Over the years I have developed some strong opinions about my tech tools. And sometimes my choices surprise my friends or relatives, requiring me to explain myself! In a few cases I decided to elaborate, once and for all, by capturing a complete explanation in a blog post. Below are four such explanations that I believe are Worth Sharing again. I hope you find them interesting or enlightening!
Chromebooks are low-cost, secure, fast and tough enough for schools to buy them and pass them out to students! So what's so great about them? This article summarizes the benefits my wife and I have found.
Zuckerberg's Facebook is a cesspool of misinformation and purposely "sticky" garbage. Learn all about Bluesky, a grown-up alternative to Facebook that's populated by folks with generally positive vibes.
The title says it all. Learn how you can rip all those tracks from your CDs and stream them yourself for the one time cost of just $14.99 (... up from $7.99 when the article was first posted).
In the last few weeks, Donald Trump has blown past all the norms that make our democracy possible, activating reluctant members of our military against our own citizens and removing everyone who would speak out against him or act to stop him. He's well on his way to realizing his vision of a fascist authoritarian regime under his complete control.
In response, Governors Gavin Newsom (CA) and J.B. Pritzker (IL) have each issued an urgent call to action for all of us.These are below. Please watch them. Then figure out how you can join them in opposition to Trump, the wannabe dictator.
Broadly speaking, those of us who create content for the web do so for one of two reasons: 1) We have something we think is worth sharing or 2) we need to create web pages that can be laced with ads to produce revenue.*
From the advertisers point of view, all web pages are potentially places for ads. Advertisers don't necessarily care about the pages' content, so long as they attract plenty of viewers/readers to whom they can show ads.
In recent years AI authoring tools have become readily available to anyone.These tools can generate mountains of content in a matter of seconds. And all that content means plenty of places to plop ads in front of eyeballs.
Unfortunately, much of this automated content is flat. While it may serve as a medium to carry ads, it is devoid of the type of personal perspective or passion that might animate a human writer.
Now there's a name for this stuff: It's called AI slop. Wikipedia explains:
"AI slop", often simply "slop", is a term for low-quality media, including writing and images, made using generative artificial intelligence technology, characterized by an inherent lack of effort, being generated at an overwhelming volume...(Read more here.)"
When the Bots Melt Down: A Political Example
Rachel Maddow provided a YouTube example of automated bots (short for "robots") that are amplifying or even creating pro Trump content, though some of it is clearly contradictory. Check out her video "TRUMP BOT MELTDOWN..."
How to Distinguish AI Slop from Human Writing
As Rachel Maddow made clear above, it's getting more and more difficult to distinguish AI generated videos from those created by humans. Here's an illustration:
So how can we tell what's real and what's an AI created fake? I asked Perplexity (the "free AI-powered answer engine") this question: "How can I distinguish human written content from AI generated content?" It recommended that I look for differences in these characteristics of the writing itself:
The bottom line: There are plenty of ways you can research that piece of content to determine if it was written by a bot! Try some of the above when you're in doubt.
Will AI Slop Result in Less Internet Use?
If you're thinking that all this sounds like we're heading for a serious internet credibility crisis, you aren't alone. In her article AI Slop Might Finally Cure Our Internet Addiction, Emma Marris writes:
"Many of the internet’s best resources for getting everyday answers are quickly being inundated with the dubious wisdom of AI. YouTube, long a destination for real people who know how to repair toilets, make omelets, or deliver engaging cultural criticism, is getting less human by the day: The newsletter Garbage Day reports that four of May’s top 10 YouTube channels were devoted to AI-generated content. Recently, the fastest-growing channel featured AI babies in dangerous situations, for some reason. Reddit is currently overrun with AI-generated posts. Even if you never use ChatGPT or other large language models directly, the rest of the internet is sodden with their output and with real people parroting their hallucinations."
So it's up to us!
If the above sounds a little "doom and gloomy" take heart! The one thing we can count on and ultimately leverage is human greed. The people publishing this AI dreck are in it for the money, you can be sure. So we need to 1) avoid their obviously bot-supported AI generated crap by not clicking on it and 2) call them out for puking it out at us by publicizing how lazy and exploitative their websites really are. By doing so we may be able to slow down the degeneration of our web by bots and keep the creations of humans alive and well.
* Note: I create the stuff I publish here for reason number one. That is, I just want to share it. However, since Google hosts this website and all Blogger-powered websites at no charge to the publisher, they place ads here to help recover the costs of hosting. I have no control over these ads. They just show up, as Google sees fit!
