[agustechbro]

I kind feel this might be good. Bot writen comments and AI media that can no longer be distinguish from real, will make us human leave the social networks, which helped to separate Us humans. Going back to the real world were you can trully believe on what you see, and enjoy the tone, look and scent of of our fellows humans beings.

[smcg]

This seems naive. As long as people are "enjoying" the AI-infested social networks, or at least not annoyed enough to leave, they will stay on them, and become further disconnected from reality. We have half of EU teenagers talking to chatbots regularly. Alienated people flock to them.

[HerbManic]

Reminds me when reality TV came a long. Many folks were convinced that it would be a passing fad and that within 12-18 months TV would return to the way it had been before hand. That because the quality was so low people would eventually bore of it, still waiting for that moment...

[senordevnyc]

But we have more high quality non-reality TV than ever?

[muddi900]

I don't know why this was downvoted. It is a genuine counterargument, even if it misses some of the context.

The problem isn't that there are alternatives. The problem is that this sort of vapid human zoo has flourished and spread globally.

The only major culture that seems to have avoided it is China. And that's because they got addicted to even more vapid mobile livestreams.

[Gigachad]

For one point, I was a daily active user of Reddit for 10 years, I deleted my account and left the platform in January over LLM content.

[greyman]

Yes. I did not left but visit the site less often and kind of worry about its future. The engagement over what I post is just much lower, while the number of reported visitors seems to increase. I don't mind some good quality AI comment, sometimes one see it, but overall it is slowly becoming ghost town.

[Flashtoo]

Same, but recently I discussed the LLM flood on Reddit with some friends IRL and they were surprised I had left Reddit, as they simply hadn't noticed significant bot activity. Mind you, these are very AI-aware people. I have little hope that normies will catch on and actually mind enough to leave.

[Gigachad]

Something I’ve noticed is a lot of Gen Z people just straight up giving up phones and social media lately. Not so much because of AI but just the widespread negative impacts of what the tech has become.

[selicos]

Social media that caters to what the user wants/interacts with can become infinitely more so. This is already applied to entertainment content across tv and the internet.

At some point an instagram/tiktok/etc user could see nothing by real people and not even know what is promoted vs ad vs post.

[UberFly]

You live in the Truman Show. Just enjoy it god damn it. Stop complaining already.

[galleywest200]

Actively seeking out a chatbot is different than wanting to talk to humans.

[dspillett]

> Actively seeking out a chatbot is different

A lot of them aren't actively seeking them out. They are pushed at them and they just try it.

Go on, just this once, you can stop if you don't like it…

> than wanting to talk to humans.

The disaffected just want to talk. I'm sure they'd prefer humans but once the chatbots seem to be good enough in their absence they get a bit trapped there because the bots are too sycophantic and they get conditioned to want that from humans too which will not happen.

[rurp]

A few tech companies managed to get massive numbers of people addicted to toxic social media content that was terrible for mental health but made a small group very wealthy. I don't think those same businesses and execs are just going to pack up and go home with an even more powerful content tool available now. LLMs are going to be used to create skinner boxes that make Facebook and Twitter seem like wholesome communities.

[lizknope]

The problem is that many of us have niche interests and no one local to discuss things with or get made fun of for being a nerd.

I loved maps and geography as a child and still do. I've never met anyone in real life that likes it as much as me. But on the internet there are places were I can discuss it and other people share fascinating articles, pictures, etc.

[vineyardmike]

This is why cities are popular for this exact type of person. For centuries. People with niche interests move to a city, which by sheer density, have others with said interest.

Plenty of people have a reason why they can’t do it, but plenty do it and are happier for finding their community IRL.

[lizknope]

I grew up in 2 towns in the 20K to 30K population. They were both super racist and not a lot of stuff to do.

I now live in an area with about 2.5 million people and there is far more to do and the people are more educated and open minded. I will never move back to a small town again.

[account42]

Yeah except cities suck for many reasons. And for really obscure nieches where there may only be a couple hundred enthusiasts worldwide cities are not going to offer you the same forums that the internet did.

[pavel_lishin]

But I have a lot of friends online, both ones I made online and ones that have moved away from me and vice versa.

I don't want to be limited to only the friends I can make who live near me

[layer8]

If it can no longer be distinguished from real, why would it make people leave?

[2pEXgD0fZ5cF]

Problem at scale. Doesn't matter if someone is consciously able to identify individual bot accounts or comments. There can still be a strong general feeling that something is very wrong. Leading to more and more frustration and unhappiness.

"Popular" reddit posts and subreddits are a good example of this.

[phainopepla2]

It might be hard to recognize an individual user or post as AI, but it's not hard to recognize the negative effect in aggregate

[lelanthran]

If AI can't be distinguished from real people, why would real people stay? If they want to talk to AI bots, they can do so without joining a "community".

[chongli]

It's a market for lemons [1]. The issue is that if AI slop can't be readily distinguished from real human content, the real human stuff will get less and less attention over time. With less attention, people lose interest in writing, and eventually abandon the community altogether. As genuine human writers leave the community, the concentration of AI slop increases, and readers begin to realize that there isn't anything of value left to read, so they depart as well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

[senordevnyc]

As genuine human writers leave the community, the concentration of AI slop increases, and readers begin to realize that there isn't anything of value left to read, so they depart as well.

How will they realize if AI content is indistinguishable?

[chongli]

Because it’s not 100% indistinguishable. It’s practically indistinguishable for the purposes of moderation (or at least moderation at scale), but recognizable because it provides no value to the reader. It’s empty calories for readers in search of content with real substance.

[intended]

Underrated take.

Yeah, the “blast radius” for social media AI slop is 80%-99% of humanity. There’s many times even I cannot make out if something is slop.

Hell, AI slop is going to be even better than reality for a portion of humanity, so it’s More likely they will stay online.

[81AB24FB]

A sufficient number of people are satisfied with human slop. That the new slop comes from LLMs makes no difference.

In the same direction, if you can't cell the AI slop from the low-quality human output, does the source matter?

The problem is quantity. Has been for a while, the robots are only making it more obvious.

[intended]

I used to deal with what you call human slop, and had many ways to identify and curtail it. However, with AI slop, I can’t distinguish between assisted posts, thoughtful posts, human posts, effort posts, or crap posts.

The direction matters. Yes Quantity is its own quality.

Communities are intended for human interaction - we encode far too much in the social affordances we use. Criticism, votes, lack of attention, all of it is feedback for people to learn and adapt from.

Bots are one way comms. Anyone trying to communicate with a bot is no longer having a conversation, they’re doing some interpretive dance.

[mock-possum]

I think the opposite is happening.

Those of us who can distinguish the bots are sick of them and are leaving - the ones who can’t tell the difference and appreciate being pandered to stay. Instead of driving them away, bot posts drive them to engage.

[spankibalt]

> "I kind feel this might be good. [...] Going back to the real world were you can trully believe on what you see, and enjoy the tone, look and scent of of our fellows humans beings."

No, it isn't anywhere near good. One doesn't throw out the baby to get rid of fouled-up bathwater. Online communities are just as valid as offline ones; it's just that many people a) don't want to be deceived, and b) don't want fakery (slop) all that entails. Easy.

[sucrosesucrose]

> Online communities are just as valid as offline ones Hilariously false. Nothing, nothing substitutes for real human contact in the real world.

[spankibalt]

> "Online communities are just as valid as offline ones Hilariously false."

No, it evidently isn't. Online communities connect people, and other communities, in ways that are impossible or undesirable to realize in meatspace. Bizarre to treat this as a zero-sum game.

> "Nothing, nothing substitutes for real human contact in the real world."

It all depends on your smell™. Et cetera.

[WillAdams]

The problem of course, is what about folks who have very specific interests/hobbies?

It's a long drive for me to get to a local shop and things which I am actually interested in working on rarely show up in the classes and so forth which they offer, and scheduling is awkward --- when my second favourite author came up on rotation for the book discussion at the local Barnes & Noble, I wasn't able to attend due to a prior commitment w/ my kids.

[lelanthran]

> Bot writen comments and AI media that can no longer be distinguish from real, will make us human leave the social networks,

These are professional skinner box designers; real people will remain on, even if the site themselves have to use chatbots to keep them there.

[colechristensen]

One of the paradoxical things that makes me hopeful is that there's going to be such an incredible amount of low effort AI slop content that it's going to drown out the low effort human-made content and generate a large amount of distaste for it. So much will be so bad that good taste and high quality will be rewarded more status as the people who will say and believe anything will be led astray and left behind.

Maybe it's hard getting across what I mean so a more concrete example is there will be SO MUCH clickbait out there that serious outfits instead of being forced to do it will be able to successfully differentiate themselves by NOT doing it. (and many similar things in different arenas)

I'm trying to say that LLMs raising the noise floor will drown out a lot of the toxic noise that's been plaguing us.

I can hope.

[aliasxneo]

> So much will be so bad that good taste and high quality will be rewarded more status as the people who will say and believe anything will be led astray and left behind.

I really want to believe this will be true. However, I also suspect there's some external driving force, that I cannot readily name, which is making people incapable of consuming anything except this low-effort content. I mean, obviously it's working to some extent. Perhaps AI will be the thing that accelerates its death, but part of me thinks something else needs to happen beyond just an increase in useless content.

[colechristensen]

In my opinion there isn't an external _nefarious_ force causing all of this. Certainly those forces exist but without them much the same would be happening.

It's the economy of everything being free but supported with advertising. That mechanic is what leads to the race to the bottom lowest common denominator human motivation hacking attention toxicity. (yes that's a bit of a ramble).

If people weren't getting paid for the smallest increment of attention they could grab, it wouldn't be promoted the way it is. I don't have a high opinion of the things which grab my attention, but they still manage to do it sometimes. I think many people are in that boat. If there were other mechanisms with which we rewarded people for doing things, something different would be optimized.

And people just wouldn't reward the 10-second-gratification in anywhere near the same way if it weren't for the advertising.

[RiverCrochet]

The "couch potato" force that in the past, made people sit on their couches and watch hours of TV simply because it was the easiest thing for them to do.

It's fine though. Low-effort people deserve low-effort content. Maybe the work of high-effort creators and the patrons that support their works will simply not be on the Internet in the future.

[mrhottakes]

Have you considered that (further) lowering the signal-to-noise ratio will make it much more difficult to find and distinguish a signal?

[colechristensen]

Yes, but I'm hopeful for a survival of the fittest instead of an extinction.

Now there's more pressure to have a stronger signal and hopefully rewards to match.

[mrhottakes]

What do you think happens to the least prolific organisms that lose the survival of the fittest?

[colechristensen]

To be clear I'm talking metaphorical survival of the fittest that takes the form of prestige/popularity/status/etc. of people and organizations.

[81AB24FB]

In the same way that monasteries preserved ancient greek philosophy during the middle ages, hopefully some groups will maintain our modern culture through these dark ages.

[RiverCrochet]

If every TV channel is static, watching TV is not productive, and the correct thing to do is stop watching TV.