because i am so tired
Show threadErin5h ago
@mcc honestly that is a question i wish would be asked way, way more often
Show threadxinit ☕5h ago

@mcc
AI trying trying to prevent other AIs from stealing their "ideas."

The AI war has begun.

@ChateauErin

Show threadmargot5h ago
@mcc @ChateauErin you can’t sell ad impressions if all your viewers are AI— and you gotta make money, not pay it
Show threadIrenes (many)5h ago

@emaytch @mcc @ChateauErin and that will help bring an end to this in about three years, when it becomes obvious to investors

which is good, for sure, we're just holding out hope something happens faster than that

Show threadnen5h ago
@ireneista @emaytch @mcc @ChateauErin Next: LLMs with credit cards, paid with taxpayer money.
Show threadgkrnours3h ago
@emaytch @mcc @ChateauErin when in school, the guy giving us SEO lesson was also working on a "big" shop selling flower online. One slide showed where traffic came from (google, twitter, ads, etc) and how they exited (abandonned an order, did order flower, etc). From memory, it was two pie charts. No way to see how many of the ads resulted in a sale. If that's standard, I wouldn't be surprised they sold bot looking at ads just like humans doing it. As long the bot did the 6s proof of work
Show threadmargot2h ago
@gkrnours yes, my understanding is that this is basically an open secret in the industry. i suspect the only reason the bubble hasn’t burst is that too many ppl involved have personal incentives to keep it going, and it’s hard to “prove” definitively
Show threadgkrnours2h ago
@emaytch It reminds me how ebay I think looked at their ads budget, found out most of the sales come from people looking for "ebay something" and stopped doing ads. Until google put an ads above their website in the results. I'm curious why nobody tried to bring google in front of a judge accusing them of racket over this
Show threadgkrnours3h ago

@mcc @ChateauErin a point that's a bit surprising when you think about it is stackoverflow moving to AI is basically giving up on their network effect. I was going to SO because they had competent people who answer my questions. I might have stayed for the community of humans.

Without the social aspect, the humans to help, compete with and wow with my badges, why bother?

Show threadAdam Cafolla19m ago

@mcc @ChateauErin

This really got me too. How ironic that they need to verify you are human.

Presumably it's to prevent other AIs scraping the website and devaluing their own. Or just another example of the ridiculous irony of the modern web.