Mental health practitioners have identified the sycophantic personas of LLMs — the fact that they are essentially algorithmic “yes-men” who adopt and endorse the worldviews of users — as a crucial mechanism by which chatbots embolden and extend our beliefs. However, some psychiatrists and philosophers interested in AI-human relationships suspect that AI psychosis may just be the most visible example of a much broader phenomenon: the subtle reshaping of ordinary human belief by conversational AI.
At the same time, Osler warns that we need to be keenly aware that we are talking about technologies that are not public goods — they are owned and operated by private companies driven by financial agendas — and should remain critical of the technologies that we have while also asking questions about what those technologies could become.
“The idea that we won’t create beautiful things with this technology is belligerent, and the idea that we won’t create dangerous things with this technology is naïve,” Osler said. “What we do with these things is what we have always done: the full roster of amazing to terrible.”
Our sense of what is real is shaped by social feedback. Increasingly, that feedback is coming from privately owned AI chatbots. Ultimately, these companies get to decide what personas their LLMs assume, how agreeable they are, what they remember, and how closely they mimic the characteristics of human-to-human interaction. In an even stranger, and perhaps more worrying, sense, they will increasingly have to decide whose reality is the “real” reality.
may just be the most visible example of a much broader phenomenon: the subtle reshaping of ordinary human belief by conversational AI
Nothing subtle about it. Interactive propaganda television.
This article is slop.
Please give at least a brief explanation when making this claim. I don’t necessarily disagree, but some of us aren’t as aware as we could be and would like to learn. Otherwise, to me at least, this just comes across as annoying jeering.
The title was enough to tip me off. “Not just x but y”
Thank you, that makes sense. To be honest I still don’t see it clearly, but it doesn’t seem like a very well written article regardless. It feels like the level I might have submitted in highschool, and I didn’t do well in highschool English.
There also appear to be em dashes everywhere which still, somehow, is an indicator.
I don’t get that one since afaik if they wrote the article originally in a word processor it might have done that automatically, but maybe it’s measurably more common in llm articles? That would be an interesting little study to see.
Slop is already a denial of service attack on our attention, our infrastructure and the signal-to-noise ratio of the information that we consume. I don’t see why I should also spend my time pointing out all of the obvious LLM tells in every slop article that goes by when that takes effort and producing the slop takes zero effort. It’s a losing battle.
I’m sorry that you can’t tell slop from human writing, but I would suggest that to train you discernment circuits in your brain you need to read more human writing. Read some books, read some articles written before 2022, read some blogs of people that you know don’t use LLMs. It’s tough to find good content out there, but it’s not difficult to discern real communication from statistically average mechanically-reclaimed meat substitute.
I really loved this sentence:
Slop is already a denial of service attack on our attention, our infrastructure and the signal-to-noise ratio of the information that we consume.
Thanks for this!
As to why you might help people:
LLM’s write in language styles based on articles and writing that came “before”. I’m somewhat older (61), and I recognize my style from many of the responses I get from LLM’s.
I’m just now starting to see the patterns that are generated, but I understand those are being corrected. Still, some humans are better at pattern matching than others, so a little help goes a long way.
Thanks again!
That’s much more eloquently said than my version, thank you!
I mean, most of my reading energy has gone into code documentation and novels over the years. Now, I’m going to work on changing that, but building up a foundation takes time and slop is coming in fast. I’d be surprised if I’m alone in this. I’d hope the community could try and help support each other to grow here, and didn’t imagine including a reference to the first thing to tip you off would be much additional effort. If it is, it’s not the slop writers that effort would be for, it’s us lemmy folks.
I get that nobody owes anybody anything, but this is a topic that has stirred up such strong feelings in enough people that we’re all a little extra vulnerable to manipulation and trolls right now. Calling out slop is great, but calling everything slop without expanding on it seems like a likely troll move these days (that isn’t an accusation, and the “everything” isn’t for you.) I don’t know about everyone else, but my troll senses are stronger than my slop senses, and unfortunately they’re turned up a little higher than I normally like.
That said, the articles’ sloppiness aside, it looks like it might have some interesting references at least.
Kinda seems like everything that criticizes or simply doesn’t frame AI as the inevitable future or humanity’s greatest achievement is accused of being slop.
You think I’m pro-AI? lmao
It’s possible (and surprisingly common) for anti-AI articles to have been written by LLMs.
“helping”
Yeah, that’s an abysmal choice of word. “Influencing”, “biasing”, “insinuating”, “gaslighting”… so many better options.
“If I may offer a suggestion, everything is fine. You’re happy. The economy is great and standard of living is better than ever.”
“Us”
100%
