[stanmancan]

A large portion of the content on the internet is now generated by AI.

You can and do have full conversations with bots and not know. I want to interact with humans not LLMs.

There’s no way to combat it. An army of bots can post a specific rhetoric and it can and does sway people’s opinions.

The new version of Digg was shut down because they couldn’t find a way to combat AI. They were at least trying to, other platforms are just eating it up because “user activity” is a win for them.

[legitster]

The sloppification of the internet began before AI. Google was SEOing the open internet to death, Reddit had fully baked in a hivemind, and social media became dominated by professional influencers.

AI is accelerating but also perhaps backfilling in what was already being lost.

[throwaway85825]

AI is the same slop but cheaper. Ideally the value of slop approaches zero but the value of quality stays the same.

[nonethewiser]

But what is the social damage? Can you quantify the damage, even roughly?

[stanmancan]

It's likely nearly impossible to evaluate that in the short term; I think we're looking at generational damage, much of which won't be apparent for years to come.