AI Slop and the Destruction of Knowledge

https://irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/ai-slop-and-the-destruction-of-knowledge/

57•sebg•5mo ago

Comments

cyanydeez•5mo ago

Imaging generating haystacks at an accelerated rate and calling it progress.

saltcured•5mo ago

Who knew the gray goo was actually going to be a flood of meaningless text?

ofjcihen•5mo ago

Honestly that would make a good sci fi short story. What appears to be a well of knowledge created by an advanced but missing species that turns out to be nothing but well ordered gibberish.

Maybe it spreads to other civilizations that find it and accidentally incorporate it into their technology.

Or maybe they go to war over it and destroy themselves leaving whoever is left to find out that’s its cyber trash.

saltcured•5mo ago

Tentative title: The Machine Slops

davesmylie•5mo ago

Not AI related, but the (hard sci-fi) book Blind Sight by Peter Watts explores this from a different angle. He posits that consciousness is expensive and some species may evolve to just "fake it".

Also, space vampires.

cyanydeez•5mo ago

Isnt that just the P zombie concept

cyanydeez•5mo ago

The AI unplugged humanity cause it read a scifi and now its broadcasting bullshit endlessly cause it was built with millenia spanning fail safes.

throwawayoldie•5mo ago

...shit, maybe this is the Great Filter. In which case, fellow humans, it's been nice knowing some of you, and best of luck to the rats or raccoons or cockroaches or whoever ends up taking our ecological niche.

slowmovintarget•5mo ago

Gregory Benford

vhantz•5mo ago

So what's the real definition??

jruohonen•5mo ago

So there is this sentence:

> Check out the full thread and the quote-posts, and you can see I found more such troubling AI-generated ‘definitions’, even embedded via hyperlinks in scientific articles on ScienceDirect.

I warned about this not so long ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44274487

Plenty more are coming soon, I suppose, and it will be interesting to see what the effect will be upon Elsevier's brand.

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AI Slop and the Destruction of Knowledge

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