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Every time I see anything negative about AI posted on HN, I expect someone to show up and say “no big deal, everything that’s becoming garbage was already garba

by EGreg 2y ago

Every time I see anything negative about AI posted on HN, I expect someone to show up and say “no big deal, everything that’s becoming garbage was already garbage on the internet and in the real world, AI just xyz, and scale is irrelevant, nothing to see here”. I almost want to collect these replies and look at them years later LOL Yes yes, before AI every site was flooded with weird copies of a photo and song, and not labeled as AI. I remember all those years where every single site with user generated content was a garbage dump with 95% fake accounts.

wkat4242 2y ago
Well, no. I do agree that AI is a net negative the way it's being applied now. I'm not trying to pooh-pooh the negative effect of AI, I just think we shouldn't underestimate how bad the internet already was the last few years. In fact this site is one of the last few beacons of light in that cesspool as far as I'm concerned. I just mean the internet had already started its inevitable decline. The problem with AI is that it can enshittify a lot further than that. But the path was already set with or without AI. > I remember all those years where every single site with user generated content was a garbage dump with 95% fake accounts. Yeah because that's exactly what reddit, twitter, stackoverflow already were. Tons and tons of low-effort karmawhoring. This was really already the case before AI. I already turned my back on all of those because it became too much. AI will make it much worse but i don't think it's the root cause. It's an enabler, a tool but not the cause. The biggest issue is the enshittification model behind the big sites that incentivices this behaviour. After all, if there's nothing to be gained nobody would do it. The problem is people want to do these insane things. We can make AI "responsible" all we want but we'll never solve that until we remove this incentive. Personally I also think AI is a net negative the way it's used now, though i can see a few niche usecases where it can really make life better. For example it can really translate much better due to context understanding. It can summarise. It can eventually probably help with deadly boring excel work (though right now Microsoft copilot really sucks at its excel functionality)
squigz 2y ago
> every single site with user generated content was a garbage dump with 95% fake accounts. This is quite the claim. Certainly doesn't seem to align with my experience. Do you have a source?
- EGreg 2y ago
  I was being sarcastic, but this claim is made by people downplaying the problems with AI

by EGreg 2y ago

wkat4242 2y ago

Well, no. I do agree that AI is a net negative the way it's being applied now. I'm not trying to pooh-pooh the negative effect of AI, I just think we shouldn't underestimate how bad the internet already was the last few years. In fact this site is one of the last few beacons of light in that cesspool as far as I'm concerned. I just mean the internet had already started its inevitable decline. The problem with AI is that it can enshittify a lot further than that. But the path was already set with or without AI. > I remember all those years where every single site with user generated content was a garbage dump with 95% fake accounts. Yeah because that's exactly what reddit, twitter, stackoverflow already were. Tons and tons of low-effort karmawhoring. This was really already the case before AI. I already turned my back on all of those because it became too much. AI will make it much worse but i don't think it's the root cause. It's an enabler, a tool but not the cause. The biggest issue is the enshittification model behind the big sites that incentivices this behaviour. After all, if there's nothing to be gained nobody would do it. The problem is people want to do these insane things. We can make AI "responsible" all we want but we'll never solve that until we remove this incentive. Personally I also think AI is a net negative the way it's used now, though i can see a few niche usecases where it can really make life better. For example it can really translate much better due to context understanding. It can summarise. It can eventually probably help with deadly boring excel work (though right now Microsoft copilot really sucks at its excel functionality)

squigz 2y ago

> every single site with user generated content was a garbage dump with 95% fake accounts. This is quite the claim. Certainly doesn't seem to align with my experience. Do you have a source?

EGreg 2y ago
I was being sarcastic, but this claim is made by people downplaying the problems with AI