5 ms·

The product here isn't necessarily suprising, it's only a matter of time before someone builds this. I continue to be suprised how deep a social media company w

The product here isn't necessarily suprising, it's only a matter of time before someone builds this. I continue to be suprised how deep a social media company wants to go into LLM-generated content though. What is the real value of social media when most of the content posted is created by a bot? Taking humans out of the loop seems to remove all value from showing ads, and the value of content that can be used to train LLMs tanks when the content is itself LLM-generated.

lnxg33k1 2y ago
It’s the perfect echo chamber to get woke to go back meta, you can hardly have any disagreement if the bot is leveled on yourself
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I think this is the real killer app here for users: A custom echo chamber, specifically tailored to what the user wants to read, brought to you by virtual friends. I hate to say it, but that would be eaten up by the growing cohort of lonely (sometimes estranged) elderly people. I stole a sneaky peek at an elderly family-friend's Facebook feed once, and it was just a constant drip of political memes from a handful of people in a large-ish Facebook Group. Now imagine if, instead of relying on a handful of people keeping that group alive, he could populate it with bots that feed him a deluge of AI-generated text and memes that all agreed with and validated his opinions...
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    There is more value in manipulating people to fit an echo chamber you control than in tailoring one for each person, losing the advantages of controlling thousands with a unified creed.
ai4ever 2y ago
whats also puzzling is giving away the foundation model the llamas will be used to pollute the social media reducing their value to advertizers
- Zambyte 2y ago
  I wonder if they have a watermark built in that allows them to detect text generated by Llama easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZJc1p6RE78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZJc1p6RE78 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.10226 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.10226
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    I'd be suprised if they weren't making sure that Facebook could recognize content made with their tooling. Watermarks will always be on the honors system though, people could always remove them before posting.
    - jazzyjackson 2y ago
      For all the talk about safety it's surprising to me how little watermarking is going on, these AI producers are content with generating unmarked garbage. I figure there's a lot you could do with interwoven zerowidth space characters and other unicode tricks (using other code blocks for otherwise normal characters like you would when spoofing a url) - sure it would be easy to write software to normalize it back to ascii but at least that requires intent to deceive - we could even write laws against stripping encoding schemes meant to identify automated content Prior art is that time Genius encoded "red handed" into morse code by way of alternating apostrophes to catch Google copying their lyrics: https://gizmodo.com/genius-claims-it-busted-google-stealing-by-hiding-a-sec-1835582388 https://gizmodo.com/genius-claims-it-busted-google-stealing-...
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        If I'm not mistaken, didn't the major LLM companies try to band together for watermarking type features only to walk it back later and admit it wouldn't work?
- ai4ever 2y ago
  I am surprised to see this: https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/ https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/ dont know how valid this is, but encouraging ai-slop as a business strategy to keep sticky customers !
elorant 2y ago
There’s nothing surprising here. Facebook isn’t appealing to young people and user engagement is falling. Right now they’re just throwing ideas on a wall to see what sticks. Threads didn’t quite took off either.
DevX101 2y ago
I think the ultimate goal here is to build the Metaverse. This was a big strategic initiative for Meta, so much so that they changed the company's name. But the product wasn't prime time ready when Zuck first introduced it. With LLMs, it's going to be a core enabling technology to make the Metaverse more immersive. Hundreds of millions, maybe billions of simultaneous conversations running inference locally with various digital avatars.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Do people want to hang out in a sexed up habbo hotel though?
  - gherkinnn 2y ago
    Meta (well, SV) is too prude for that. It will be a controlled, sterile and ad-laden habbo hotel.
  - kridsdale3 2y ago
    They absolutely do. Check out the subreddit for Character.ai users. It's a million teenagers too nervous to talk to their IRL crush, but they can live out fantasies with their dark brooding cyber boyfriend no problem.
    - moomoo11 2y ago
      Cool but that’s a minority of people. Like I’m sure on whatever unpleasant Chan sites there are a bunch of people. But they are weirdos.
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        I am not sure of this considering the TAM of pornography. With each generation being more insular, having less opportunity to meet and interact in third spaces, etc it seems like people interacting at scale with bots continually improving is the natural trajectory we’re already on. AI boyfriend, girlfriend, companion, whatever is obviously the next step. Way less effort than navigating the in person social environment, expectations, etc.
barbazoo 2y ago
What’s the value of looking at fake news all day *shrug* I wouldn’t be surprised if people were into this.
lovethevoid 2y ago
It's also more interesting when Meta (and Google) are so dependent on advertising income, yet their moves in AI directly oppose that income stream. Views based ads are worthless on a platform with AI. Click based ads will also become worthless when bots can click through. Nothing gets purchased and brand value doesn't mean anything if few humans even see it. I suppose none of that matters when you operate as they do, both as the advertising network and also the agent that keeps the ad prices artificially high. Guess we'll have to wait for companies to make this realization a decade later after wasting billions advertising to bots.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I don't think they directly oppose it. They're not creating views. They're creating content for views (and thus ad impressions).
Zambyte 2y ago
The key here is engagement. I have been increasingly hearing people complain that they don't see content from their friends as much or at all anymore on social media. LLMs are a way for Facebook to present information that it wants to present to keep you engaged, as if it came from someone you care about. That seems like it would keep people even more hooked than presenting information from people you don't know.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  That's interesting. I don't use Facebook, but I would have expected anyone annoyed with not seeing content from their friend to be even more frustrated if the content they do see is a bot posting as their friend. It'll be really interesting if this approach were to actually work at keeping people engaged as if they were interacting with friends.
  - Zambyte 2y ago
    I think it's more interesting when you consider that the bot may genuinely post things that reflect the opinions and experiences of the person that it is posting on behalf of. The real person may seamlessly jump in mid conversation, and that does a lot to validate the experience of talking to the bot. I think it's an extremely unhealthy path to walk down, but I can see why they're doing it.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Embedding ads deep into language models that then seamlessly and unobtrusively roll them into their responses is definitely the endgame for commercialization. Nobody wants to be the first to do it of course, since they'll get dropped by everyone like a billion degree potato.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Do they assume people are stupid and won’t see these as ai bots?
  - Carrok 2y ago
drusepth 2y ago
> What is the real value of social media when most of the content posted is created by a bot? Besides the maybe 5% or so of people I interact with online that I actually know IRL, I don't really care if I'm interacting with a bot. A bot could have secretly written your message and I'd still leave the same reply. Anyone that replies to me could also secretly be a bot and I'd read their comment the same. This whole HN post could just be bots all the way down and it'd still be an interesting read through the comments. Even if the replies are from humans, if they're indistinguishable from other humans I still don't really care about who wrote them. Engagement is engagement and my Sims-esque social bar refills at the same rate.
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  Ok, I can see how content can be interesting even if there's not a person behind it but would you still publish your comment if it was only ever going to be read by computer programs?
  - superturkey650 2y ago
    Depends on if the computer programs might respond in an interesting way or if my comment might help them respond in an interesting way in the future. Same as when interacting with humans, I guess.
  - drusepth 2y ago
    I think there's two likely scenarios here: 1) My comment is only ever going to be read by computer programs and I'll probably get a response back from a computer program (see: ChatGPT/GPTs, character.ai, AI Studio, Replika, the countless "AI friend" services, etc) 2) My comment is posted in a more public setting that's inundated by computer programs, but also visible to other humans (e.g. a comment on a public FB post that computer programs read, but that other humans might also read and/or respond to) #1 feels like current-gen one-on-one chatbots, but #2 is where I expect FB to end up eventually, using bots to keep conversations flowing and growing while humans interact here and there. In either case, my answer is yes. It's still a conversation either way, isn't it?
  - 2y ago
RandallBrown 2y ago
If a technology is an existential threat to your business I think it makes sense to try and control and understand that technology. Someone is going to build this stuff and ruin social media anyway, might as well be Meta so they can put it to good use or better understand how to prevent those problems. It's sort of (but not entirely) similar to what happened with Kodak and digital cameras.

lnxg33k1 2y ago

It’s the perfect echo chamber to get woke to go back meta, you can hardly have any disagreement if the bot is leveled on yourself

ryandrake 2y ago
I think this is the real killer app here for users: A custom echo chamber, specifically tailored to what the user wants to read, brought to you by virtual friends. I hate to say it, but that would be eaten up by the growing cohort of lonely (sometimes estranged) elderly people. I stole a sneaky peek at an elderly family-friend's Facebook feed once, and it was just a constant drip of political memes from a handful of people in a large-ish Facebook Group. Now imagine if, instead of relying on a handful of people keeping that group alive, he could populate it with bots that feed him a deluge of AI-generated text and memes that all agreed with and validated his opinions...
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  There is more value in manipulating people to fit an echo chamber you control than in tailoring one for each person, losing the advantages of controlling thousands with a unified creed.

ai4ever 2y ago

whats also puzzling is giving away the foundation model the llamas will be used to pollute the social media reducing their value to advertizers

Zambyte 2y ago
I wonder if they have a watermark built in that allows them to detect text generated by Llama easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZJc1p6RE78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZJc1p6RE78 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.10226 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.10226
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I'd be suprised if they weren't making sure that Facebook could recognize content made with their tooling. Watermarks will always be on the honors system though, people could always remove them before posting.
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    For all the talk about safety it's surprising to me how little watermarking is going on, these AI producers are content with generating unmarked garbage. I figure there's a lot you could do with interwoven zerowidth space characters and other unicode tricks (using other code blocks for otherwise normal characters like you would when spoofing a url) - sure it would be easy to write software to normalize it back to ascii but at least that requires intent to deceive - we could even write laws against stripping encoding schemes meant to identify automated content Prior art is that time Genius encoded "red handed" into morse code by way of alternating apostrophes to catch Google copying their lyrics: https://gizmodo.com/genius-claims-it-busted-google-stealing-by-hiding-a-sec-1835582388 https://gizmodo.com/genius-claims-it-busted-google-stealing-...
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      If I'm not mistaken, didn't the major LLM companies try to band together for watermarking type features only to walk it back later and admit it wouldn't work?
ai4ever 2y ago
I am surprised to see this: https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/ https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/ dont know how valid this is, but encouraging ai-slop as a business strategy to keep sticky customers !

elorant 2y ago

There’s nothing surprising here. Facebook isn’t appealing to young people and user engagement is falling. Right now they’re just throwing ideas on a wall to see what sticks. Threads didn’t quite took off either.

DevX101 2y ago

I think the ultimate goal here is to build the Metaverse. This was a big strategic initiative for Meta, so much so that they changed the company's name. But the product wasn't prime time ready when Zuck first introduced it. With LLMs, it's going to be a core enabling technology to make the Metaverse more immersive. Hundreds of millions, maybe billions of simultaneous conversations running inference locally with various digital avatars.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
Do people want to hang out in a sexed up habbo hotel though?
- gherkinnn 2y ago
  Meta (well, SV) is too prude for that. It will be a controlled, sterile and ad-laden habbo hotel.
- kridsdale3 2y ago
  They absolutely do. Check out the subreddit for Character.ai users. It's a million teenagers too nervous to talk to their IRL crush, but they can live out fantasies with their dark brooding cyber boyfriend no problem.
  - moomoo11 2y ago
    Cool but that’s a minority of people. Like I’m sure on whatever unpleasant Chan sites there are a bunch of people. But they are weirdos.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      I am not sure of this considering the TAM of pornography. With each generation being more insular, having less opportunity to meet and interact in third spaces, etc it seems like people interacting at scale with bots continually improving is the natural trajectory we’re already on. AI boyfriend, girlfriend, companion, whatever is obviously the next step. Way less effort than navigating the in person social environment, expectations, etc.

barbazoo 2y ago

What’s the value of looking at fake news all day *shrug* I wouldn’t be surprised if people were into this.

lovethevoid 2y ago

It's also more interesting when Meta (and Google) are so dependent on advertising income, yet their moves in AI directly oppose that income stream. Views based ads are worthless on a platform with AI. Click based ads will also become worthless when bots can click through. Nothing gets purchased and brand value doesn't mean anything if few humans even see it. I suppose none of that matters when you operate as they do, both as the advertising network and also the agent that keeps the ad prices artificially high. Guess we'll have to wait for companies to make this realization a decade later after wasting billions advertising to bots.

robertlagrant 2y ago
I don't think they directly oppose it. They're not creating views. They're creating content for views (and thus ad impressions).

Zambyte 2y ago

The key here is engagement. I have been increasingly hearing people complain that they don't see content from their friends as much or at all anymore on social media. LLMs are a way for Facebook to present information that it wants to present to keep you engaged, as if it came from someone you care about. That seems like it would keep people even more hooked than presenting information from people you don't know.

_heimdall 2y ago
That's interesting. I don't use Facebook, but I would have expected anyone annoyed with not seeing content from their friend to be even more frustrated if the content they do see is a bot posting as their friend. It'll be really interesting if this approach were to actually work at keeping people engaged as if they were interacting with friends.
- Zambyte 2y ago
  I think it's more interesting when you consider that the bot may genuinely post things that reflect the opinions and experiences of the person that it is posting on behalf of. The real person may seamlessly jump in mid conversation, and that does a lot to validate the experience of talking to the bot. I think it's an extremely unhealthy path to walk down, but I can see why they're doing it.
moffkalast 2y ago
Embedding ads deep into language models that then seamlessly and unobtrusively roll them into their responses is definitely the endgame for commercialization. Nobody wants to be the first to do it of course, since they'll get dropped by everyone like a billion degree potato.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Do they assume people are stupid and won’t see these as ai bots?
- Carrok 2y ago

drusepth 2y ago

> What is the real value of social media when most of the content posted is created by a bot? Besides the maybe 5% or so of people I interact with online that I actually know IRL, I don't really care if I'm interacting with a bot. A bot could have secretly written your message and I'd still leave the same reply. Anyone that replies to me could also secretly be a bot and I'd read their comment the same. This whole HN post could just be bots all the way down and it'd still be an interesting read through the comments. Even if the replies are from humans, if they're indistinguishable from other humans I still don't really care about who wrote them. Engagement is engagement and my Sims-esque social bar refills at the same rate.

jazzyjackson 2y ago
Ok, I can see how content can be interesting even if there's not a person behind it but would you still publish your comment if it was only ever going to be read by computer programs?
- superturkey650 2y ago
  Depends on if the computer programs might respond in an interesting way or if my comment might help them respond in an interesting way in the future. Same as when interacting with humans, I guess.
- drusepth 2y ago
  I think there's two likely scenarios here: 1) My comment is only ever going to be read by computer programs and I'll probably get a response back from a computer program (see: ChatGPT/GPTs, character.ai, AI Studio, Replika, the countless "AI friend" services, etc) 2) My comment is posted in a more public setting that's inundated by computer programs, but also visible to other humans (e.g. a comment on a public FB post that computer programs read, but that other humans might also read and/or respond to) #1 feels like current-gen one-on-one chatbots, but #2 is where I expect FB to end up eventually, using bots to keep conversations flowing and growing while humans interact here and there. In either case, my answer is yes. It's still a conversation either way, isn't it?
- 2y ago

RandallBrown 2y ago

If a technology is an existential threat to your business I think it makes sense to try and control and understand that technology. Someone is going to build this stuff and ruin social media anyway, might as well be Meta so they can put it to good use or better understand how to prevent those problems. It's sort of (but not entirely) similar to what happened with Kodak and digital cameras.