I'm old enough to remember when the Internet was full of organic dog shit.
A good deal of humans care about the truth. Some of them actively seek to deceive and avoid the truth -- liars, we tend to dislike them. But the ones both sides dislike are the ones who disregard the truth... ie: bullshitters -- the, "that's just your opinion, man," the, "what even is the truth anyway?" people.
While I'm aware of the criticisms of Frankfurt's definition of bullshit [0], I think a useful part of it is the idea that there are folks who don't even care what the truth is. This seems to be the intended purpose of generative AI; ie: hallucinations exist by design and cannot be removed without recognizing that the approach needs to change.
I think that's what gets people like the author to write criticisms like this. We detest bullshit in a number of critical areas such as information retrieval and search.
If you welcomed a giant robot in your house that produces 100x as much shit as a human, you don't have the infrastructure to deal with it.
It was never an issue of yes or no, it's an issue of how much.
Humans get tired.
People buy brands because they don't want to figure out what's good or bad. Brands tend to gain a reputation by being good.
The same is true for websites. People will trust specific websites when they seek information, and those websites will get passed around.
People pick convenience above almost everything else unfortunately, a few may prefer the old world but a vast majority of people will use Google and whatever its successor is.
Google was a breath of fresh air.
Now Google is used for strategic shots - you are interested in one piece of information, you find it, and you quickly retreat to your safe havens.
And there were services like Hotline!
And bookmarks. You bookmarked everything!
Well….
Before modems, we used to drive to peoples houses and literally swap floppy disks of software and files!
There would be meetups.
I was just a kid, but my Dad used to network with other computer owning parents and friends!
So Sneaker Net essentially.
We’d go to computer shows too!
Ad blockers are one such tool.
AI powered answer extraction tools are the next one. That can filter out all the product placement noise for you while you are browsing.
Algorithm feed aggregators that can consume algorithm feeds and filter them to get rid of garbage and things that trigger you in negative ways to invoke engagement.
Consider: TimeCube.
Created by a human? It's nonsense, but... it's fascinating. Engaging. Memorable. Thought-provoking (in a meta kind of way, at any rate). I dare say, worthy of preservation.
If TimeCube didn't exist, and an AI generated the exact same site today? Boring. Not worth more than a glance. Disposable. But why? It's the same!
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Right or wrong, we value communication more when there's a human connection on the other side—when there's a mind on the other side to pick at, between the lines of what's explicitly communicated, and continuity for ongoing or repeated communication that could reveal more of what's behind the veil. There's another level of understanding we feel like we can achieve, when a human communicates, and expectation, an anticipation of more, of enticing mystery, of a mind that may reflect back on our own in ways that we find enlightening, revealing, or simply to grant positive familiar-feeling and a sense of belonging.
What's remarkable is this remains true even when the content of the communication is rather shit. Like TimeCube.
All of that is lost when an LLM generates text. I think that's also why we feel deceived by LLM use when it masquerades as human, even if what's communicated is identical: it's because we go looking for that other level of communication, and if that's not there, giving the impression it might be really is misleading.
This may change, I suppose, if "AI" develops rather a lot farther than it is now and we begin to feel like we're getting a window into a true other when it generates output, but right now, it's plainly far away from that.