Gah.
Maybe a day early?
The Matrix was right. Our society peaked in 1999.
It looks like something Rockstar would make to be identifiable but just different enough they don't need to license the likeness
End of the world? I doubt it.
End of the internet? Maybe.
Wading through the drivel is getting worse with the addition of AI generated content. I'm pretty sure I've clicked through pages that had zero human oversight. Terrible doesn't begin to describe them.
Honest content is becoming a thing of the past. Before long it will be AIs watching AI generated content to learn so they can generate content. That will be the extent of the internet.
Toyman! said:End of the world? I doubt it.
End of the internet? Maybe.
Wading through the drivel is getting worse with the addition of AI generated content. I'm pretty sure I've clicked through pages that had zero human oversight. Terrible doesn't begin to describe them.
Honest content is becoming a thing of the past. Before long it will be AIs watching AI generated content to learn so they can generate content. That will be the extent of the internet.
The Dead Internet Theory becomes less of a theory everyday. Like Facebook creating official fully AI profiles to interact with content.
NickD said:The Dead Internet Theory becomes less of a theory everyday. Like Facebook creating official fully AI profiles to interact with content.
Pretty soon it will just be a bunch of AI accounts interacting with each other. All the real humans will be on private spaces like this forum or Discord.
I agree. I think AI is far more dangerous than social media and will end up nowhere good. I decline to use it wherever possible despite Google and the internet in general insisting I must.
Yep, call me paranoid, but if social media was hammering nails into the coffin of the Information Age, AI is doing it with a pneumatic nail gun.
Most of the AI slop is easily identifiable, but people still fall for it hook line and sinker, and it's only getting better with time. What is "reality" when you can just generate something convincing enough that tens of thousands of people think it's real? Soon enough we could be looking at a major geopolitcal incident because of a really good deepfake campaign or something along those lines.
Feels like we're on the verge of total information collapse and the end of consensus reality some days.
Not a f---ing muscle car!!!
I had to call my bank this morning. It took quite a while to wade through the AI responses before I was able to connect to a real human being. I can't say that it 'enhanced my experience'.
NickD said:Toyman! said:End of the world? I doubt it.
End of the internet? Maybe.
Wading through the drivel is getting worse with the addition of AI generated content. I'm pretty sure I've clicked through pages that had zero human oversight. Terrible doesn't begin to describe them.
Honest content is becoming a thing of the past. Before long it will be AIs watching AI generated content to learn so they can generate content. That will be the extent of the internet.
The Dead Internet Theory becomes less of a theory everyday. Like Facebook creating official fully AI profiles to interact with content.
Dead Internet Theory is a conspiracy that involves malicious intent and control. What's its dumb consumerism driven cousin? That's what we are getting. Just an infinite sea of garbage content.
Private spaces really are the future, although even those are being lost to people moving to social media.
I think auto enthusiast information sharing peaked around 2010
Well I have something to look up this morning. I hadn't heard of the dead internet theory.
I'm getting more & more convinced with each passing day that our existence has slipped out of reality & into something else.
The only way out is through; genies do not go back into bottles.
The current hoovering up of everything including other AI regurgitation both takes away the incentive to create things (art, documentation, anything) for the web, and makes it hard to find anything useful.
Search was degrading badly before the AI results, at least in part because for 20 years sites have been built first for Google and then for users, and there's been a business model of (at first manually) scraping someone else's stuff and putting it up with your own ads and more SEO emphasis, making xeroxes of xeroxes beat the actual info in the search results. AI has made that worse.
LLMs, machine learning, etc are tools. They're not going away, so we have to figure out how to solve the problems they create, in addition to the problems we already had, of course.
I joked about webrings a couple of pages ago (EDIT: sorry, in the other "AI is dumb" thread), but it's an example of a technology so simple that it scarcely deserves the word technology, which uses human connection to navigate a trusted network without relying on a tech firm to tell you what to look at. There are probably better and more scalable ideas, but "give me back search that actually works" probably isn't on the menu anytime soon, despite it being such a simple and reasonable request.
Maybe it'll all get so dumb it forces us to spend more time in the real world.
BTW, some search engines don't force AI results. You can turn it off in Brave. I think someone mentioned an "-ai" flag in Google, but I just tried and it was inconclusive, and I mostly avoid them these days. This doesn't help with how bad search is, but it might avoid the AI summary.
All the AI generated stuff has made google searches completely useless. Also AI assumes things about you and what you are searching for and provides stuff that is completely useless. This is especially true when you are searching for technical information on say roofing. Instead all it spits back are lists of roofing contractors in your area.
AI is a stupid thing for stupid people. It is dumbing down the internet to the lowest common use case that is driven by adds and sales. There is no incentive for it to actually provide information and help people learn stuff. Ironicly that is what the "internet" was originally for. It is one of the best examples of large corporate greed beating something so far in to the ground that is is now useless crap.
I may have to go back to the library and look for stuff. LOL
In reply to dean1484 :
Most of that degradation predates AI.
EDIT: but AI is definitely not doing anything to improve that problem.
I just got an email from Google announcing their Gemini AI assistant. They offered to switch my search ability to include it...no thanks.
There was a disclaimer at the end of their email that said "Gemini can make mistakes, including about people, so double check it. If I have to take that extra step I don't see that it has any advantage.
Beer Baron 🍺 said:The Matrix was right. Our society peaked in 1999.
Every day I feel more like this.
Just the other day I saw something cool, thought I followed or saved it. Today I literally cannot find it, where I saw it or any evidence of it. The search terms are so broad tons of crap is in the way of the thing. Assuming it wasn't a dream.
In other news.
Chat GTP says its users have generated 700 million images in the past 10 days.
I'm betting all of them got dumped on the internet. More bullE36 M3 images to wade through to find the nuggets you are looking for.
Glad I'm not in the photography business.
Toyman! said:In other news.
Chat GTP says its users have generated 700 million images in the past 10 days.
I'm betting all of them got dumped on the internet. More bullE36 M3 images to wade through to find the nuggets you are looking for.
Glad I'm not in the photography business.
What I find interesting is that Chat GTP will use those self generated images ,flaws and all, as foder for future image generation. Since Chat GRP can generate its false image base faster than humans can input "real" images into the data-base, things are going to go all mad cow at some point.
There will be a reset at some point.
AI will lose its novelty and people will demand authenticity.
The browser and search engine that meets those demands first will be the winner. That may be what removes Google's crown.
Comeuppance I feel is more realistic; AI Programs are "cannibalizing" each other, consuming each other's "data" and regurgitating it as their own, spreading the same fake information around. We're also seeing more quiet failings, like how ChatGPT are now claiming what was GPT 5 now is 4.5 or how they're not getting anything more accurate or use less energy. This is all because the market is running out of "new" things; technology is not some grand savior, your "Artificial intelligence" is just a large language model that collates data, and there are no silver bullets to fix all our issues- meanwhile, the costs to run these massive monopolies gets worse and worse. "EnE36 M3tification" is a very real trend because now these companies have to bleed every dime they can get just to keep going; if they ever admit to loosing a base, they'll lose profit and shareholder value.
AI as propaganda for the stupid I feel is more correct and realistic, especially when you compare it to propaganda from the USSR and whos using it now; it's meant to just reinforce someone's already concrete opinions.
dean1484 said:All the AI generated stuff has made google searches completely useless. Also AI assumes things about you and what you are searching for and provides stuff that is completely useless. This is especially true when you are searching for technical information on say roofing. Instead all it spits back are lists of roofing contractors in your area.
AI is a stupid thing for stupid people. It is dumbing down the internet to the lowest common use case that is driven by adds and sales. There is no incentive for it to actually provide information and help people learn stuff. Ironicly that is what the "internet" was originally for. It is one of the best examples of large corporate greed beating something so far in to the ground that is is now useless crap.
I may have to go back to the library and look for stuff. LOL
Except it hasn't. Like I mentioned in the other thread. You have to know how to use it.
Anymore when I see the letters AI, I have an increasing tendency to walk away... quickly.
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