Comment by bartwr
1 month ago
I love using AI tools and they are changing my work and life in amazing ways. I cannot imagine going back. And yet, I am more concerned about the social damage due to their widespread use and the amounts of slop they generate. Just this week: - There was an article about a news company faking polls by asking LLMs for answers. - My wife told me that she stopped watching any funny pet videos because 99% now is AI slop - start normal, but then turn into someone's slop idea. - A friend told me their big tech company uses AI-generated metrics as part of performance evaluation. Nobody checks them. - Another friend told me their big tech company requires engineers to use AI-generated commit messages with terrible signal-to-noise ratio and making version control and history useless for engineers. But directors and PMs love them, they are so descriptive! - My neighbor uses LLMs to create some neighbor meeting plans/agendas, plausibly looking PDFs citing contractors etc. It's impossible to read through it, mixed hallucinations and real information, all wrapped in thousands of slop words. What is real and what made up? I'll spend 10x more time double guessing. - Encountering more and more articles and general "content" that is AI generated and looks ok at the first glance, but slop upon inspections. Why would I read LLMs output on a webpage with ads, if I can ask it myself and get better, personal answers and style?
And I am not even talking here about other ethical issues, training data, less junior job positions, job replacement of journalists with LLM-equipeed contractors, etc.
LLMs make my personal and work life so much better, but social life unbearable. Is it worth the trade-off? I guess it doesn't matter at this point.
I think it remains to be seen whether the various AI tools we have today are a net-negative or net-positive for society.
Most inventions are a net positive: The steam engine, vaccines, chimneys.
A few are net-negative: grenades, leaded gasoline, asbestos insulation.
If we can no longer trust that a potential job candidate in a video call actually exists, they will have to be flown in. That's a cost. If we can no longer trust that an employee who wrote a document actually thought about it at all and must be questioned to make sure, that's a cost. Those costs will add up.
A written document or a video essay used to be proof-of-thought and now it's not. If we can't find new proofs of thought, and if AI doesn't get vastly better to the point where we can trust it blindly, then I think this will all be a net-negative.
One of the motivations to build data centers as fast as possible and improve tools as fast as possible may be to get to net-positive before it all gets banned. This article exists. The clock is ticking.