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What happened to the quality of journalism once it went online? When news media had to compete against bloggers and social media. It went into the toilet. What

by krapp 3y ago

What happened to the quality of journalism once it went online? When news media had to compete against bloggers and social media. It went into the toilet. What happened to the quality of video games once game frameworks became easily available? The market got flooded with low-effort garbage. Youtube and Tiktok and other social media platforms make global video distribution easy, but most of it is uninteresting and uninspired, when not low-effort clickbait or ragebait. Making things easy doesn't lead to more substance, only exponentially more of what sells, which is shallow, low effort aesthetic. What point is there in encouraging people to create things of substance when that substance will only be consumed, commoditized and shat out by AI? Every time you see authentic, human generated art online now, it just gets assimilated. It's a sign of something forever tainted and blighted from the collective human soul. We can't be blind to vapid content when the systems and algorithms that generate our culture optimize only for it. The only hope is that somehow AI fails to follow through on its promise. Maybe it will never be able to create content of high enough quality, quickly enough or at a low enough cost. Given the evolution of technology, and the capability of LLMs in particular, that seems unlikely. Only another AI winter can save us. As long as AI remains deeply integrated into all possible electronic and online means of communication, creativity and expression (as it seems destined to be) then human expression just feeds the machine, and becomes as impossible to find in the ocean of machine-generated slime as non-commercial content on Google.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
This was already the case for human made art before? The vast vast majority of 'art' online, including youtube videos, wasn't even worth spending a few seconds looking at in 2021. So we go from 98% not worth looking at to 99.9% not worth looking at, or whatever the figure is.
- speff 3y ago
  Anyone who's dealt with multiple 9s knows how big of a jump 98->99.9% is. This isn't making the point you think.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  Most of what is made is not that good. For every shawshank redemption we have 20 'leonard part 6' movies or worse. People just do not realize how much content there is out there in the big budget space. In the low budget space that ratio is even worse. Most of it is not good. We are going to see the volume of low effort items cranked to 11.
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    And the Shawshank Redemption movies will stop being made. Or if they are being made, they will be ignored. I read a blog today and it was high-quality long form tech journalism - something I haven't seen for a long time, tucked away on a no-mark site in a far corner of the Internet. I didn't agree with all of the content, but it was so good to see something written at that level. 50 years ago it would have been normal for tech publishing. Today most tech journalism is gossip and clickbait. It's not thoughtful and referenced long form analysis of where the industry may be heading, written with original critical insights.
    - sumtechguy 3y ago
      I picked that movie because it is considered one of the best movies on IMDB. However, it did very poorly on release. It was years later it did much better. Gems are made. But they also do not always get the recognition they deserve. With AI we are about to get a lot more rubish to dig thru. However, we may be surprised too. At this point is kind of too soon to tell. But my gut reaction is 'a small bit of good tons of bad'.
- krapp 3y ago
  Given the choice between garbage made by humans and garbage made by a machine, I'd still prefer the former over the latter, even when the AI stuff appears more technically polished.
throwaway13337 3y ago
I wanted to respond to this because there's some truth to it. However, I think the mechanism of action is more layered and the outcomes varied so that both can be true. So, yes, there are a lot of new video games because it's easy. It's also true that the most aggressively marketed and therefore quite popular games are bad. Mobile games now make up over half of the gaming revenue. This is a problem not of volume but of incentive. These popular games have created a cycle of [heavy monetization > more ads > more popularity]. They exploit people. This is a problem but a different kind of problem. On the other hand, the indie games on steam have never been better. They're extremely creative, and fun, and they invent. They riff off each other. And most new things in gaming come first from here. The only thing not healthy about it is the lack of money they make. These games are so cheap that they have a hard time paying the developer's rent. Platforms and cynical games with better marketing and monetization have stolen their lunch and poisoned their audiences. The point is that bringing down the barrier of creation did allow much better creations. However, marketing and exploitation ruined a lot. I won't go into it as deeply, but you can imagine the same pattern played out everywhere else. YouTube has great content and would have more if it was more discoverable. It's hard to find because the algorithm made for maximizing marketing dollars suggests things that we don't tell the algorithm we want but what the algorithm thinks will keep us watching. It resists helping us. Because marketing money. With these new generative models, we can imagine decreasing money needed to create but we will all compete for the same finite source of attention. Like with games, the good stuff will still be there, but it might be hard to find. A positive sum game (creation) turns into a zero-sum game (attention auctions) with negative externalities (ragebait, mobile game addiction). Those that control who gets attention will be able to soak up all the gains from the positive sum game. It's already been happening with app stores and google ads. And there's no reason it shouldn't soak up all the margin gains. The enemy is not bringing down barriers - that's the good stuff. It's reining in marketing and attention platforms so that we can all benefit from these creations instead the benefits being greatly attenuated and, in some cases, made negative but the attention gatekeepers.

by krapp 3y ago

MichaelZuo 3y ago

This was already the case for human made art before? The vast vast majority of 'art' online, including youtube videos, wasn't even worth spending a few seconds looking at in 2021. So we go from 98% not worth looking at to 99.9% not worth looking at, or whatever the figure is.

speff 3y ago
Anyone who's dealt with multiple 9s knows how big of a jump 98->99.9% is. This isn't making the point you think.
sumtechguy 3y ago
Most of what is made is not that good. For every shawshank redemption we have 20 'leonard part 6' movies or worse. People just do not realize how much content there is out there in the big budget space. In the low budget space that ratio is even worse. Most of it is not good. We are going to see the volume of low effort items cranked to 11.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  And the Shawshank Redemption movies will stop being made. Or if they are being made, they will be ignored. I read a blog today and it was high-quality long form tech journalism - something I haven't seen for a long time, tucked away on a no-mark site in a far corner of the Internet. I didn't agree with all of the content, but it was so good to see something written at that level. 50 years ago it would have been normal for tech publishing. Today most tech journalism is gossip and clickbait. It's not thoughtful and referenced long form analysis of where the industry may be heading, written with original critical insights.
  - sumtechguy 3y ago
    I picked that movie because it is considered one of the best movies on IMDB. However, it did very poorly on release. It was years later it did much better. Gems are made. But they also do not always get the recognition they deserve. With AI we are about to get a lot more rubish to dig thru. However, we may be surprised too. At this point is kind of too soon to tell. But my gut reaction is 'a small bit of good tons of bad'.
krapp 3y ago
Given the choice between garbage made by humans and garbage made by a machine, I'd still prefer the former over the latter, even when the AI stuff appears more technically polished.

throwaway13337 3y ago

I wanted to respond to this because there's some truth to it. However, I think the mechanism of action is more layered and the outcomes varied so that both can be true. So, yes, there are a lot of new video games because it's easy. It's also true that the most aggressively marketed and therefore quite popular games are bad. Mobile games now make up over half of the gaming revenue. This is a problem not of volume but of incentive. These popular games have created a cycle of [heavy monetization > more ads > more popularity]. They exploit people. This is a problem but a different kind of problem. On the other hand, the indie games on steam have never been better. They're extremely creative, and fun, and they invent. They riff off each other. And most new things in gaming come first from here. The only thing not healthy about it is the lack of money they make. These games are so cheap that they have a hard time paying the developer's rent. Platforms and cynical games with better marketing and monetization have stolen their lunch and poisoned their audiences. The point is that bringing down the barrier of creation did allow much better creations. However, marketing and exploitation ruined a lot. I won't go into it as deeply, but you can imagine the same pattern played out everywhere else. YouTube has great content and would have more if it was more discoverable. It's hard to find because the algorithm made for maximizing marketing dollars suggests things that we don't tell the algorithm we want but what the algorithm thinks will keep us watching. It resists helping us. Because marketing money. With these new generative models, we can imagine decreasing money needed to create but we will all compete for the same finite source of attention. Like with games, the good stuff will still be there, but it might be hard to find. A positive sum game (creation) turns into a zero-sum game (attention auctions) with negative externalities (ragebait, mobile game addiction). Those that control who gets attention will be able to soak up all the gains from the positive sum game. It's already been happening with app stores and google ads. And there's no reason it shouldn't soak up all the margin gains. The enemy is not bringing down barriers - that's the good stuff. It's reining in marketing and attention platforms so that we can all benefit from these creations instead the benefits being greatly attenuated and, in some cases, made negative but the attention gatekeepers.