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Axios got traction because it heavily condensed news into more scannable content for the twitter, insta, Tok crowd. So AI is this on massive steroids. It is un

by apsurd 8mo ago

Axios got traction because it heavily condensed news into more scannable content for the twitter, insta, Tok crowd. So AI is this on massive steroids. It is unsettling but it seems a recurring need to point out that across the board many of "it's because of AI" things were already happening. "Post truth" is one I'm most interested in. AI condenses it all on a surreal and unsettling timeline. But humans are still humans. And to me, that means that I will continue to seek out and pay for good writing like The Atlantic. btw I've enjoyed listening to articles via their auto-generated NOA AI voice thing. Additionally, not all writing serves the same purpose. The article makes these sweeping claims about "all of writing". Gets clicks I guess, but to the point, most of why and what people read is toward some immediate and functional need. Like work, like some way to make money, indirectly. Some hack. Some fast-forwarding of "the point". No wonder AI is taking over that job. And then there's creative expression and connection. And yes I know AI is taking over all the creative industries too. What I'm saying is we've always been separating "the masses" from those that "appreciate real art". Same story.

plastic-enjoyer 8mo ago
> "Post truth" is one I'm most interested in. I have this theory that the post-truth era began with the invention of the printing press and gained iteratively more traction with each revolution in information technology.
- Finbel 8mo ago
  So slightly before 1440 was peak Truth for humanity?
- yannyu 8mo ago
  I think you're right, but I also think it's worthwhile to look at Edward Bernays in the early 1900s and his specific influence on how companies and governments to this day shape deliberately shape public opinion in their favor. There's an argument that his work and the work of his contemporaries was a critical point in the flooding of the collective consciousness with what we would consider propaganda, misinformation, or covert advertising.
  - plastic-enjoyer 8mo ago
    > There's an argument that his work and the work of his contemporaries was a critical point in the flooding of the collective consciousness with what we would consider propaganda I would rather say that Bernays was a keen observer and understood mass behavior and the potential of mass media like no one else in his time. Soren Kierkegaard has written about the role of public opinion and mass media in the 19th and had a rather pessimistic outlook on it. You have stuff like the Dreyfuss Affair where mass media already played a role in polarizing people and playing into the ressentiments of the people. There were signs that people were overwhelmed by mass media even before Bernays. I would say that Bernays observed these things and used those observations to develop systematic methods for influencing the masses. The problem was already there, Bernays just exploited it systematically.
- robot-wrangler 8mo ago
  Doesn't matter when post-truth started because it's now over, and it's more accurate to characterize this era as "post-rationality". Most people do seem to understand this, but we are in different stages of grief about it.
- atommclain 8mo ago
  Maybe I’m viewing truth too narrowly, but I feel like the printing press brought us as close as we could come to a “truth era”. Authorship of text, and the friction and cost involved with publishing seems to bend towards transmitting truth. I guess how are you evaluating or measuring truth?
meetingthrower 8mo ago
Same. New yorker is the other mag I subscribed to. Until 3 weeks ago I had a high cortisol inducing morning read: nyt, wsj, axios, politico. I went on a weeklong camping trip with no phone and haven't logged into those yet. It's fine.
- jihadjihad 8mo ago
  People think I'm nuts when I tell them I ditched subscriptions for those sites and only check them maybe once a week, if that. But what you said is 100% true, it's fine. When things in your life provide net negative value it's in your best interest to ditch them.
  - aleph_minus_one 8mo ago
    > When things in your life provide net negative value it's in your best interest to ditch them. Let's ditch politicians. :-)
- KittenInABox 8mo ago
  I agree with this in general but with caveats. For example I think reading national-sized news every day sucks. But if you're of a specific demographic it might be useful to keep pretty up to date on nuanced issues, like if you're a gun owner you will probably want to keep up to date on gun licensing in your area. Or if you're a trans person it's pretty important nowadays to be very aware of laws being passed to dictate your legally going to whatever bathroom or something.
- paulryanrogers 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - onionisafruit 8mo ago
    you don’t need any of the mentioned periodicals for that. m
    - 8mo ago
ngriffiths 8mo ago
> Additionally, not all writing serves the same purpose. I think this is a really important point and to add on, there is a lot of writing that is really good, but only in a way that a niche audience can appreciate. Today's AI can basically compete with the low quality stuff that makes up most of social media, it can't really compete with higher quality stuff targeted to a general audience, and it's still nowhere close to some more niche classics. An interesting thought experiment is whether it's possible that AI tools could write a novel that's better than War and Peace. A quick google shows a lot of (poorly written) articles about how "AI is just a machine, so it can never be creative," which strikes me as a weak argument way too focused on a physical detail instead of the result. War and Peace and/or other great novels are certainly in the training set of some or all models, and there is some real consensus about which ones are great, not just random subjective opinions. I kind of think... there is still something fundamental that would get in the way, but that it is still totally achievable to overcome that some day? I don't think it's impossible for an AI to be creative in a humanlike way, they don't seem optimized for it because they are completely optimized for the sort of analytical mode of reading and writing, not the creative/immersive one.
- lich_king 8mo ago
  > Today's AI can basically compete with the low quality stuff that makes up most of social media, it can't really compete with higher quality stuff But compete in what sense? It already wins on volume alone, because LLM writing is much cheaper than human writing. If you search for an explanation of a concept in science, engineering, philosophy, or art, the first result is an AI summary, probably followed by five AI-generated pages that crowded out the source material. If you get your news on HN, a significant proportion of stories that make it to the top are LLM-generated. If you open a newspaper... a lot of them are using LLMs too. LLM-generated books are ubiquitous on Amazon. So what kind of competition / victory are we talking about? The satisfaction of writing better for an audience of none?
  - apsurd 8mo ago
    > if you get your news on HN, significant portion that make it to the top are LLM-generated. You mean this anecdotally I assume. This makes me think of the split between people who read the article and people who _only_ read the comments. I'm in the second group. I'd say we were preemptive in seeking the ideas and discussion, less so achieving "the point" of the article. FWIW, AI infiltrates everything, i get that, but there's a difference between engagement with people around ideas and engagement with the content. it's blurry i know, but helps to be clear on what we're talking about. edit: in this way, reading something a particular human wrote is both content engagement and engagement with people around an idea. lovely. engaging with content only, is something else. something less satisfying.

by apsurd 8mo ago

plastic-enjoyer 8mo ago

> "Post truth" is one I'm most interested in. I have this theory that the post-truth era began with the invention of the printing press and gained iteratively more traction with each revolution in information technology.

Finbel 8mo ago
So slightly before 1440 was peak Truth for humanity?
yannyu 8mo ago
I think you're right, but I also think it's worthwhile to look at Edward Bernays in the early 1900s and his specific influence on how companies and governments to this day shape deliberately shape public opinion in their favor. There's an argument that his work and the work of his contemporaries was a critical point in the flooding of the collective consciousness with what we would consider propaganda, misinformation, or covert advertising.
- plastic-enjoyer 8mo ago
  > There's an argument that his work and the work of his contemporaries was a critical point in the flooding of the collective consciousness with what we would consider propaganda I would rather say that Bernays was a keen observer and understood mass behavior and the potential of mass media like no one else in his time. Soren Kierkegaard has written about the role of public opinion and mass media in the 19th and had a rather pessimistic outlook on it. You have stuff like the Dreyfuss Affair where mass media already played a role in polarizing people and playing into the ressentiments of the people. There were signs that people were overwhelmed by mass media even before Bernays. I would say that Bernays observed these things and used those observations to develop systematic methods for influencing the masses. The problem was already there, Bernays just exploited it systematically.
robot-wrangler 8mo ago
Doesn't matter when post-truth started because it's now over, and it's more accurate to characterize this era as "post-rationality". Most people do seem to understand this, but we are in different stages of grief about it.
atommclain 8mo ago
Maybe I’m viewing truth too narrowly, but I feel like the printing press brought us as close as we could come to a “truth era”. Authorship of text, and the friction and cost involved with publishing seems to bend towards transmitting truth. I guess how are you evaluating or measuring truth?

meetingthrower 8mo ago

Same. New yorker is the other mag I subscribed to. Until 3 weeks ago I had a high cortisol inducing morning read: nyt, wsj, axios, politico. I went on a weeklong camping trip with no phone and haven't logged into those yet. It's fine.

jihadjihad 8mo ago
People think I'm nuts when I tell them I ditched subscriptions for those sites and only check them maybe once a week, if that. But what you said is 100% true, it's fine. When things in your life provide net negative value it's in your best interest to ditch them.
- aleph_minus_one 8mo ago
  > When things in your life provide net negative value it's in your best interest to ditch them. Let's ditch politicians. :-)
KittenInABox 8mo ago
I agree with this in general but with caveats. For example I think reading national-sized news every day sucks. But if you're of a specific demographic it might be useful to keep pretty up to date on nuanced issues, like if you're a gun owner you will probably want to keep up to date on gun licensing in your area. Or if you're a trans person it's pretty important nowadays to be very aware of laws being passed to dictate your legally going to whatever bathroom or something.
paulryanrogers 8mo ago
[flagged]
- onionisafruit 8mo ago
  you don’t need any of the mentioned periodicals for that. m
  - 8mo ago

ngriffiths 8mo ago

> Additionally, not all writing serves the same purpose. I think this is a really important point and to add on, there is a lot of writing that is really good, but only in a way that a niche audience can appreciate. Today's AI can basically compete with the low quality stuff that makes up most of social media, it can't really compete with higher quality stuff targeted to a general audience, and it's still nowhere close to some more niche classics. An interesting thought experiment is whether it's possible that AI tools could write a novel that's better than War and Peace. A quick google shows a lot of (poorly written) articles about how "AI is just a machine, so it can never be creative," which strikes me as a weak argument way too focused on a physical detail instead of the result. War and Peace and/or other great novels are certainly in the training set of some or all models, and there is some real consensus about which ones are great, not just random subjective opinions. I kind of think... there is still something fundamental that would get in the way, but that it is still totally achievable to overcome that some day? I don't think it's impossible for an AI to be creative in a humanlike way, they don't seem optimized for it because they are completely optimized for the sort of analytical mode of reading and writing, not the creative/immersive one.

lich_king 8mo ago
> Today's AI can basically compete with the low quality stuff that makes up most of social media, it can't really compete with higher quality stuff But compete in what sense? It already wins on volume alone, because LLM writing is much cheaper than human writing. If you search for an explanation of a concept in science, engineering, philosophy, or art, the first result is an AI summary, probably followed by five AI-generated pages that crowded out the source material. If you get your news on HN, a significant proportion of stories that make it to the top are LLM-generated. If you open a newspaper... a lot of them are using LLMs too. LLM-generated books are ubiquitous on Amazon. So what kind of competition / victory are we talking about? The satisfaction of writing better for an audience of none?
- apsurd 8mo ago
  > if you get your news on HN, significant portion that make it to the top are LLM-generated. You mean this anecdotally I assume. This makes me think of the split between people who read the article and people who _only_ read the comments. I'm in the second group. I'd say we were preemptive in seeking the ideas and discussion, less so achieving "the point" of the article. FWIW, AI infiltrates everything, i get that, but there's a difference between engagement with people around ideas and engagement with the content. it's blurry i know, but helps to be clear on what we're talking about. edit: in this way, reading something a particular human wrote is both content engagement and engagement with people around an idea. lovely. engaging with content only, is something else. something less satisfying.