Thought pollution

AI slop implies the problem is that the audience likes it, and to some that is the problem, but the real issue is how difficult it makes it to find the stuff you actually want to see. "AI spam" is the term I default to using.

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.

Information pollution.

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

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.

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.

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.

xô, flango

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?)

I don't see it so much as pollution as a smokescreen being put in place on purpose. It is my belief that these companies plan to so heavily flood the internet with AI generated nonsense that they can then begin to charge a premium for access to verified information.

That is why I have made an effort to collect actual physical books all printed before AI became a thing that have lots of info I can use to verify things. I have books on medical info, various crafts, construction, agriculture, copies of works from Lenin, Marx, Mao, Stalin, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, Voltaire, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, etc. Math textbooks, science textbooks. I've got around 80 or so right now. A lot of them I got for free and the rest I got for very cheap (anywhere from 1$ to 9$) because I go after used books. Many are from the 70s and 80s.

The idea is that say in like 2035 if I need to know something random I have a bunch of 100% human made and verified information. Even if some is a bit outdated it's better than AI slop.

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".

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.

Noetic pollution.

I might just start calling it that.