5 ms·

AI is killing the old web

48 points by solalf 3y ago

eimrine 3y ago
I have an opinion than we need to pay some microtransactions to post our comments (web3?). Than all chatgpt-generated text will become a regular text from humans.
- jeltz 3y ago
  What prevents spammers from also paying? Right now many times of spam is done by humans so if it can be made profitable with manual work today I cannot see why having to pay would change anything.
  - tamrix 3y ago
    You could blockchain link to something like civc with id verification.
    - onetokeoverthe 3y ago
      [dead]
  - DaSHacka 3y ago
    The theory is it becomes exponentially more difficult to post spam in a cost-effective manner. As a nice added benefit, the spammers are also now directly funding your site, essentially paying you for the hassle of having to deal with them.
    - jeltz 3y ago
      The first thing is not true for many sorts of spam. For example a lot of the people who destroy google search results do it manually and even pay for domain names tp do so. It is more difficult but I would say only slightly more so. And worst of all it is likely that spsmmers are willing to pay a higher price than your genuine users. Spam can be highly profitable. That they make you a profit is true though, but that is both good and bad. It finds your antispam work but could also create perverse incentives where you want spsmmers.
    - antifa 3y ago
      Spammers have more money than poor people, so congrats you've just censored 90+% of the world.
MichaelMoser123 3y ago
Web being killed by LLM generated spam, what an irony. Next all LLM's will need to find other training data and other approaches, as reddit, wikipedia and stackoverflow will all be dead.
Turskarama 3y ago
The old web is already dead, it was killed by Google, Twitter, and Reddit. AI might well kill Web2.0, and good riddance.
rockemsockem 3y ago
Great. Can't happen fast enough. We've been coping with human-generated garbage for a long time, now AI will generate garbage at such a scale that the problems we've been coping with will be solved, because otherwise we'll all drown. This quote stuck out to me especially "There are a bunch of words, but no real value in what’s written," That has been my main problem with so many top search results, business insider being the most recognizable culprits IMO, for years.
- denkmoon 3y ago
  Seems like the otherwise scenario is more likely to me.
  - rockemsockem 3y ago
    Why?
    - denkmoon 3y ago
      Drowning in plastic waste, drowning in atmospheric pollution, drowning in mental health disorders. None of these have resulted in a magical "we'll solve it because otherwise we'll drown" solution. I fail to see why drowning in bad search results will result in a different outcome.
      - rockemsockem 3y ago
        All of those are being solved though. Carbon capture technology has moved out of R&D and into the productionization phase. There are multiple ongoing efforts to remove plastic from the ocean and other waterways which are currently actually removing plastic, not just working on R&D. There's also tons of work on how to breakdown plastic, so we aren't stuck with it forever. Mental health is honestly a harder problem because there's less that can be directly qualified, but I'd point to the recent successes with drugs like MDMA, Ketamine, and mushrooms as a very promising avenue. Currently they seem most well suited for those who are worst off, but that is likely just the start. The knowing you're drowning part is super important. We haven't been visibly drowning in atmospheric pollution until say the past decade or so, even though the levels were absolutely astonishingly high. Similar with mental health, in the US we are now really drowning in mass shootings, which wasn't the case even 10 years ago. Search results similarly have been like kind of shitty for a long time, the past 5 years at least, but they were and are still navigable. The drowning hasn't started in search yet either.
FLpxpyJ 3y ago
Plenty would argue it's been dead for awhile, since even before AI. [1] I refuse to concede though, it's as dead as you let it be. In both the places you passively consume from, and actively participate in. [2] [1]: https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/dead-internet-theory-most-of-the-internet-is-fake.3011/ https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/dead-internet-... [2]: https://32bit.cafe/mission/ https://32bit.cafe/mission/
noman-land 3y ago
The old web was killed by the corporate web at least ten years so. The corporate web has created this absolute dumpster fire dystopia of brainless bumblegum listicles, outrage bait attention economy, and frightening total surveillance secretly destroying people's rights worldwide. I was skeptical of this new wave of AI and still am but the open source side has been absolutely stunning. llama.cpp, whisper.cpp. HuggingFace and all the insane models. The community documenting and converting and explaining models. Let this wave of LLM generated trash choke the gills of content marketing once and for all. If I want mindless content, I'll ask my laptop now, and I won't ask your poor, pitiful click-farmer intern. The corporate web might be good for buying things from companies, but it is an absolute cancer for knowledge and culture.
- krapp 3y ago
  There's exponentially more knowledge and culture on the corporate web than there ever was on the old web. I know Hacker News is almost universally at the "angry man yelling at clouds" stage when it comes to the web, but there is actually a baby to be lost with the bathwater.
  - noman-land 3y ago
    I couldn't agree more about the baby. I've been through many of the stages of grief about what we've lost and what we're losing by letting the web be controlled by... whatever the hell this is. I've tried for years to get people to understand that this web has become diseased. That it harms them in ways they may not understand as a less technical person. No one cares. I'm at a stage now where I stopped caring as well. People will only understand when it affects them personally. It's sad. It hurts me to know that people will get hurt. But the current incarnation of the web needs to implode under the weight of its own garbage so it will finally be so obviously diseased and disgusting that no one will be able to not see it. I say let it happen. I don't know how else to convince people to look away from the box.
GuestHNUser 3y ago
People seem to be getting hung up on the bad article title. It's a genuinely good read when you set the semantics of what the old web is aside.
netsroht 3y ago
Is my new project [0] also part of the problem? I'm still unsure myself because LLMs also allow us to process data in unprecedented ways. In my specific case, I auto generate stories to highlight different view points based on what people are saying about hot controversial topics on social media. What's your opinion? [0] https://zeitgaist.social https://zeitgaist.social
- danielbln 3y ago
  Why do all the images look deep fried?
  - netsroht 3y ago
    Because I intentionally process them with a very rudimentary "cartoonizer" in order to distinguish from a regular news articles and to emphasize that these stories are not written by humans. I don't know yet whether this helps.
- latexr 3y ago
  > Is my new project also part of the problem? Yes. In a few ways it’s considerably worse. Your website is referencing major world events, including war and freedom of press, by leveraging uninformed comments from the web (many of them themselves written by AI). That would be a problem even if your content weren’t auto-generated (random comments don’t make good or accurate journalism) but it’s worse when it’s churned at a high rate and introduces its own false interpretations.
  - netsroht 3y ago
    Thanks for your input. This website should neither compete with nor replace regular journalism. What I try to achieve here is to be able to break free from social media silos where usually people are in kind of bubble. No one can read this many comments and people usually tend to read only comments / conversations where they align with their believes. Hence, I try to highlight different view points along with contrasting opinions (across several different social media platforms) to get an overview--not necessarily fact-based. These stories aren't supposed to push any agenda down anyone's throat. Since this project just went live I'm still figuring out how to communicate that.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pasmafaute 3y ago
I stopped reading in the first paragraph. > Redditors are staging blackouts. The implication that the Reddit blackouts are related to recent AI advances is ridiculous. The embedded link also makes no mention of AI. I dislike this kind of disingenuous clickbait. It's not worth my time to keep reading. In a way I should thank them for the early red flag. This way I don't need to waste my time on the whole article.
- bacchusracine 3y ago
  >The implication that the Reddit blackouts are related to recent AI advances is ridiculous. The allegation is that most of ChatGPT can be traced back to their using sites like Reddit and Twitter to scrape the information from for its training data. Reddit is changing the cost of accessing its APIs as a direct result of this and not really about killing off third party clients. That's the connection.

48 points by solalf 3y ago

I have an opinion than we need to pay some microtransactions to post our comments (web3?). Than all chatgpt-generated text will become a regular text from humans.

jeltz 3y ago
What prevents spammers from also paying? Right now many times of spam is done by humans so if it can be made profitable with manual work today I cannot see why having to pay would change anything.
- tamrix 3y ago
  You could blockchain link to something like civc with id verification.
  - onetokeoverthe 3y ago
    [dead]
- DaSHacka 3y ago
  The theory is it becomes exponentially more difficult to post spam in a cost-effective manner. As a nice added benefit, the spammers are also now directly funding your site, essentially paying you for the hassle of having to deal with them.
  - jeltz 3y ago
    The first thing is not true for many sorts of spam. For example a lot of the people who destroy google search results do it manually and even pay for domain names tp do so. It is more difficult but I would say only slightly more so. And worst of all it is likely that spsmmers are willing to pay a higher price than your genuine users. Spam can be highly profitable. That they make you a profit is true though, but that is both good and bad. It finds your antispam work but could also create perverse incentives where you want spsmmers.
  - antifa 3y ago
    Spammers have more money than poor people, so congrats you've just censored 90+% of the world.

MichaelMoser123 3y ago

Web being killed by LLM generated spam, what an irony. Next all LLM's will need to find other training data and other approaches, as reddit, wikipedia and stackoverflow will all be dead.

Turskarama 3y ago

The old web is already dead, it was killed by Google, Twitter, and Reddit. AI might well kill Web2.0, and good riddance.

rockemsockem 3y ago

Great. Can't happen fast enough. We've been coping with human-generated garbage for a long time, now AI will generate garbage at such a scale that the problems we've been coping with will be solved, because otherwise we'll all drown. This quote stuck out to me especially "There are a bunch of words, but no real value in what’s written," That has been my main problem with so many top search results, business insider being the most recognizable culprits IMO, for years.

denkmoon 3y ago
Seems like the otherwise scenario is more likely to me.
- rockemsockem 3y ago
  Why?
  - denkmoon 3y ago
    Drowning in plastic waste, drowning in atmospheric pollution, drowning in mental health disorders. None of these have resulted in a magical "we'll solve it because otherwise we'll drown" solution. I fail to see why drowning in bad search results will result in a different outcome.
    - rockemsockem 3y ago
      All of those are being solved though. Carbon capture technology has moved out of R&D and into the productionization phase. There are multiple ongoing efforts to remove plastic from the ocean and other waterways which are currently actually removing plastic, not just working on R&D. There's also tons of work on how to breakdown plastic, so we aren't stuck with it forever. Mental health is honestly a harder problem because there's less that can be directly qualified, but I'd point to the recent successes with drugs like MDMA, Ketamine, and mushrooms as a very promising avenue. Currently they seem most well suited for those who are worst off, but that is likely just the start. The knowing you're drowning part is super important. We haven't been visibly drowning in atmospheric pollution until say the past decade or so, even though the levels were absolutely astonishingly high. Similar with mental health, in the US we are now really drowning in mass shootings, which wasn't the case even 10 years ago. Search results similarly have been like kind of shitty for a long time, the past 5 years at least, but they were and are still navigable. The drowning hasn't started in search yet either.

FLpxpyJ 3y ago

Plenty would argue it's been dead for awhile, since even before AI. [1] I refuse to concede though, it's as dead as you let it be. In both the places you passively consume from, and actively participate in. [2] [1]: https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/dead-internet-theory-most-of-the-internet-is-fake.3011/ https://forum.agoraroad.com/index.php?threads/dead-internet-... [2]: https://32bit.cafe/mission/ https://32bit.cafe/mission/

noman-land 3y ago

The old web was killed by the corporate web at least ten years so. The corporate web has created this absolute dumpster fire dystopia of brainless bumblegum listicles, outrage bait attention economy, and frightening total surveillance secretly destroying people's rights worldwide. I was skeptical of this new wave of AI and still am but the open source side has been absolutely stunning. llama.cpp, whisper.cpp. HuggingFace and all the insane models. The community documenting and converting and explaining models. Let this wave of LLM generated trash choke the gills of content marketing once and for all. If I want mindless content, I'll ask my laptop now, and I won't ask your poor, pitiful click-farmer intern. The corporate web might be good for buying things from companies, but it is an absolute cancer for knowledge and culture.

krapp 3y ago
There's exponentially more knowledge and culture on the corporate web than there ever was on the old web. I know Hacker News is almost universally at the "angry man yelling at clouds" stage when it comes to the web, but there is actually a baby to be lost with the bathwater.
- noman-land 3y ago
  I couldn't agree more about the baby. I've been through many of the stages of grief about what we've lost and what we're losing by letting the web be controlled by... whatever the hell this is. I've tried for years to get people to understand that this web has become diseased. That it harms them in ways they may not understand as a less technical person. No one cares. I'm at a stage now where I stopped caring as well. People will only understand when it affects them personally. It's sad. It hurts me to know that people will get hurt. But the current incarnation of the web needs to implode under the weight of its own garbage so it will finally be so obviously diseased and disgusting that no one will be able to not see it. I say let it happen. I don't know how else to convince people to look away from the box.

GuestHNUser 3y ago

People seem to be getting hung up on the bad article title. It's a genuinely good read when you set the semantics of what the old web is aside.

netsroht 3y ago

Is my new project [0] also part of the problem? I'm still unsure myself because LLMs also allow us to process data in unprecedented ways. In my specific case, I auto generate stories to highlight different view points based on what people are saying about hot controversial topics on social media. What's your opinion? [0] https://zeitgaist.social https://zeitgaist.social

danielbln 3y ago
Why do all the images look deep fried?
- netsroht 3y ago
  Because I intentionally process them with a very rudimentary "cartoonizer" in order to distinguish from a regular news articles and to emphasize that these stories are not written by humans. I don't know yet whether this helps.
latexr 3y ago
> Is my new project also part of the problem? Yes. In a few ways it’s considerably worse. Your website is referencing major world events, including war and freedom of press, by leveraging uninformed comments from the web (many of them themselves written by AI). That would be a problem even if your content weren’t auto-generated (random comments don’t make good or accurate journalism) but it’s worse when it’s churned at a high rate and introduces its own false interpretations.
- netsroht 3y ago
  Thanks for your input. This website should neither compete with nor replace regular journalism. What I try to achieve here is to be able to break free from social media silos where usually people are in kind of bubble. No one can read this many comments and people usually tend to read only comments / conversations where they align with their believes. Hence, I try to highlight different view points along with contrasting opinions (across several different social media platforms) to get an overview--not necessarily fact-based. These stories aren't supposed to push any agenda down anyone's throat. Since this project just went live I'm still figuring out how to communicate that.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pasmafaute 3y ago

I stopped reading in the first paragraph. > Redditors are staging blackouts. The implication that the Reddit blackouts are related to recent AI advances is ridiculous. The embedded link also makes no mention of AI. I dislike this kind of disingenuous clickbait. It's not worth my time to keep reading. In a way I should thank them for the early red flag. This way I don't need to waste my time on the whole article.

bacchusracine 3y ago
>The implication that the Reddit blackouts are related to recent AI advances is ridiculous. The allegation is that most of ChatGPT can be traced back to their using sites like Reddit and Twitter to scrape the information from for its training data. Reddit is changing the cost of accessing its APIs as a direct result of this and not really about killing off third party clients. That's the connection.