People are very worried about a future in which a lot of the Internet is AI-generated. I’m kinda not. So far, AIs are more truth-tracking and kinder than humans. I think the default (conditional on OK alignment) is that an Internet that includes a much higher population of AIs is a much better experience for humans than the current Internet, which is full of bullying and lies.
All such discussions hinge on AI being relatively aligned, though. Of course, an Internet full of misaligned AIs would be bad for humans, but the reason is human disempowerment, not any of the usual reasons people say such an Internet would be terrible.
I feel good about this prediction so far. Instagram and TikTok have now a significant amount of AI-generated videos (though they haven’t overrun these platforms by any means). The categories I’ve seen so far are: - Low-brow animated stories. - Fantasy or sci-fi scenarios with music. - Colorful AI-generated art. - Cute meme animals.
The greatest sin of this content is that it’s often low quality. But it’s not really that great of a sin. I think, all things considered, AI slop is above average content. Other content often contains bullying, meanness, lies. AI-generated content rarely so.
Also, so far, this is mostly thanks to humans and to AI guardrails, not really due to the character of AIs as I expected in my initial quick take. It looks like humans are using this tech in mostly good-spirited ways so far.
There is also a significant category of “AI video passing itself off as a real video”, and many videos have people debating in the comments if it’s real or AI. This seems like it can erode trust and is generally negative.
So far, we have documented cases of Generative AI being used to subvert elections in Romania (actually causing an annulment), and to some extent in NYC. We also have this report by OpenAIfrom 2024, which details such influence operations facilitated using OAI’s API. Given the proliferation of significantly more capable open-source models in the 18 months since, we can be fairly confident that broader, more complex operations are taking place today.
I also tend to associate AI-slop with low quality content, but we know AI is more capable than that, which leads me to believe that significant amounts of content online are parts of influence operations by malicious actors.
Previously, I said:
I feel good about this prediction so far. Instagram and TikTok have now a significant amount of AI-generated videos (though they haven’t overrun these platforms by any means). The categories I’ve seen so far are:
- Low-brow animated stories.
- Fantasy or sci-fi scenarios with music.
- Colorful AI-generated art.
- Cute meme animals.
The greatest sin of this content is that it’s often low quality. But it’s not really that great of a sin. I think, all things considered, AI slop is above average content. Other content often contains bullying, meanness, lies. AI-generated content rarely so.
Also, so far, this is mostly thanks to humans and to AI guardrails, not really due to the character of AIs as I expected in my initial quick take. It looks like humans are using this tech in mostly good-spirited ways so far.
There is also a significant category of “AI video passing itself off as a real video”, and many videos have people debating in the comments if it’s real or AI. This seems like it can erode trust and is generally negative.
This seems anecdotal.
So far, we have documented cases of Generative AI being used to subvert elections in Romania (actually causing an annulment), and to some extent in NYC. We also have this report by OpenAI from 2024, which details such influence operations facilitated using OAI’s API. Given the proliferation of significantly more capable open-source models in the 18 months since, we can be fairly confident that broader, more complex operations are taking place today.
I also tend to associate AI-slop with low quality content, but we know AI is more capable than that, which leads me to believe that significant amounts of content online are parts of influence operations by malicious actors.
AFAIK that was not because of Gen AI, though the broader point of your comment does stand.