Director of Computer Science Dept., Prof. Dr. Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering)
AI slop. What for? Do we need "this" to progress and grow as humans? No single pixel, token, byte is worth the excessive resources and money burning that is happening in the corporate backyard. Marketers, AI bros, acolytes and hypers iterate at the same rhythm: a techno utopianism where we will have more time for enjoying life whereas machines (i.e. algorithms, bots, artificial agents, programs, robots, systems, apps, etc., you name it) will do the work for us and augment our intellect and wellbeing. But the reality is very different: "enjoying life" is being reserved for those unelected few that already have the money, power, and control even over governments. The much bigger rest is and will continue struggling to keep their jobs, their hobbies, their privacy, their rights, and their dignity through the uberization of their professions and behaviours. What for? For allowing the unelected few have more money, power, and control? "For the better of humankind" is becoming the most abused cliché. AI slop is a fact and we are drowning faster than we can realise in its immense stench. It has never been so demotivating to do research in AI or to teach it. It is not pessimism; it is asphyxia and rebellion. __ [Added: the article where I think the term 'AI slop' was coined: "First Came ‘Spam.’ Now, With A.I., We’ve Got ‘Slop’: A new term has emerged to describe dubious A.I.-generated material" https://lnkd.in/dcKpjnnR Or was it earlier? Does anybody know?]
Best-Selling Author of The Storytelling Edge | Fractional Marketing Exec | Keynote Speaker | Storytelling Workshops & Trainings
"The human internet is dying." Someone just posted a screenshot on Reddit showing what happens when you search for a baby peacock: over half the results are AI-generated. It isn't just baby peacocks. Want decorating ideas? Most of what you'll find on Pinterest is AI slop, bizarre interiors conjured from a Live Laugh Love fever dream. Want to buy a field guide to edible plants before a big hike? There's a good chance that guide you found on Amazon was AI-generated (and might kill you). Even Reddit and Wikipedia — the last bastions of the open, free, human-generated internet — are being overrun with AI slop. Much like with the planet itself, we're racing towards a future where the internet may be so polluted that there's no going back.
AI is a tool and how it is used is what matters. What do you consider to be the beneficial and ethical uses of AI today?
And this is just the beginning 🤔 Personally, I am very worried about Wikipedia because I like it; I like its basic principle of fast collectively-self-correcting capability. Can that resist the likely AI onslought?.
Mike Lensink Fenna Woudstra Mathilde Wuite - nice example for the workshop. Are you familiair with the term AI-slop?
Like all things good, humans will abuse it and pervert it. BTW... I like your term "AI Slop."
To predict the acceleration of the uberization of professions through AI is a great insight. How can we oppose it at this stage?
So, indeed the worst possible (digital) nightmare is already happening: GenAI presenting synthetic results to us humans, and even worse, storing these pieces bullshit for further reshuffling by other GenAI models.
What's it for? You need an "it" there 🙂.
Web scraper bots gobble up and distort all content. Wikipedia and Reddit are the first to perish. And when the Internet is scraped bare of useful human-made content, the demand still persists, and accelerates. LLMs will continue generating their own, hallucinatory content. AI Slop that feeds the scrapers with more data. Then, Model Collapse emerges. And the parts of Internet that are useful for Humanity, dies. And it doesn't end there. It gets worse, and now the physical world is in danger. Cyber attack surfaces expand every day. Model collapse may affect autogenerated code. If this is used for critical software updates in combination with lax Security practices, it might enable poisoning of Medical/Pharmaceutical R&D Databases, Critical Infrastructure Security systems, Air, Sea and Land transport, Safety-Critical Industrial Facilities,...
This is true of text as well. AI is eating itself. This is the AI Ouroboros, because the internet is still the largest source of training data. And the internet is polluted with AI data, text and image, and sound, and music (for example Spotify is rapidly enshittifying with a plethora of AI music). This is why so many companies (like Linkedin) are creating AI Training Opt In by default because they want to capture human data for training, rather than AI data. You can opt out of this in LinkedIn in your data settings.
3D Artist | Character and Creature Artist | 4+ years XP | PC, Console and Mobile Games
2moHow will we live in this new AI era? It is truly annoying not to see real photos, drawings, or other hand-made creations. Or not being sure anymore if something is AI/Photoshopped. All this AI stuff brought out truly what many humans want—fast success. And with that, we forget the joy we get from learning and growing with a skill. I really want the internet, where I know I communicate with a human or a human created it. And I'm thankful to AI, because it showed me, how much a human connection over the internet means to me.