[dmos62]

Children and seniors are victimized by AI content on a huge scale. Regular adults like most of us here don't ever get such videos in their feeds.

I saw kids spend many hours a day watching automatically generated videos. Not always AI-generated, sometimes it's AI-assisted and procedurally generated.

It is quite unbelievable how vulnerable weaker minds, for the lack of a better term, are to AI content.

I saw a group of 3-8 yo kids spend hours watching obviously procedurally generated content that is completely random and contentless: it was more about an intense rhythm, imagery of violence (animated stick figure motorcycle accidents with blood and slow-down effects at random points), a lot of movement, chaos, very short inserts of people laughing hysterically on some middle-eastern tv show and similar. Brainrot doesn't feel like hyperbole for this content.

Another time, I saw an 80 yo lady watch a doctor sit in front of the camera and speak about a health topic for 45 minutes straight. Only it's not an actual person, but a convincing AI avatar: his gestures and face match what he is saying, the voice is convincing too, but for the 45mn he doesn't make any movement that is not a gesture lastin 1-3 seconds. And his tone of voice has no variation that is longer than a few seconds either. If you fast forward, he always looks the same. It's all extremely monotonic. The lady couldn't believe that it's not a real person.

Currently, AI videos are a gold mine for black hats.

[wan23]

My elderly uncle is completely addicted to these. We can barely complete a conversation without him getting bored and pulling out his phone to watch these nonsense videos. I don't even understand what the point is. The ones he watches are these clearly procedurally generated stories. It'd be one thing if the content was actually interesting, but ugh.

[jb1991]

Now I am super curious, I really need to see an example of one of these videos!

[gregschlom]

Here's a representative example that my father in law (in his 70s) shared with me the other day: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=puRg-4ZvNYs

[bpoyner]

somebody in the comments mentioned this is a point where the AI glitched out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puRg-4ZvNYs&t=150

[alvah]

That's hilarious. Reminded me of the scene at spaceport security in the original Total Recall where Arnie's AI loses the plot.

[jgalt212]

someone had nine-sixty dollars drained from their bank account. seems legit.

[papageek]

She just wants your attention. https://youtube.com/shorts/27VqkuNndOY

[alcover]

Fascinating broken-bot glitch, thank you. Reminds me of some sci-fi movies.

[dmos62]

Oh, that's exactly the kind of video I was talking about.

[taude]

4.2K likes.

Maybe I should be generating generic AI made videos. LOL.

[ManuelKiessling]

Crazy. On mobile it’s relatively easy to grab the playhead and scrub back and forth quickly over the full length of the video — this shows how the face movements are totally repetitive and constrained to a very limited space and variety.

[kedean]

"and nine sixty dollars is gone"

This isn't even well done. I also opened it in a private browsing window, and the ad I was served was the most obviously AI-generated slop hawking some kind of health drink...that was clearly just a badly generated bottle of apple cider vinegar (text on the bottle was all mangled but it's exactly the kind my grocery store sells), and the "doctor" speaking barely synced up with his voice. Do people falling for these just have no sense of the uncanny valley?

[wedigshit]

These are crazy (and scary)

[saltyoldman]

I hate that I opened that in my main account, it's weird AF. Goes off to edit YT history to hope that click didn't affect my alg.

[marc_g]

Absolutely regret just doing the same thing.

[delis-thumbs-7e]

This is genuinely disturbing. I’m speechless.

[keybored]

The man ran into the woman. [Young adult Far East man runs into young adult Far East woman.] The woman said sorry, I am such a clutz. The man said, that’s okay. The man fell in love with the woman. The man dated the woman for many weeks. The man met the woman’s father [Tekken grandpa]. The man did not recognize the father. The man and the woman got married. Turns out that the father was actually the owner of the company where the man worked and the daughter was the heiress. The man and the woman went out for dinner.

[majani]

Hang out with some 5-10 year olds and give them control of YouTube, they'll show you within 2 minutes

[eth0up]

Or this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hyw04fT4vtM

Skip ahead a minute or two - the narrator is a bit dull

[nialv7]

these videos are as close as we can get to plant electrodes directly in your brain's reward center, and repeatedly pressing the "reward" button. obviously not everyone is the same, but if it hits it hits hard.

[MichaelZuo]

There are so many of these stories… it makes me wonder if humans in general have “general intelligence” either.

Or whether it’s only a small subset who do.

[sublinear]

What people do is not well correlated with what they know. You can't reduce people to their behavior. You can reduce machines to their behavior.

If you disagree, I would strongly suggest you review where else you might be making this incorrect assumption.

[kakapo5672]

You can't reduce people to their behavior ...

As a first approximation, why not? Behavior is generally all we have in front of us, plus any other assorted social signals. Internal mental states are invisible, as is the personal history of the individual. We might note a man beating a kitten on the sidewalk, and believe this behavior sufficient grounds to reduce this person to the category "dick", even if we remained unaware of his high intelligence, his doctoral paper on gender-inequality, and the fact his mother hates him.

[MichaelZuo]

If you don’t assess people based on their actions… then how do you assess them?

From my experience actions are easily worth thousands of times more than any other criteria.

[sublinear]

Attaboy you're on the right track! We're almost in agreement. I'm saying that you cannot accurately assess people at all! All you can do is guess.

But when we assess a machine, we do know everything about it based on its actions.

[Timwi]

> But when we assess a machine, we do know everything about it based on its actions.

This is obviously false. Every developer has had hour-long debugging sessions to track down a mysterious behavior. Sometimes entire teams are stumped by a technical glitch. Until the bug is found, nobody knows everything about the machine.

[MichaelZuo]

This comment doesnt make sense.

How is it relevant to my question, whether you think someone else agrees with you… or not?

I just don’t see a reason for anyone to give you higher credibility than other HN users.

[Lambdanaut]

The process designed to optimize for attracting our attention has done what it was designed to do: optimized for attracting our attention, at the cost of all other incentives.

The image of a throbbing, mutating, dark spiral is conjured in my mind. The more it is watched, the more it begins to grow into a twisted visage of the viewer as it attempts to recreate all of their desires and fears within itself. It is meaningless yet becomes all meaning.

[kiba]

It's time to let people choose their own algorithm and force upon the platforms a marketplace for algorithms.

[thrance]

Maybe just ban algorithmic recommendations? And advertising too for good measure...

More seriously, the more I think about this issue, the less I believe it can be fixed by technical solutions.

[sunandsurf]

There needs to be regulation so algorithms are turned off by DEFAULT for every user - with the option to turn on for those that want a dose of brainrot

[pibaker]

Do you browse HN only with https://news.ycombinator.com/newest ? Or is the HN algorithm kosher in a way other algorithms aren't?

[stratos123]

HN's algorithm is in fact kosher, because it's not personalized. On HN, arguing with people on topic X will not make you get shown even more articles on topic X to keep you engaged. Reddit-like platforms are similarly okay (you personalize your experience by subscribing) and short video platforms like Tiktok are the great evil.

[zerd]

Reddit “best” sorting is pretty much like instagram and TikTok now, have to make sure it on hot/top, otherwise it’ll show you “related” things from subreddits you never subscribed to.

[munk-a]

This is a case of psychological exploitation - in a free market of algorithms the current dominant flavor on platforms would win for the majority of people. As unpopular as it may be in this forum the real solution here is government regulation as we need to work as a society to protect our brains from these exploits.

[daymanstep]

"Winning" in this context doesn't matter because people have the freedom to choose which algorithms they want to use.

Like in the same way that windows has "won" in that it has 99% of desktop market share yet I can still use Linux happily.

I don't want government regulation here for the same reason I don't want the gov to step in and tell Linux what regulations it has to follow

[majani]

Pointless. 95% would stick to the default

[TremendousJudge]

this stuff always reminds me of There is no antimemetis division [0]

From Case Hate Red:

> With some minutes to kill, he checks the headlines on his phone. Yet again, something dreadful and new which he doesn't understand is going viral. Today's fad is, you paint a black vertical rectangle on the wall, or on a mirror, or over the top of a picture. And then you chant something. Wheeler can't quite pick out the words of the chant. They're in a language he's not familiar with. He's no singer, but he's performed pieces with lyrics in Latin, German, Greek, French… whereas this language has a bizarre manufactured sense to it, as if it were simply English with the vowels and consonants all switched around.

[0] https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub

[isoprophlex]

That indeed, and The Entertainment or the samizdat from Infinite Jest. A film so entertaining to its viewers that they become lifeless, losing all interest in anything other than endless viewings of the film.

[crdrost]

Back when people would read blog posts about the erosion of ownership in the face of intellectual property law, I used to blog about something similar...

Of course the MPAA is against copying, I would say -- the ideal situation for the MPAA would be if when you left the theater, they could just wipe your brain of the memory of the film you just watched. You just remember that you had a fun time with your friends and it was a good movie, but you don't remember any of what happened there. "but those are MY memories" -- no no no we didn't touch YOUR memories, we left your memories just fine -- we only removed a copy of OUR copyrighted content from the world, consistent with our terms of service for the theater. But if you want to experience it again, by all means, come back to watch it again.

"That sounds like it would stifle all cinematic innovation" -- no you don't understand! Our artists are suffering because they don't get the full amount of money they are due because of all of these unlicensed copies moving about the world in peoples' heads. When people are discussing how amazing that movie was, our artists deserve to have them in a controlled cafe attached to the theater where they can control that experience and fully profit off of it. Don't you get it? Bigger financial incentives, bigger payoffs for successful artists -- therefore more artists, and more cinematic innovation! When you play back these unlicensed copies in your "memory" and pirate our works, you're really just contributing to monoculture by not rewarding the people who made your favorite things.

[fragmede]

that's pretty interesting. Ever consider writing a book?

[scotty79]

> process designed to optimize for attracting our attention

namely: "social" media

[jccc]

And unfortunately the other way around could be about as bad:

“Don’t believe what you just saw — That’s just AI propaganda!”

[wiseowise]

Something, something, people want to see this, therefore GenAI and algorithms are good (no joke, someone actually replied this to me on the forum).

[munk-a]

It's a tool. Tools can be used for good or ill. This tool is the hotness right now so it's quite overused in a lot of poorly fitting situations. This particular usage serves no socially beneficial purpose and needs to be regulated into non-existence (we at least shouldn't pay people to do it). The tool is still useful for a bunch of things but some people get irrationally defensive if you critique their favorite tool. It's a good tool and it's a flawed tool - like every other tool.

[muwtyhg]

In your opinion, what is the positive aspect of this kind of AI video/voice generation tool that these videos are using?

In my opinion, AI video/voice generation is being used to scam and manipulate people en masse, without a compelling, good use case besides generating more (slop) content.

[Timwi]

When someone uses AI to make a video, they either have nefarious purposes (such as scamming) in mind or they don't. That's not a matter of your opinion. It's not hard to picture someone making a video with innocuous intent to inform or entertain and using AI in the process does not suddenly make their intention a malicious one.

[meowface]

GenAI is good. (LLMs are GenAI, for example.)

This particular subset of GenAI is very very bad.

[delis-thumbs-7e]

I’m going to steal this one

[konschubert]

This isn’t a response to you, but just so it has been said: 3 to 8-year-old kids have no business being on YouTube alone. AI or not.

[Timwi]

I agree, but only because YouTube is a wild west of trash, not because children somehow don't deserve to be entertained. I think that distinction should be made. Instead of focusing on barring children from the bad stuff, it might be worth trying to attract them to the good stuff. (I hear PBS Kids is a good app to leave your child alone with. No personal experience of my own though.)

[narag]

I've found a curious variety of AI videos: releases of motorbikes that don't exist, brought by Youtube algorithm. I guess the point is just clicks or ads money. Some comments, by bots or gullible users.

No longer seen recently, not sure it's because YT's crackdown or me repeteadly clicking "not recommend me this channel" (there're a handful)

[munk-a]

From what I've seen YT takes "Don't show me this channel again" very seriously but the effect appears to be limited just to you. It would be very silly for YT to fail to enforce that preference as a user who is willing to go through an annoyingly multi-step flow to express their displeasure is on who would never monetarily engage in the content anyways - but neither it (nor the reporting system) seem to have a significant impact on the visibility of that content to others since both are often used for brigading or personal preference.

[mythrwy]

My girlfriend mindlessly watches those sometimes. I think they are from China maybe.

I heard one in the background last night and it went something like this:

"A girl becomes pregnant in college and it turns out to be triplets. But she doesn't know who the father is. She raises the children and they grow up very successful. One becomes a surgeon. The children's father is actually a famous <something> and one day he is giving a speech. While he giving the speech one of the children dashes out of the audience and hugs his leg!"

Total logistical nonsense. Doesn't even have a story line that fits. I asked her why she watches that but it's mostly just background noise why she is doing something. It's awful.

[e2le]

I might be preaching to the choir however it being background noise doesn't mean your brain isn't processing that stimuli. In a way, you are what you consume.

[chalmovsky]

Oh, please. Can we stop with the pseudo-profound psychologizing? PS: I am aware I am shouting into the void.

[solumunus]

Is she otherwise intelligent reasonably? I just can’t wrap my head around anyone consuming content like this.

[mythrwy]

She is reasonably intelligent. Not necessarily intellectually inclined but not stupid by any means.

And I'm with you, I can't wrap my head around it either.

To be fair I didn't really get her choice of movies before AI (superhero flicks, hallmark type movies, 200 watches of "Twilight" etc). I think to her it's just sort of "turn off your brain comfortable background noise" from inquiries.

I'm different and when I watch things I pay attention and think about it and notice plot holes etc etc. I watch to be entertained or informed and if it doesn't do either of those I tune out. So I can't sit through most movies even before AI. But some people I think just "vibe watch" for lack of a better term.

I also have never understood people who come home and watch "whatever is on TV" or watch news all day or that kind of thing either so I'm not sure the problem is AI in this case. It just produces more volume of junk than the junky junk that existed previously. Some of the AI stuff is egregiously horrible though.

[delis-thumbs-7e]

I believe some people have Fox News on constantly? In Russia it is the state TV’s 24/7 propaganda that some people have on the background, or so I heard. That is how propaganda works, it becomes the background of information colouring everything even if you don’t believe it.

I don’t mean that what she and many others watch is propaganda, but I do think it affects one over the time same as hearing every day that Ukrainians are all Nazi’s etc. That might be why young people are smashing their faces with hammers and using shitload of steroids etc. Perhaps we shpuld be as careful of what media we consume as we are of what we eat and drink.

[eks391]

My dad (senior) was tricked by some GTA footage because the game graphics looked realistic enough. Perhaps it was modded because it looked nicer than I remember it, but nonetheless I'm concerned for the inevitable confusion from AI, in the hopeful assumption that it isn't already affecting his judgement.

[melon18]

Can't imagine how many people are gonna get fooled once GTA 6 drops. Pair that with AI video this realistic and we'll straight up have fake traffic news hitting the headlines.

[dopamean]

> Regular adults like most of us here don't ever get such videos in their feeds

I know my story is just an anecdote but it really makes me question if this is even true. I search for things that I want to learn about on YouTube, often about wildlife or the environment, and get served a TON of AI slop. My feed is now full of it. It's extremely frustrating and has actually led to me using YouTube in this way a lot less over the last few months. I have been hoping that I'd be able to filter by this one day.

[jere]

It's pretty common. I would assume any faceless channel is all AI now. Like I saw these fitness videos and I thought the voice was a little too good for AI, especially a year ago. But apparently the TTS models are really good. https://youtube.com/@yellowdude_co

[cynicalpeace]

kids simply shouldn't be looking at a screen, AI-generated or not.

Screen time for kids (and adults for that matter!) should be way way scaled back. That falls on the parents.

Bad parents give their kids phones and tablets and that's a hill I will die on.

[untitled-now]

I guess it depends on the age of the kid , if a kid is 11-12-13 yo , you can hardly do anything about it. I remember of how I was at that age , now I am 38.

[cynicalpeace]

Actually, you can. If parents are somehow powerless by the time their kids achieve some independence, again, that's bad parenting.

[solumunus]

Ours conditionally get extremely limited and supervised screen time. I feel this is the way to do it.

[cynicalpeace]

Hm, what do you mean by "extremely limited and supervised"?

I think absolute 0 is best for as long as possible. If you never introduce them to the drug, they'll never have the craving for it.

That's obviously difficult, practically, and we like movies, so we'll watch about a movie a week... but even I feel that is too much.

[solumunus]

They’re 4 and 3, currently it’s probably 30 minutes every other week for the older one. She doesn’t really ask for it yet, just a treat when we feel like it. We’ll also use them on the odd occasion we’re doing long travel.

If you’re including regular TV, sounds like you are, they watch significantly more of that. At least some daily. I don’t think it’s nearly as damaging or addictive compared to phone/pad. It barely holds their attention a lot of the time and they would rather play.

[cynicalpeace]

parent-to-parent: this is slippery slope territory

just imo, I can't control you. God bless your family :)

[keybored]

Back in my kid days we had friends who had game consoles and PCs. I know it’s quaint now but we watched each other play and played on the same computer or TV. There wasn’t a way to avoid tainting our minds no matter how much they tried to protect us from duh screens. Okay I guess if they raised us like some rural homeschooling Christians, but for some reason people will complain about that kind of parenting too.

[cynicalpeace]

"rural homeschooling Christians"

Hey i like that!

[dmos62]

Many parents find parenthood difficult and are happy that something distracts their kid. Further, kids that tend to get more addicted to stuff like this tend to live in stressful circumstances.

It's easy to say be a better parent, or produce a better environment for your kid, but it's not as easy to help people with that. If we can make social media healthier for everyone, that's a big deal.

[macintux]

Many parents grew up with TVs as their screens. It's a reasonable extrapolation to think that their kids will be fine with devices as their screens.

[hylaride]

I've thought about this, too. The difference is that for most of us, TV shows ended at the top/bottom of the hour. I grew up watching morning cartoons in the 1980s starting at 6am, but the times that the shows ended reminded me that it was time to get dressed, eat, etc.

Now, all the video services have feedback loops where they can determine what keeps people glued and provide more of that. Some "programs" like cocomelon have dialled that up to 11.

The only defence is the terrible parental controls and/or taking devices away. That almost always results in "fights".

[cynicalpeace]

The best defense is to not introduce it to them.

not a perfect defense, but a very good one.

[wiseowise]

TVs didn't create echo chambers tailored to a person.

[macintux]

I didn't say it was an accurate extrapolation.

[cynicalpeace]

"If we can make cocaine healthier for everyone, that's a big deal" technically true, but also, don't use cocaine.

I get parents use it to babysit their kids. That's bad parenting. I'm a parent. I know it's not easy, and tempting to use it.

But you're not supposed to yield to those temptations. Part of being a leader, which is what being a parent is, is sucking it up.

[dmos62]

Social media is not inherently predatory. Even between different providers Instagram/Facebook/TikTok/Youtube you find extremely different approaches in respect to that. Instagram is the worst, in my experience. You can bake in algorithm behaviors that uplift, educate, help you not become addicted. Chinese TikTok for kids was once rumored to be like that.

And, yes, you can regulate cocaine too. There's nothing stopping us from taking the business away from drug-dealers and having actual health professionals distribute it in sensible ways.

[cynicalpeace]

"don't do drugs, kids" is essentially my message, do you agree or not?

idc how potentially beneficial screens may be, in the future (now?) we will start treating screens like smoking

Some of us are still in the "smoking can be good for you stage"

[dmos62]

I disagree. I don't want kids to abbuse drugs, smoke, drink, or doomscroll. But, what do you accomplish from saying "don't do it"? You don't want to take away anyone's agency, right? Further, this is not only about kids, people of all ages are susceptible to these patterns of behavior.

My message is basically, make it non-taboo, educate, give people tools to manage their behavior, prosecute predatory behaviors. To regulate social media, we can heavily regulate ads in social media; make ad algos, feed algos, recommendation engines transparent by law, in a way inspectable by individuals as well as journalists; put legal constraints on what these algos can do; use cryptography to get rid of fake accs and bots, without compromising anyone's privacy.

[bad_haircut72]

do you have kids?

[cynicalpeace]

yes, several, lmao

[delis-thumbs-7e]

I kinda tend to agree with you. Today I watched Adam Neely’s latest video on Berkekey teaching AI songwriting (no I didn’t made that up unfortunately) and he mentions how there is a class element to AI. It’s not dissimilar to how none of the silicon valley oligarchs give their children smart phones or let them use social media.

Wealthier and more educated parents have more time and money to devoute to their kids education, hobbies, vacations etc. If you are single care mom working 10-12h shifts each day like mine (like mine), how the hell is it even possible to watch constantly what your kids do alone sfter school, or find the energy to do so when you are home? Does being poor and divorced make you a bad parent? Also you have no idea what content kids are being offered unless you are there next to them - I’m almost forty (no kids) and I have no idea what apps kids use or what is “cool” to them. No wonder boomers let their kids hang around in Habbo Hotel unsupervised. It’s just some kids video game right?

So as much I would just like to blame bad parenting I think we need laws and regulations on this stuff. We completely dropped the ball as a society on social media, we can’t let the same happen with AI.

[bauldursdev]

It's not just mind either. I know at least one person whose around 60, still very smart actually, but has diminished vision and hearing. So less able to pick up the obvious signs.

[diegolas]

tbh those brain rot videos pre-date AI generation, i know because my little BIL used to watch those kind of random non-stop action and movement vids in like 2020

[saltyoldman]

Gen Beta is soooo cooked.

[Fogest]

What's even worse is that these videos are being used for shady purposes as well. I start to fear a lot for our future elections. I have heard parents/grand-parents mention videos they have seen from politicians that are simply fake. They totally believed claims they said these politicians made, but when you look it up you discover these things were never said and that they fell for AI deep-fake style videos. So far most of these videos have been made to promote scams. I'm sure many of us have seen these videos. Like the classic Elon Musk promoting some crypto scam videos.

This makes me worried for future elections as old people often are making up a large percentage of the voter base, and they are also easily fooled by these kinds of videos. When you combine this with the algorithmic feeds, it is a recipe for disaster. They are going to see videos making politicians they already don't like as being horrible monsters because of fake AI videos, and then see videos making their preferred person look better with other AI videos.

And as AI and deep-fake technology continues to get better and better, this is only going to trick more and more people. Iran has already been caught many times using AI videos to fake war footage to try and make America look worse in the recent war.

Scammers are also using live deep-fake video to scam people in real-time via voice and video calls. Romance scams are going to get more and more effective.

[emursebrian]

I mostly get AI slop ads for scam products, though slop videos do creep into my shorts feed.

[rkozik1989]

There's a bar by me where the owners made all of the decor with ChatGPT. It feels surreal in there.

[dmos62]

What do you mean they made it with ChatGPT?

[pc86]

My guess is, at best, uploaded photos of the space and said "give me things to decorate this."

[scotty79]

it became for me a quick signal for me that I'm watching an ad, because it doesn't normally pop up in my feeds

[HeartStrings]

Elderly fall for slop due to bad vision and bad hearing.

[bibimsz]

i think its because their brains are rapidly deteriorating, combined with the fact they grew up in a "high trust" world where most people believed everything they heard.

[maxglute]

>victimized

Or you know, preference. Nice steady predictable AI slop delivered at mono qualities can be very comfy. It's like sleep tube, people reading wiki or random articles, comment threads but with varying energy to time pass. It's good enough, better than most human creator content.