AI Slop

Black Hole

Black Hole

May contain traces of nut
These days, search engines have AI-generated summary answers to your query, and if you just want a quick answer you might be tempted to settle for the summary and not delve any further. This is a right bugger for the content producers, because they won't get visitors to the websites the AI tools have scraped. Google doesn't care about that though!

Should you care? I say yes:
  1. If content providers don't get traffic and benefit from it, they'll be less likely to provide the content. This isn't social media I'm talking about (who needs that anyway), but the niche stuff.
  2. The AI generated summaries are being run (and consuming energy) every time you query a search engine, whether you like it or not (there is no opt-out – but there should be!), and can't be trusted so they are useless if not actually misleading. Not in my name!
Case in point: a couple of times recently I've needed to check the opening hours of shops, and the summaries had obvious errors (like illegal Sunday hours). If they can't even present those straightforward facts without corrupting them, what's the chance of getting delivered a pizza without Evostick?

Asking for Asda and Waitrose opening hours using Duck Duck Go search assistant and Google's search:–

From the stores' own websites:

IMG_5319.jpeg IMG_5318.jpeg

Duck Duck Go:

IMG_5320.jpeg IMG_5317.jpeg

Google:

IMG_5321.jpeg IMG_5322.jpeg

Google is the closest, but still not correct.

Any more examples welcome here!
 
I was feeling lazy the other week. For purely sentimental reasons I've tried to use Simh and some old DEC Vax/Vms source to create a simulation of the computer system I used in the mid-late 1980s. That's the background. The other week I was trying to work out an easy way to find the next available user/group IDs when creating a new user. I got one of the AI things to write a DCL (Digital Command Language) script to do it. It came up with a script that was full of errors. Turns out there is no easy way. So did AI make it up?

On a side note - why AI slop? I see the term is being used by some Windows detractors, referring to Microslop. If the cap fits, I suppose.
 
EEPhil said:
On a side note - why AI slop?
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It's become the general term for AI-generated content. When AI-generated content (such as scientific papers released to pre-print review websites) becomes training input to other LLMs, the hallucinations procreate and it all ends up as slop.
 
Don't get me started - just don't.

No sign of intelligence anywhere - just fancy algorithms we used to write in the last century.

Deciding I shouldn't criticise without trying the product, I tried each of the available Models with the same task - producing a biography and bibliography for some people who are a part of a larger work I'm engaged in.
I quickly found that I needed to demand sources and URLs for everything. I also found I needed to instruct them not to invent anything. Initial passes having produced childlike scribbles telling me about what a good person x was, and how much x did in the community. When challenged, the response was 'I made that up as a typical example of what people like x do'

Trials with 'any' query produce similar worthless results. Even at the non-trivial cost to the planet of using several models, having them cross check each others output helps toward better results.

and the really sad thing - the way the TechBro's, politicians, and the public accept all this and think it's wonderful.

You don't need to be very intelligent to realise that if you have something scanning the net and producing answers from everything it finds, then the quality and accuracy will steadily decline. The pin head authors and social media writers simply dumb down every subject.

And isn't that a bit like TV? - now we have to watch via streaming, and load an application to do so. Millions of individual streams where once we had one transmission per channel.

I may see the last elephant before my time is up.
 
YorkshiremanII said:
When challenged, the response was 'I made that up as a typical example of what people like x do'
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You realise that's not an explanation, and just another string generated from tokens in response to you questioning it?

YorkshiremanII said:
and the really sad thing - the way the TechBro's, politicians, and the public accept all this and think it's wonderful.
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The output is probably better than a minimum-wage minion would produce, so...
 
Owen Smith said:
The Duck has settings to turn off the AI search.
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So it does. I had to search for the setting, it wasn't obvious (iOS).

peterworks said:
Do a search on UDM=14
I have created a new Google search engine in Firefox using this (https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&channel=entpr&udm=14&q=%s) and no more AI. The search above will show how to use IDM=14 with different search engines.
It works fine for me - no more AI (whoopee !)
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I did know about that (vaguely), but as a Google account holder there ought to be a preference setting available rather than have to add a switch to every URL.
 
EEPhil said:
On a side note - why AI slop?
Click to expand...

Black Hole said:
It's become the general term for AI-generated content. When AI-generated content (such as scientific papers released to pre-print review websites) becomes training input to other LLMs, the hallucinations procreate and it all ends up as slop.
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I too am interested in why AI slop.

Your original post referred to "AI-generated summary answers to your query", which would not usually be considered content.
 
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Luke said:
I too am interested in why AI slop.
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If you mix colours, you eventually end up with brown regardless. The same goes for so-called AI - it's just in the form of :poop:.
We used to have a slops bin for remains of school dinners - that all ended up as brown too, but I'm sure the pigs loved it.
 
prpr said:
If you mix colours, you eventually end up with brown regardless. The same goes for so-called AI - it's just in the form of :poop:.
We used to have a slops bin for remains of school dinners - that all ended up as brown too, but I'm sure the pigs loved it.
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The pigs would have loved it unless it had Snook in it (Dad's Army reference).
 
Luke said:
I too am interested in why AI slop.

Your original post referred to "AI-generated summary answers to your query", which would not usually be considered content.
Click to expand...

Are you saying my post 1 is off-topic‽ Just a catch-all title, expecting a range of examples to be accumulated.
 
AI slop reminds me of the puddings with school lunches in the 1970s and 80s. In theory some fruit pie or crumble plus custard, but in practice it quickly all mulched into one yellowy brown goo.
 
EEPhil said:
Apparently it was 'tler. I don't think so.
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It was to start with, but comedically evolved to "clop" (to my ears anyway).
I just fancy one of those...
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Yes, but not in the current heatwave. I had the heating on only a couple of days ago. Even the weather wants to control you now.
Black Hole said:
but it's now illegal to feed it to them.
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I know. Tell that to the 1970s. Maybe Mad Cow disease (et al) is what's currently afflicting all the odious nutters allegedly running things. What we need is a bloody good virus to kill them all off.
Ah, the Chinks already tried that, and didn't quite manage it. Maybe "they" are having another go with Ebola.

If not any of that, then how about Yellow Key for a bit of light relief.
 
EEPhil said:
Luxury! I had mine on a couple of hours first thing this morning. If I hadn't there might have been a clatter when I had a shower. (Think brass monkey)
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My air con is on. It's 29C outside and the loft is already above that. Without air con the house turns into an oven in this weather, and with all the insulation it then retains that heat all evening and night.
 
Hell fire! X seems to be promoting AI with a plethora of adverts. I only use X to receive transport and news posts and rarely, if ever, post on there. About every 3 or 4 messages there's an advert about AI. Blocking, muting and "I don't like this advert" do nothing. As said on another thread - no means NO!
 
Not sure if I'm missing the point here but simply putting " -ai" after your search term removes the AI slop. Well it does in Chrome anyway.
Admittedly, it would be nicer to just have an ai-off setting that you do once and forget.
 
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