*Edit*: here at least, I am clearly not isolated!
Perhaps I am increasingly isolated in holding this position, but I have no interest in reading "AI"-generated slop.
I love reading.
I read people's blogs and toots and whatever *because people wrote them* and I want to read their own thoughts and opinions.
I buy books, and read numerous different authors. I like finding new authors, bringing new ideas, styles etc.
Same with "AI" images. I'd prefer no image at all.
Heh, what a coincidence to see this right as one of my old posts saying the same (from eight months ago) has been getting boosted around again. ;)
https://polymaths.social/@amin/statuses/01K03C7KYJ50AE33CQAYRVTYHM
I will repeat this as many times as I need to: no matter how terrible you think your writing is, I would far rather read it than anything that came out of an LLM.
@amin In which case, perhaps I am not as isolated as I thought.
It doesn't surprise me that *some* other people have this perspective, but I wonder how common it is.
I think most people would hold it, actually, if not consciously. People get so obsessed over specific authors, for example; no reason to do that with AI. People want to read the thoughts of other people.
In the meantime, I think mostly we're seeing people interested in AI writing out of curiosity and because it's so new.
Add me to your list.
But I'd add: there is a space for texts that are read purely for information. Which would be something that could be machine generated. Unfortunately those texts require (a) correctness, and (b) transparency about sources. Both things a transformer cannot give, due to it's architecture.
So genAI fails completely for me.
Before Christmas a couple of big companies cancelled AI-generated ad campaigns because the negative feedback was causing harm to their brand at the start of their peak selling season. The more people complain about these things (don’t share the ads, just say ‘company X used to be okay but their latest ad campaign is slop and it makes me hate them’ - ad agencies consider people sharing the ads to be positive for raising brand awareness even if people hate them), the more that feedback will go from ad companies to their customers.
For an example of the parenthetical: about 15 years ago, Tango did an ad campaign that had people rolling fruit down Constitution Hill in Swansea, where it smashed at the bottom. There were a bunch of news articles about how they didn’t bother to clean up and left the mess for residents. There was only one problem: all of the fruit was CGI, there was no mess. The negative press made a load of people watch the ad. The claim that they made a mess was ‘leaked’ from the ad agency to news sources who didn’t do any basic fact checking (I lived just around the corner, it was easy for someone to pop down and see there was no mess). The campaign was considered a big success. So if people share an ad and say ‘I hate this’, it won’t necessarily have the right result. But if they share a single terrible frame, it might.
@neil I like that stance re: #AIslop:
https://social.treehouse.systems/@whitequark/116224927984042017
the Glasgow Interface Explorer project's new LLM policy: > We do not accept contributions where code was generated partly or in whole using LLMs. These tools are designed to be extractive and place an unreasonable burden on OSS maintainers, both on the level of individual pull requests and for the ecosystem as a whole. If you didn’t bother writing it, we won’t bother reading. https://glasgow-embedded.org/latest/contribute.html
No! 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻
@stroobl
AI can write good docs is an unpopular opinion among people that know the value of documentation. Rightfully so because:
1. "AI" doesn't exist, and LLM's can't "know" meaning. They hide it well.
2. Writing documentation proves the author cares about the thing they document.
3. Documenting something surfaces it's subtlest bugs.
If devs use llm for documentation, the software is shit. If you use llm to describe others' software, you're taking a great risk of misunderstanding it.
@neil
@diffractie I don't like the feeling that I might be the first person to look at/read/encounter something.
It just feels so inherently like it doesn't matter, it's like thinking you're on solid ground but when you check there's nothing holding you up, you've already gone over the edge of the cliff.
Someone was posting here about preferring "AI news" because they said that it was unbiased.
Someone posted an AI-generated "summary" of something.
More websites are using AI-generated images.
Do you not see this kind of thing?
@neil I haven't seen such posts here at all. Tbh it sounds like a troll because AI generated content is anything but unbiased. And in my experience, people around here are well aware of this.
That said, at work and around the internet at large I see more and more people using AI. Some because they believe in the technology, others because they feel its the normal thing to do now.
@neil What I found really depressingly interesting is that I find it really fatiguing, and I already suffer from a huge amount of fatigue. All the dodging AI, my brain-fogged head working harder to filter things out, the heart sink as I get tricked and only later realise something was off.
Like recipes! Following along on my phone whilst already overwhelmed by what I'm doing, and then finding out mid-way through following a recipe that, hang on a sec, this is AI nonsense.
@FrazzledBrynn @neil Ah, damn, that's gotta suck.
I like to cook, but I don't even try looking up recipes online any more, unless they're verifiably from the pre-slop era. Fortunately, we have a shelf of cookbooks and I've gotten pretty good at winging things for a weeknight dinner.
@Jaimieserotica @FrazzledBrynn Oh, so much this!
I often hear that "AI will mean the end of lawyers" but, for now at least, it just means more work for me :)
@neil I find AI images a really strong flag that I'm not going to want to read an article.
I suspect at least part of the problem is that "experts" will tell you that a web page *has* to have an image to represent it (because that's what algorithms want), and people are panicked into finding *something* to fill that void.
@noodlemaz @ahnlak @neil Oh, yes, others exist, although I still find Pixabay the best.
Perhaps a good time to plug my article, 'Create your own book cover - without generative 'AI' which is full of free or cheap resources 😉
@rubyjones On the consumption side, I am absolutely in a fortunate position that I can afford to pay, and see value in paying, for books, to support authors, and so on (although I suppose that I see blogs as free-to-read). Perhaps there's a circle there.
Slop has no value to me, so I would not knowingly pay for it.
But perhaps someone who doesn't value creativity or human expression would not willingly pay for it anyway, so slop is attractive enough?
(Sorry, pondering aloud here.)
@neil The thing is, there is more free fiction and art online than a person could ever need. I've actually found it hard to pull myself away from the safe, comforting arms of fanfiction, which gives me exactly what I want, for free, but I get frustrated that I can't pay the authors for their often spectacular works.
I agree with you - writing and art are communication - there's no point if there's no one on the other side communicating anything. And the fact that it's all stolen>
@neil >and relies on technology that is doing absolutely horrendous things to the environment, makes it absolutely unthinkable for me to partake.
And yet I have very old, very dear friends who seem to simply not care. Even after I have explained to them how bad it is for the world, and how hurtful to me.
I don't get it.
@cy @neil @WeirdWriter You have a very strange attitude. Explaining AO3 like no one here has heard of it. Saying original fiction is stealing??
I don't know where this aggressive defence of fanfiction is coming from. I talked about my love of fanfic in another thread of this conversation. It's bizarre to make out like you can't love both original fiction and fanfiction.
Do you just search on the word 'fanfic' and go on the attack? Really weird. Goodby, Cy.
@neil @rubyjones libraries are also great! I get loads of ebooks from mine.
And authors support them too. Reading is very accessible thanks to them :)
Sorry for flurry of replies
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