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Comment by throwaway13337 | Hacker News Reader

It’s wild to me that people see this as bad.

The point of the form is not in the filling. You shouldn't want to fill out a form.

If you could accomplish your task without the busywork, why wouldn’t you?

If you could interact with the world on your terms, rather than in the enshitified way monopoly platforms force on you, why wouldn't you?

And yeah, if you could consume content in the way you want, rather than the way it is presented, why wouldn’t you?

I understand the issue with AI gen slop, but slop content has been around since before AI - it's the incentives that are rotten.

Gen AI could be the greatest manipulator. It could also be our best defense against manipulation. That future is being shaped right now. It could go either way.

Let's push for the future where the individual has control of the way they interact.

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you are getting this from the wrong perspective. I agree what you say here, but things you are listing here implies one thing;

"you didnt want to do this before, now with the help of ai, you dont have to. you just live your life as the way you want"

and your assumption is wrong. I still want to watch videos when it is generated by human. I still want to use internet, but when I know it is a human being at the other side. What I don't want is AI to destroy or make dirty the things I care, I enjoy doing. Yes, I want to live in my terms, and AI is not part of it, humans do.

I hope it is clear.

> I understand the issue with AI gen slop, but slop content has been around since before AI - it's the incentives that are rotten.

Everyone says this, and it feels like a wholly unserious way to terminate the thinking and end the conversation.

Is the slop problem meaningfully worse now that we have AI? Yes: I’m coming across much more deceptively framed or fluffed up content than I used to. Is anyone proposing any (actually credible, not hand wavy microtransaction schemes) method of fixing the incentives? No.

So should we do some sort of First Amendment-violating ultramessy AI ban? I don’t want that to happen, but people are mad, and if we don’t come up with a serious and credible way to fix this, then people who care less than us will take it upon themselves to solve it, and the “First Amendment-violating ultramessy AI ban” is what we’re gonna get.

It's true that AI makes the slop easier.

That's actually a good thing.

Slop has been out there and getting worse for the last decade but it's been at an, unfortunately, acceptable level for most of society.

Gen AI shouts that the emperor has no clothes.

The bullshit busywork can be generated. It's worthless. Finally.

No more long winded grant proposals. Or filler emails. Or Filler presentations. Or filler videos. or perfectly samey selfies.

Now it's worthless. Now we can move on.

Oh come on, are you 12? Real life doesn’t have narrative arcs like that. This is a real problem. We’re not gonna just sit around and then enjoy a cathartic resolution.

(Maybe skip the mini-insults & make the site nicer for all?)

Anyway I think GP has a point worth considering. I have had a related hope in the context of journalism / chain of trust that was mentioned above: if anyone can produce a Faux News Channel tailored to their own quirks on demand, and can see everyone else doing the same, will it become common knowledge that Stuff Can Be Fake, and motivate people to explicitly decide about trust beyond "Trust Screens"?

What do you think incentivized the mass production this "slop"? Why do you think LLMs will end the incentives to continue creating it?

> If you could accomplish your task without the busywork, why wouldn’t you?

There's taking away the busywork such as hand washing every dish and instead using a dishwasher.

Then there is this where, rather than have any dishes, a cadre of robots comes by and drops a morsel of food in your mouth for every bite you take.

Does your analogy mean that you'd like to stop someone from owning that cadre of robots? Or is this just a personal preference?

You can have your dishwasher and I'll take the robots. And we can both be happy.

And therein is the problem - if your robots take up so many resources I can't have my dishwasher, is that your right? Is your right to being happy more important than others?

The problem of resource distribution is solved by money already.

If I can't pay for the robots, I am not getting them. And if I buy my robots and you only get a dishwasher then you can afford two nice vacations on top while I don't.

You don't lose anything if I get robots.

I feel this disregards of scarcity economics.

Let's say we have a finite amount of cheap water units between us. After exhausting those units, the price to acquire more goes up. Each our actions use up those units.

If restrictions on water use do not exist, you can quickly use up those units and, if you can easily afford more units, which makes sense as you have enough for robots, you are not concerned with using that cheap water up.

I can't even afford to "toil" with my dishwasher now.

A more detailed analogy would be if you owning the robots meant that all food is now packaged for robots instead of humans, increasing the personal labor cost of obtaining and preparing food as well as inflating the cost of dinnerware exponentially, while driving up my power bill to cover the cost of expanding infrastructure to power your robots.

In that case, I certainly am against you owning the robots and view your desire for them as a direct and immediate threat against my well being.

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