5 ms·

Increasingly, my reaction to AI-generated content of basically all types is simply a deep, resonant sadness. The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb

Increasingly, my reaction to AI-generated content of basically all types is simply a deep, resonant sadness. The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb - there is an initial shock of sadness, an initial dose of loss, an initial sense of what has been taken away. But then for months and years afterwards, the daily occurrence of some other little humdrum experience, and only at the moment of the encounter does one think, "Ah yes, this too is forever changed." Like sounding the depths of a dark well, where every day you lower the rope a little further, but every day there is nothing to feel but a pointless swinging in a vast, unquantifiable emptiness.

mizzao 4mo ago
It seems like Black Mirror's "Joan is Awful" is here, but instead of a quantum computer generating personalized content, we just have an endless parade of meaningless slop.
- encom 4mo ago
  >an endless parade of meaningless slop This is, increasingly, the front page of HN. Direct slop is uncommon, but not rare. I skip any headline that mentions AI. But sometimes you get baited, you start reading, and it's about AI anyway. A few days ago there was an article about someone hacking some device, and it was just the author vibe-hacking with AI. It is not interesting. I have intense AI fatigue. Make a containment board for AI sloppers. It's so much worse than all the previous fads combined, like blockchains and Rust rewrites. I'm not even anti-AI, but the exposure to it is just overwhelming and unrelenting.
  - _dwt 4mo ago
    I think at this point the containment board is the entire Internet. I have no idea how, but we all need to "Atlas Shrugged" this shit and start over somewhere else with something else.
  - funimpoded 4mo ago
    It reminds me of how movie special effects making-ofs got super boring when most of the work started being done with computers end-to-end. But with everything.
  - parliament32 4mo ago
    > the front page of HN I think I've "flagged" more links this year than my last 13 years on this site combined. I'm sure it's unproductive and doesn't really do anything, but it makes me feel a touch better. I'm so over the slop I think I'm actually visiting HN markedly less because of it. On the plus side, there has been a (predictable) uptick in slop-flagging browser extensions over the last few months. Once a good locally-hosted version exists, I think it'll take its rightful place alongside ad blockers for tech-minded folks.
    - encom 4mo ago
      >slop-flagging I would love something like SponsorBlock for YouTube, but for AI slop. Crowd-flag channels, and banish them from my sight.
Tade0 4mo ago
To me it had, in a way, the opposite effect - I started appreciating non-AI content more. Good art has something that is difficult to reproduce if one isn't already an artist who is just using AI as a medium - it's intentionality. Take for example Floor796[0]. Every little detail counts and while you could use AI to generate single characters or even the whole thing, you'd inevitably find details which have no reason to be there. You could then remove them manually or modify your prompt or input image so that those you know about won't appear, but AI being AI will keep sneaking in new ones. The longer your prompt, the more intentional everything becomes, effectively making it the art piece. [0] https://floor796.com/ https://floor796.com/
- santoshalper 4mo ago
  Yeah, but you have to realize we are on the losing side of this war. The armies of bullshit now have an incredible advantage that actual art can never have. At least in the past, there was some equilibrium. Bullshit was cheaper to make than art (or any other quality product), but now it has become infinitely cheaper to produce, and much more expensive for us to separate from the bullshit. Think about this for a moment - it takes a company of 8 people to make 3000 podcast episodes a week. It would take far more than 8 people to listen to that many podcasts. How can we possibly hope to separate the wheat from the chaff? What happens when it's 30,000 episodes per week? 300,000. What possible hope does art and craft have against an army that is effectively infinite. We can hope that the cream will rise to the top, but I am not optimistic. I genuinely believe we are watching the end of art and human creativity as it is absolutely drowned is mass slop. tl;dr - we're fucked.
  - nancyminusone 4mo ago
    >How can we possibly hope to separate the wheat from the chaff? Categorize, curate, and share. The war is only for your attention. I have favorite creators now, and they would cease to be favorite if they suddenly started sloppin' it up. The best of them recommended cool things made by other people, who in turn recommended more things, and so on. If instead you peddle bullshit, it won't take long to be identified as a bullshit vendor, even if you have 1000x the bullshit of the next leading brand. Not everyone will get the message especially if you mainly consume algorithmic feeds - we all seem to have that relative who thinks you would enjoy being sent an AI Jesus image every other week.
dontwannahearit 4mo ago
[flagged]
- qotgalaxy 4mo ago
  [dead]
- CooCooCaCha 4mo ago
  I’m so intensely sick of this attitude. We are losing things with technology. Important things. Human things. Looking under a microscope at one specific instance and saying “eh it’s not that bad, you’re overreacting” is disingenuous or at least putting your head in the sand.
  - bombcar 4mo ago
    Imagine a library. You go in, grab a book, and start reading. Imagine the same library, but it's the Unseen University's Library - you go in, grab one of any book ever written, and start reading. You've gained something! Imagine the library is now the Library of Babel, it contains every possible book that could ever exist - https://libraryofbabel.info/browse.cgi https://libraryofbabel.info/browse.cgi You've definitely lost something. You'll never hit "random" and find anything of value.
  - dontwannahearit 4mo ago
    You want human things? Put down the technology and go and connect with some humans. But yes, the original poster with their allusions to lost limbs and "pointless swinging in a vast, unquantifiable emptiness.." is overreacting, depressed or both. The slop will continue until it is no longer profit-making for someone.
    - CooCooCaCha 4mo ago
      Appeals to individualism and capitalism, why am I not surprised.
      - 4mo ago
drowntoge 4mo ago
It feels like I will forever mourn the totally self-inflicted loss of the Internet. I feel like I will never get over it, so much so that I wish I had never experienced its (brief) moment of brilliance. I feel sorry for my younger self for thinking it was here to stay.
- elmomle 4mo ago
  It was a very special time when the Internet was full of people's open, personal gardens. I feel fortunate for having experienced that because it showed me what's out there if I look, and I want to cultivate the pleasure of finding such things and sharing them with people I care about.
- nyeah 4mo ago
  It's not self-inflicted at all. Users didn't enshittify the sites we used to enjoy.
- Melatonic 4mo ago
  Kagi SmallWeb still has a lot of interesting stuff like the old internet
biscuits1 4mo ago
"The growth of AI feels . . . like losing a limb" Indeed. Figuratively, generatively, and of course, generationally.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
MarkusQ 4mo ago
> The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb Or gaining a new, oddly misshapen and inexplicably placed limb of no apparent purpose or utility.
- BobaFloutist 4mo ago
  That will randomly and unpredictably try to take over tasks from your other limbs, hijacking your somatosensory system so you can't tell when it's doing so without actively looking at what you're doing.
  - dylan604 4mo ago
    I think you just described my cat's tail
  - robocat 4mo ago
    Alien Hand Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome
sambapa 4mo ago
Have you lost a limb?
gyomu 4mo ago
The saddest part to me was realizing that pretty much no one gives a shit. I knew that they were plenty of careless people with no taste for truth or quality in the world, but I didn’t realize there were so many of them. Especially so amongst my friends and family members and coworkers. Here’s someone who’s now sending AI generated messages for daily communication. Here’s someone who’s now using AI generated slop art to promote their work. Here’s someone who turns to ChatGPT for any random question they have. No regard for beauty or truth or personal expression or the quality of expert work, only hooked to the “get this done” machine.

mizzao 4mo ago

It seems like Black Mirror's "Joan is Awful" is here, but instead of a quantum computer generating personalized content, we just have an endless parade of meaningless slop.

encom 4mo ago
>an endless parade of meaningless slop This is, increasingly, the front page of HN. Direct slop is uncommon, but not rare. I skip any headline that mentions AI. But sometimes you get baited, you start reading, and it's about AI anyway. A few days ago there was an article about someone hacking some device, and it was just the author vibe-hacking with AI. It is not interesting. I have intense AI fatigue. Make a containment board for AI sloppers. It's so much worse than all the previous fads combined, like blockchains and Rust rewrites. I'm not even anti-AI, but the exposure to it is just overwhelming and unrelenting.
- _dwt 4mo ago
  I think at this point the containment board is the entire Internet. I have no idea how, but we all need to "Atlas Shrugged" this shit and start over somewhere else with something else.
- funimpoded 4mo ago
  It reminds me of how movie special effects making-ofs got super boring when most of the work started being done with computers end-to-end. But with everything.
- parliament32 4mo ago
  > the front page of HN I think I've "flagged" more links this year than my last 13 years on this site combined. I'm sure it's unproductive and doesn't really do anything, but it makes me feel a touch better. I'm so over the slop I think I'm actually visiting HN markedly less because of it. On the plus side, there has been a (predictable) uptick in slop-flagging browser extensions over the last few months. Once a good locally-hosted version exists, I think it'll take its rightful place alongside ad blockers for tech-minded folks.
  - encom 4mo ago
    >slop-flagging I would love something like SponsorBlock for YouTube, but for AI slop. Crowd-flag channels, and banish them from my sight.

Tade0 4mo ago

To me it had, in a way, the opposite effect - I started appreciating non-AI content more. Good art has something that is difficult to reproduce if one isn't already an artist who is just using AI as a medium - it's intentionality. Take for example Floor796[0]. Every little detail counts and while you could use AI to generate single characters or even the whole thing, you'd inevitably find details which have no reason to be there. You could then remove them manually or modify your prompt or input image so that those you know about won't appear, but AI being AI will keep sneaking in new ones. The longer your prompt, the more intentional everything becomes, effectively making it the art piece. [0] https://floor796.com/ https://floor796.com/

santoshalper 4mo ago
Yeah, but you have to realize we are on the losing side of this war. The armies of bullshit now have an incredible advantage that actual art can never have. At least in the past, there was some equilibrium. Bullshit was cheaper to make than art (or any other quality product), but now it has become infinitely cheaper to produce, and much more expensive for us to separate from the bullshit. Think about this for a moment - it takes a company of 8 people to make 3000 podcast episodes a week. It would take far more than 8 people to listen to that many podcasts. How can we possibly hope to separate the wheat from the chaff? What happens when it's 30,000 episodes per week? 300,000. What possible hope does art and craft have against an army that is effectively infinite. We can hope that the cream will rise to the top, but I am not optimistic. I genuinely believe we are watching the end of art and human creativity as it is absolutely drowned is mass slop. tl;dr - we're fucked.
- nancyminusone 4mo ago
  >How can we possibly hope to separate the wheat from the chaff? Categorize, curate, and share. The war is only for your attention. I have favorite creators now, and they would cease to be favorite if they suddenly started sloppin' it up. The best of them recommended cool things made by other people, who in turn recommended more things, and so on. If instead you peddle bullshit, it won't take long to be identified as a bullshit vendor, even if you have 1000x the bullshit of the next leading brand. Not everyone will get the message especially if you mainly consume algorithmic feeds - we all seem to have that relative who thinks you would enjoy being sent an AI Jesus image every other week.

dontwannahearit 4mo ago

[flagged]

qotgalaxy 4mo ago
[dead]
CooCooCaCha 4mo ago
I’m so intensely sick of this attitude. We are losing things with technology. Important things. Human things. Looking under a microscope at one specific instance and saying “eh it’s not that bad, you’re overreacting” is disingenuous or at least putting your head in the sand.
- bombcar 4mo ago
  Imagine a library. You go in, grab a book, and start reading. Imagine the same library, but it's the Unseen University's Library - you go in, grab one of any book ever written, and start reading. You've gained something! Imagine the library is now the Library of Babel, it contains every possible book that could ever exist - https://libraryofbabel.info/browse.cgi https://libraryofbabel.info/browse.cgi You've definitely lost something. You'll never hit "random" and find anything of value.
- dontwannahearit 4mo ago
  You want human things? Put down the technology and go and connect with some humans. But yes, the original poster with their allusions to lost limbs and "pointless swinging in a vast, unquantifiable emptiness.." is overreacting, depressed or both. The slop will continue until it is no longer profit-making for someone.
  - CooCooCaCha 4mo ago
    Appeals to individualism and capitalism, why am I not surprised.
    - 4mo ago

drowntoge 4mo ago

It feels like I will forever mourn the totally self-inflicted loss of the Internet. I feel like I will never get over it, so much so that I wish I had never experienced its (brief) moment of brilliance. I feel sorry for my younger self for thinking it was here to stay.

elmomle 4mo ago
It was a very special time when the Internet was full of people's open, personal gardens. I feel fortunate for having experienced that because it showed me what's out there if I look, and I want to cultivate the pleasure of finding such things and sharing them with people I care about.
nyeah 4mo ago
It's not self-inflicted at all. Users didn't enshittify the sites we used to enjoy.
Melatonic 4mo ago
Kagi SmallWeb still has a lot of interesting stuff like the old internet

biscuits1 4mo ago

"The growth of AI feels . . . like losing a limb" Indeed. Figuratively, generatively, and of course, generationally.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

MarkusQ 4mo ago

> The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb Or gaining a new, oddly misshapen and inexplicably placed limb of no apparent purpose or utility.

BobaFloutist 4mo ago
That will randomly and unpredictably try to take over tasks from your other limbs, hijacking your somatosensory system so you can't tell when it's doing so without actively looking at what you're doing.
- dylan604 4mo ago
  I think you just described my cat's tail
- robocat 4mo ago
  Alien Hand Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome

sambapa 4mo ago

Have you lost a limb?

gyomu 4mo ago

The saddest part to me was realizing that pretty much no one gives a shit. I knew that they were plenty of careless people with no taste for truth or quality in the world, but I didn’t realize there were so many of them. Especially so amongst my friends and family members and coworkers. Here’s someone who’s now sending AI generated messages for daily communication. Here’s someone who’s now using AI generated slop art to promote their work. Here’s someone who turns to ChatGPT for any random question they have. No regard for beauty or truth or personal expression or the quality of expert work, only hooked to the “get this done” machine.