4 ms·

AI is in danger of peeing in it's own water source. It's unbelievably useful at imitating and generating content, but it needs enough original content to be abl

AI is in danger of peeing in it's own water source. It's unbelievably useful at imitating and generating content, but it needs enough original content to be able to train and scrape. Google got one thing wrong and nearly destroyed the internet - people need to have an incentive to contribute content online, and that incentive should not be to game the system for advertising. This in particular dawned on me when asking Claude for instructions in taking apart my dryer. There was literally only one webpage on the internet left with instructions for my particular dryer - the page was more or less unusable with rotten links and riddled with adware. Claude did it's best but filled in the missing diagrams with hallucinations. I was imaging if LLMs could finally solve the micropayments solution people have always proposed for the internet. Part of my monthly payment gets split between all of the sites that the LLM scraped knowledge. Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. It might not be a lot of money, but it would certainly be more than the pitiful ad revenue you get from posting content online right now. And if I want to upload corrected instructions for repairing this dryer I would have reason to.

ares623 6mo ago
> I was imaging if LLMs could finally solve the micropayments solution people have always proposed for the internet. Part of my monthly payment gets split between all of the sites that the LLM scraped knowledge. Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. As a software user I wish I could do the same for all the software I use.
- Jach 6mo ago
  Many open source projects accept donations. There's also explicitly paid-for software. What exactly do you wish for that you can't do right now?
  - ares623 6mo ago
    Specifically the part where engineers get paid the same way as artists on Spotify.
    - techpression 6mo ago
      So not at all for their work and with a reverse Robin Hood model? That would be terrible for software. The way artists gets paid on streaming is a genius play at catering to the biggest artists and labels and screw over the smaller ones, especially true on Spotify with their freemium model
    - Loughla 6mo ago
      So a handful will make a buttload but the vast majority won't make enough to pay rent?
      - pjc50 6mo ago
        Certainly that's how open source pans out.
      - ares623 6mo ago
        Doesn't sound nice if it happens to us does it?
intended 6mo ago
> in danger It has already done so, and we can be confident in saying that. Verified content will always be relatively expensive when compared to AI content. Visits to wikipedia and most sites have dropped. Rtings has gone full paywall. Ad revenue for producing Verified content will be too meager to allow for public consumption. Theres jokes about GenAI being the great filter; while I doubt this, I do hope this is the final push that makes us think of how we want our information commons to be nurtured.
- palmotea 6mo ago
  > Verified content will always be relatively expensive when compared to AI content.... > Visits to wikipedia and most sites have dropped. Rtings has gone full paywall. Ad revenue for producing Verified content will be too meager to allow for public consumption. AI is a technology that's going to further entrench inequality, by warping incentives to push us further away from democratization. Unless you've got $$$ to drop on verified content, you'll be served prolefeed slop and be that much more ignorant.
  - intended 6mo ago
    At this point, it feels like most technology will be used in favor of people with power, and not in a democratizing manner. I'd argue that this is something that is more about the state of play, than tech itself.
    - palmotea 6mo ago
      > I'd argue that this is something that is more about the state of play, than tech itself. What do you mean by that? It seems inherent to the technology under capitalism: it allows a flood of slop and anything public and valuable will be plundered, so the incentive is to make valuable stuff exclusive and elite.
      - intended 6mo ago
        I mean that > inherent to the technology Vs > inherent to the technology under capitalism The TLDR of my point is going to be that wealth concentration and information pollution sets up economies that don’t work for us in a manner that is healthy for us.
meander_water 6mo ago
I think most labs actively create synthetic data using existing model as part of the mix for the pretraining stage for their next model. Would love to know exactly what the latest process is to keep slop out of training data.
- martinald 6mo ago
  const isAiContent = (str) => str.includes('—');? :)
  - AlienRobot 6mo ago
    Latest generation LLM's use en dashes instead of em dashes to avoid detection.
    - jondwillis 6mo ago
      No, they don’t. But obviously GP was tongue–—in-–cheek.
- madamelic 6mo ago
  I think everyone overblows the whole "AI is poisoning AI!" thing. It could be a problem but the genuine value in Reddit or any other human social media is honestly pretty low from my estimates. It's great for seeing how humans talk but in terms of 'nutritional' value for truth or answers... I am not sold. If I was choosing what to 'feed' AI, I wouldn't even bother with textual social media (besides Github / Gitlab / other source control) There's way more value, if seeking out answers, in following the links to external sources, scraping books, and other sources that aren't "unwashed masses saying whatever they want".
  - beepbooptheory 6mo ago
    You can put it in scare quotes all you want, doesn't stop you from sounding like Scrooge McDuck.
  - palmotea 6mo ago
someone_eu 6mo ago
> I was imaging if LLMs could finally solve the micropayments solution people have always proposed for the internet. Part of my monthly payment gets split between all of the sites that the LLM scraped knowledge. Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. This system is usually called taxes. Which then pay for the universal healthcare, free education, affordable housing, libraries, parks,.. and so on. LLM doesn't need to invent it, we should stop allowing them (people and companies behind LLM) to avoid it.
spacechild1 6mo ago
> Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. That's probably not the best comparison. Spotify only benefits the big players resp. those with the most bots. If you actually want to support specific artists, you'd have to use Bandcamp or similar sites.
pjc50 6mo ago
> Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. So, mostly to fraudulent AI spam? AI makes this problem worse in both directions. It makes it fantastically easy to produce ""content"". So if you're scraping content, or browsing content, you're going to run in to increasing amounts of AI. Micropayments makes this worse, because it's then a means of getting paid to produce spam. The problem comes when you want the ""content"" to be connected to real questions like "how does my dryer work" or "what is going to happen to oil availability six months from now". AI trainers didn't pay book authors until forced to. $3,000 ended up being a pretty high value! But it was also a one-off. Everyone writing books from now on is going to have to deal with being free grist to the machine.
- Aurornis 6mo ago
  > So, mostly to fraudulent AI spam? Most of Spotify’s payments do not go to fraudulent AI spam. I am aware that AI spam exists on the platform and I’ve read the articles, too. That does not mean that “most” of their payments go to AI spam. Their pay scales by listens. The AI spam doesn’t collect many listens. The spammers do it because they can automate it and make it low effort, but it’s not a cash cow for the spammers.
  - dymk 6mo ago
    Spammers do it because it pays out.
  - halhen 6mo ago
    An interesting listen https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/ about money laundering and spam in streaming services
    - GorbachevyChase 6mo ago
      I find that very believable. My completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theory is that OnlyFans is a money-laundering and dragnet-style-blackmail campaign for unlawful mass surveillance. I can’t imagine a normal or even abnormal person paying content makers, but I could imagine contractors and NGOs smurfing payments.
troyvit 6mo ago
> Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. As others said, Spotify pays shit for artists, but maybe that's the problem with the whole thing here. It should be more like how Bandcamp pays artists (80% to the artists, 20% for Bandcamp), but then the rapacious economy supporting the largest LLM providers would collapse and (wipes away a single tear) we'd all have to use simpler, cheaper, most likely local models.
- Auracle 6mo ago
  “Since Spotify pays out two-thirds of all music revenue to the industry – almost 70% of what we take in – as Spotify revenues grow, music payouts have grown as well. “ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-01-28/2025-music-industry-payouts-whats-next-for-artists/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-01-28/2025-music-industry-... That’s not that far off from 80%.
  - TremendousJudge 6mo ago
    It's not evenly distributed. Big labels get much better payouts per listen than independent artists
  - Vegenoid 6mo ago
    I think people get distracted by the "percentage of revenue paid to musicians" thing, when the bigger reason streaming pays out so little to artists is that people pay $10-$15 per month for unlimited access to all music. Even 80% of that, split across dozens or hundreds of musicians, is not very much. Of course, it's also worth remembering that streaming was partially a response to widespread piracy. It's difficult to get people to pay very much at scale for easily copied digital media. In addition, a greater share of the payout (relative to number of streams) goes to big music distributors that control the biggest, most popular artists and have the leverage and employees to negotiate those agreements.
zby 6mo ago
There were a couple of proposals for compensating authors in similar manner - there is a wikipedia page on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_alternatives - but it somehow does not mention the one that was most pro-sharing - the Creative Contribution by Philippe Aigrain https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_book_monograph/j.ctt46mvx8 https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_book_monograph/j.ctt46mvx8
butlike 6mo ago
> Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. As an artist, you don't want this. I promise you you don't want this.

ares623 6mo ago

Jach 6mo ago
Many open source projects accept donations. There's also explicitly paid-for software. What exactly do you wish for that you can't do right now?
- ares623 6mo ago
  Specifically the part where engineers get paid the same way as artists on Spotify.
  - techpression 6mo ago
    So not at all for their work and with a reverse Robin Hood model? That would be terrible for software. The way artists gets paid on streaming is a genius play at catering to the biggest artists and labels and screw over the smaller ones, especially true on Spotify with their freemium model
  - Loughla 6mo ago
    So a handful will make a buttload but the vast majority won't make enough to pay rent?
    - pjc50 6mo ago
      Certainly that's how open source pans out.
    - ares623 6mo ago
      Doesn't sound nice if it happens to us does it?

intended 6mo ago

> in danger It has already done so, and we can be confident in saying that. Verified content will always be relatively expensive when compared to AI content. Visits to wikipedia and most sites have dropped. Rtings has gone full paywall. Ad revenue for producing Verified content will be too meager to allow for public consumption. Theres jokes about GenAI being the great filter; while I doubt this, I do hope this is the final push that makes us think of how we want our information commons to be nurtured.

palmotea 6mo ago
> Verified content will always be relatively expensive when compared to AI content.... > Visits to wikipedia and most sites have dropped. Rtings has gone full paywall. Ad revenue for producing Verified content will be too meager to allow for public consumption. AI is a technology that's going to further entrench inequality, by warping incentives to push us further away from democratization. Unless you've got $$$ to drop on verified content, you'll be served prolefeed slop and be that much more ignorant.
- intended 6mo ago
  At this point, it feels like most technology will be used in favor of people with power, and not in a democratizing manner. I'd argue that this is something that is more about the state of play, than tech itself.
  - palmotea 6mo ago
    > I'd argue that this is something that is more about the state of play, than tech itself. What do you mean by that? It seems inherent to the technology under capitalism: it allows a flood of slop and anything public and valuable will be plundered, so the incentive is to make valuable stuff exclusive and elite.
    - intended 6mo ago
      I mean that > inherent to the technology Vs > inherent to the technology under capitalism The TLDR of my point is going to be that wealth concentration and information pollution sets up economies that don’t work for us in a manner that is healthy for us.

meander_water 6mo ago

I think most labs actively create synthetic data using existing model as part of the mix for the pretraining stage for their next model. Would love to know exactly what the latest process is to keep slop out of training data.

martinald 6mo ago
const isAiContent = (str) => str.includes('—');? :)
- AlienRobot 6mo ago
  Latest generation LLM's use en dashes instead of em dashes to avoid detection.
  - jondwillis 6mo ago
    No, they don’t. But obviously GP was tongue–—in-–cheek.
madamelic 6mo ago
I think everyone overblows the whole "AI is poisoning AI!" thing. It could be a problem but the genuine value in Reddit or any other human social media is honestly pretty low from my estimates. It's great for seeing how humans talk but in terms of 'nutritional' value for truth or answers... I am not sold. If I was choosing what to 'feed' AI, I wouldn't even bother with textual social media (besides Github / Gitlab / other source control) There's way more value, if seeking out answers, in following the links to external sources, scraping books, and other sources that aren't "unwashed masses saying whatever they want".
- beepbooptheory 6mo ago
  You can put it in scare quotes all you want, doesn't stop you from sounding like Scrooge McDuck.
- palmotea 6mo ago

someone_eu 6mo ago

> I was imaging if LLMs could finally solve the micropayments solution people have always proposed for the internet. Part of my monthly payment gets split between all of the sites that the LLM scraped knowledge. Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. This system is usually called taxes. Which then pay for the universal healthcare, free education, affordable housing, libraries, parks,.. and so on. LLM doesn't need to invent it, we should stop allowing them (people and companies behind LLM) to avoid it.

spacechild1 6mo ago

> Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. That's probably not the best comparison. Spotify only benefits the big players resp. those with the most bots. If you actually want to support specific artists, you'd have to use Bandcamp or similar sites.

pjc50 6mo ago

> Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. So, mostly to fraudulent AI spam? AI makes this problem worse in both directions. It makes it fantastically easy to produce ""content"". So if you're scraping content, or browsing content, you're going to run in to increasing amounts of AI. Micropayments makes this worse, because it's then a means of getting paid to produce spam. The problem comes when you want the ""content"" to be connected to real questions like "how does my dryer work" or "what is going to happen to oil availability six months from now". AI trainers didn't pay book authors until forced to. $3,000 ended up being a pretty high value! But it was also a one-off. Everyone writing books from now on is going to have to deal with being free grist to the machine.

Aurornis 6mo ago
> So, mostly to fraudulent AI spam? Most of Spotify’s payments do not go to fraudulent AI spam. I am aware that AI spam exists on the platform and I’ve read the articles, too. That does not mean that “most” of their payments go to AI spam. Their pay scales by listens. The AI spam doesn’t collect many listens. The spammers do it because they can automate it and make it low effort, but it’s not a cash cow for the spammers.
- dymk 6mo ago
  Spammers do it because it pays out.
- halhen 6mo ago
  An interesting listen https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/ about money laundering and spam in streaming services
  - GorbachevyChase 6mo ago
    I find that very believable. My completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theory is that OnlyFans is a money-laundering and dragnet-style-blackmail campaign for unlawful mass surveillance. I can’t imagine a normal or even abnormal person paying content makers, but I could imagine contractors and NGOs smurfing payments.

troyvit 6mo ago

> Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. As others said, Spotify pays shit for artists, but maybe that's the problem with the whole thing here. It should be more like how Bandcamp pays artists (80% to the artists, 20% for Bandcamp), but then the rapacious economy supporting the largest LLM providers would collapse and (wipes away a single tear) we'd all have to use simpler, cheaper, most likely local models.

Auracle 6mo ago
“Since Spotify pays out two-thirds of all music revenue to the industry – almost 70% of what we take in – as Spotify revenues grow, music payouts have grown as well. “ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-01-28/2025-music-industry-payouts-whats-next-for-artists/ https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-01-28/2025-music-industry-... That’s not that far off from 80%.
- TremendousJudge 6mo ago
  It's not evenly distributed. Big labels get much better payouts per listen than independent artists
- Vegenoid 6mo ago
  I think people get distracted by the "percentage of revenue paid to musicians" thing, when the bigger reason streaming pays out so little to artists is that people pay $10-$15 per month for unlimited access to all music. Even 80% of that, split across dozens or hundreds of musicians, is not very much. Of course, it's also worth remembering that streaming was partially a response to widespread piracy. It's difficult to get people to pay very much at scale for easily copied digital media. In addition, a greater share of the payout (relative to number of streams) goes to big music distributors that control the biggest, most popular artists and have the leverage and employees to negotiate those agreements.

zby 6mo ago

There were a couple of proposals for compensating authors in similar manner - there is a wikipedia page on them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_alternatives - but it somehow does not mention the one that was most pro-sharing - the Creative Contribution by Philippe Aigrain https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_book_monograph/j.ctt46mvx8 https://www.jstor.org/content/oa_book_monograph/j.ctt46mvx8

butlike 6mo ago

> Paid out like Spotify pays out artists. As an artist, you don't want this. I promise you you don't want this.