<story><title>Drowning in AI Generated Garbage: the silent war we are fighting</title><url>https://ploum.net/2022-12-05-drowning-in-ai-generated-garbage.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tylerrobinson</author><text>I see parallels here with industrialization and automation in manufacturing and food production. Today, it&amp;#x27;s self-evident to us as consumers when a product is cheap, low-quality, manufactured garbage from China. In many cases we can choose to spend more and buy a handmade or custom version of the product we want.&lt;p&gt;In the future we might knowingly consume AI-generated cheap text for some purposes and opt for &amp;quot;the real thing&amp;quot; in other cases. Just like I buy manufactured wood furniture from Target for the spare bedroom, but not for things I want to keep forever.&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing is that a boom in AI-generated content makes gatekeepers like traditional publishers more relevant after two decades of decline. The narrative of the internet has always been the democratization of content, information, and news. Now, we might find that a stamp of approval has specific value. A publisher can promise that some certain content for medicine or engineering was not generated by AI. Whether fraud also exists is a different question.&lt;p&gt;Another way I&amp;#x27;m thinking about it is with GMO food. GMO food supporters point out that GMOs help us feed more people, but it still makes others uneasy. Maybe there&amp;#x27;s a similar story with AI content. It makes some content cheaper, but what are the side effects?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>Everyone is (rightfully) picking on your GMO example, but I want to address something else:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Today, it&amp;#x27;s self-evident to us as consumers when a product is cheap, low-quality, manufactured garbage from China.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Correct.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;In many cases we can choose to spend more and buy a handmade or custom version of the product we want.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not quite. It&amp;#x27;s increasingly hard to find a version of a product that&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; low-quality garbage - the expensive option is often just the cheap option with extra markup for those who got fooled by marketing, or naively believe companies still care about their brands.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the unexpected side effect that, I feel, people &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; mostly failed to realize: because running a company and manufacturing anything has nontrivial costs, letting the market race to the bottom hollows out the middle. You&amp;#x27;re left with a bunch of specialty vendors who make quality goods for other businesses or governments, at ridiculous prices, and the low-quality throwaway garbage for everyone else. The &amp;quot;more expensive, reasonable quality&amp;quot; product group disappears - the vendors move either into low-quality crap or too-expensive-for-individuals specialty items (or sometimes both), as the middle can&amp;#x27;t compete with either end.&lt;p&gt;I imagine the threat of AI-generated content to be similar: as it completely blows the bottom across creative industry, it will hollow it out. Skilled creators will, when they can, move to the high-end Big Art, where you pay more for the work&amp;#x27;s provenance than for the enjoyment itself, because they won&amp;#x27;t be able to afford competing with somewhat worse but &lt;i&gt;much cheaper&lt;/i&gt; AI-generated shovel-art.&lt;p&gt;(Also relevant is that regular people are usually as good at distinguishing between crap and good products as they&amp;#x27;re at distinguishing between crap and good art.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Drowning in AI Generated Garbage: the silent war we are fighting</title><url>https://ploum.net/2022-12-05-drowning-in-ai-generated-garbage.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tylerrobinson</author><text>I see parallels here with industrialization and automation in manufacturing and food production. Today, it&amp;#x27;s self-evident to us as consumers when a product is cheap, low-quality, manufactured garbage from China. In many cases we can choose to spend more and buy a handmade or custom version of the product we want.&lt;p&gt;In the future we might knowingly consume AI-generated cheap text for some purposes and opt for &amp;quot;the real thing&amp;quot; in other cases. Just like I buy manufactured wood furniture from Target for the spare bedroom, but not for things I want to keep forever.&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing is that a boom in AI-generated content makes gatekeepers like traditional publishers more relevant after two decades of decline. The narrative of the internet has always been the democratization of content, information, and news. Now, we might find that a stamp of approval has specific value. A publisher can promise that some certain content for medicine or engineering was not generated by AI. Whether fraud also exists is a different question.&lt;p&gt;Another way I&amp;#x27;m thinking about it is with GMO food. GMO food supporters point out that GMOs help us feed more people, but it still makes others uneasy. Maybe there&amp;#x27;s a similar story with AI content. It makes some content cheaper, but what are the side effects?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>archon1410</author><text>&amp;gt; Another way I&amp;#x27;m thinking about it is with GMO food. GMO food supporters point out that GMOs help us feed more people, but it still makes others uneasy.&lt;p&gt;a very apt analogy perhaps in a way you didn&amp;#x27;t intend. it makes people uneasy, there&amp;#x27;s a natural reaction towards the unnatural, maybe for emotional reasons. it&amp;#x27;s the same way with GMO crops and AI poems—they will not be able to tell the difference between actual creativity and &amp;quot;artificial artefacts&amp;quot;&amp;#x2F;&amp;quot;random statistical noise&amp;quot;, but they&amp;#x27;re supposed to have mystical difference. One authentic, the other inauthentic. One that is actually good, and one that merely tricks you into thinking it is good. But don&amp;#x27;t attempt to scientifically determine if there&amp;#x27;s any difference... you&amp;#x27;ll be disappointed.</text></comment>