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Comment by baddash | Hacker News Reader

I argue the opposite, that originality will actually become more valuable.

Think about it: everyone has characterized AI slop, as slop. Which means that we negatively value it in terms of originality. Combine that with the fact that there will be a lot of it, this means that original work will 1. stand out or be very distinct from slop, and 2. have its value amplified as a result of this polarization.

basically, we value originality more AND are able to identify it more readily.

related is also the fact that originality will literally be valuable as training data for future models

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I can prod at a model as much as I want to produce something I find more original than average, but there are plenty of people out there that will say it doesn't count because of the fact an AI made it. "Slop" doesn't just mean "it sucks because it's bad", it often means "it's sucks because it's AI". They'd argue that if you were creative enough to produce something so original you wouldn't rely on an AI to make it for you. It's tainted by association, all the way back to the multi-billion-dollar enterprises that originally trained the models for their own ends.

Also there have been dozens of HN submissions and comments where the poster didn't even bother to remove the em dashes. Most people just don't care. The people who continue to post like this wouldn't have been as visible had they not discovered AI and pounced on it, but they were always there. The idea of posting with an AI voice, em-dashes and all, would likely have still appealed to them if you'd asked 5-10 years ago. Nowadays it takes hardly any energy for them to have a persistent voice.

I also define "slop" in a similar way. However, I specifically define it as creations that lack soul or originality. And can actually have a high degree of quality in some aspects, as you can see with some AI generated art and music. Because of this, I'm tempted to adopt a different term since "slop" feels too negative

Slop has always been around. AI has cheapened its creation.

Depends on how good the slop fork machine is, the act of true original creation is a messy and long process if it can be replicated to death immediately basically for free its not viable anymore

then it isn't a slop fork machine anymore is it? i was under the impression that the best the SFM would get is generating... how do I say this? high quality low quality work. Basically, the ability to cheaply produce quality work, characterized by its lack of soul/originality. think amazing looking advertisement graphics. not to say that it can't do better than that. just meant it as an extreme example for illustrative purposes

If something is able to generate things with soul and true originality... we're talking about something incredible, a new intelligent species potentially

It doesnt have to able to generate original things, its enough to be able to detect what makes it original and replicate the original thing with enough variations in different contexts to be able to be destructive and render the true original thing completely useless

what you described is not how originality works.

think about how in music, when an artist comes out with something original and awesome, and then everyone starts copying it and creating their own derivative works, like Jimi Hendrix or something.

Did Hendrix become useless? Did everyone end up thinking he sucks or something? No, he is even more revered, as the originator of a new type of sound that probably created multiple genres

The same thing applies here. Originality will be valued and even empowered as extrapolation and development off of it can increase in speed and quality in the case you mention

> then it isn't a slop fork machine anymore is it?

True, but some nuance is that a LOT of artist/creative types lean exclusively on the mechanical skill needed to create, without anything really much to say. They also very frequently copy other's styles, etc.

I'm not defending AI pumping out crap, but this also shows a lot of folks don't have much to offer beyond the mechanical aspects and we shouldn't glorify churning out stuff by hand as high art either.

This honestly makes me feel ambivalent, as on the one hand, it is awesome that it is pushing creatives to be more original, but on the other hand it does threaten these types of creatives who have invested time into making this their livelihood :/

Yeah same, I'm definitely not applauding it, but it has felt like coming for a long time even before AI recently.

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