Didn’t expect Ben Affleck to have the most articulate and realistic explanation where video models and Hollywood is going pic.twitter.com/MCgkVqpPNG
— Jori Lallo (@jorilallo) November 17, 2024
There’s been too much news — yes, I’ve been sitting on this story for a couple of months now. Max Read, at NYMag, on how “A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage — and it’s only going to get worse”:
Slop started seeping into Neil Clarke’s life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then — they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
These are prime examples of what is now known as slop: a term of art, akin to spam, for low-rent, scammy garbage generated by artificial intelligence and increasingly prevalent across the internet — and beyond. From their weird narrative instincts and inert prose, Clarke realized the stories came straight from ChatGPT. Sometimes they would arrive with the original prompt included, which was often as simple as “Write a 1,000-word science-fiction story.”
It was relatively easy to identify an AI-generated submission, but that required reading thousands (a “wall of noise”) and manually sorting them. Clarke compared the problem to turning off the spam filter and trying to read your email: “Okay, now multiply that by ten because that’s the ratio that we were getting.” Within weeks, the problem became unmanageable. “We had reached the point where we were on track to receive as many generated submissions as legitimate ones,” Clarke told me. Eventually, on February 20, he made the decision to close submissions temporarily. Clarkesworld had become one of the first victims of AI slop.
In the nearly two years since, a rising tide of slop has begun to swamp most of what we think of as the internet, overrunning the biggest platforms with cheap fakes and drivel, seeming to crowd out human creativity and intentionality with weird AI crap. On Facebook, enigmatic pages post disturbing images of maimed children and alien Jesuses; on Twitter, bots cluster by the thousands, chipperly and supportively tweeting incoherent banalities at one another; on Spotify, networks of eerily similar and wholly imaginary country and electronic artists glut playlists with bizarre and lifeless songs; on Kindle, shoddy books with stilted, error-ridden titles (The Spellbound Quest: Students Perilous Journey to Correct Their Mistake) are advertised on idle lock screens with blandly uncanny illustrations.
If it were all just a slightly more efficient form of spam, distracting and deceiving Facebook-addled grandparents, that would be one thing. But the slop tide threatens some of the key functions of the web, clogging search results with nonsense, overwhelming small institutions like Clarkesworld, and generally polluting the already fragile information ecosystem of the internet. Last week, Robyn Speer, the creator of WordFreq, a database that tracks word frequency online, announced that she would no longer be updating it owing to the torrent of slop. “I don’t think anyone has reliable information about post-2021 language usage by humans,” Speer wrote. There is a fear that as slop takes over, the large language models, or LLMs, that train on internet text will “collapse” into ineffectiveness — garbage in, garbage out. But even this horror story is a kind of wishful thinking: Recent research suggests that as long as an LLM’s training corpus contains at least 10 percent non-synthetic — that is, human — output, it can continue producing slop forever.
Worse than the havoc it wreaks on the internet, slop easily escapes the confines of the computer and enters off-screen systems in exasperating, troubling, and dangerous ways. In June, researchers published a study that concluded that one-tenth of the academic papers they examined “were processed with LLMs,” calling into question not just those individual papers but whole networks of citation and reference on which scientific knowledge relies. Derek Sullivan, a cataloguer at a public-library system in Pennsylvania, told me that AI-generated books had begun to cross his desk regularly. Though he first noticed the problem thanks to a recipe book by a nonexistent author that featured “a meal plan that told you to eat straight marinara sauce for lunch,” the slop books he sees often cover highly consequential subjects like living with fibromyalgia or raising children with ADHD. In the worst version of the slop future, your overwhelmed and underfunded local library is half-filled with these unchecked, unreviewed, unedited AI-generated artifacts, dispensing hallucinated facts and inhuman advice and distinguishable from their human-authored competition only through ceaseless effort…
We know that the original source of these things was side-hustle scams,” Clarke told me. “People waving a bunch of money on YouTube or TikTok videos and saying, ‘Oh, you can make money with ChatGPT by doing this.’” Clarke could even trace spikes in submissions to specific videos: It’s not some burgeoning artificial super-intelligence or even a particularly sophisticated crew of scammers that has waylaid Clarkesworld; rather, it’s the audiences of influencers like Hanna Getachew, an accountant and technology-procurement manager who runs an Amharic-language YouTube account dedicated to “teaching side hustles and online jobs” — and who recently posted a video called “Get Paid With Clarkes World Magazine.” (Clarkesworld pays 12 cents per word for submissions of 1,000 to 22,000 words. Getachew claims viewers can “earn between $250 and $2,460.”)
The economics involved are simple. On one end, the demand: the effectively infinite, indiscriminate appetite for content of websites like Facebook and TikTok, which need enticements for users and real estate for advertisers. On the other, the supply: the astonishingly adequate, inexhaustible output of generative-AI apps like ChatGPT, Midjourney, or Microsoft’s Image Creator, heavily subsidized by investors and provided to consumers at low or no cost.
Billions of dollars are flowing among the many companies on either side of this dynamic, and the question for any would-be AI hustler is how to get in the middle, find an angle, and take a cut. The simplest, most straightforward option is to be a “slopper”: someone who generates content at scale using AI and manipulates or leverages a platform to make money from it. Sloppers may try to sell their content directly to people on a major marketplace — by, say, automating the production of recipe books to sell to unsuspecting (and maybe undiscriminating) customers on Amazon. Or they may build a website filled with articles generated by an LLM, festoon them with advertisements, and try to get them highly ranked on Google News. Maybe, and most straightforwardly of all, many simply vie for direct payments from platforms for AI-generated text, images, and videos: Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter all offer bonus payments for “engaging” content. (In a sense, so does Spotify, though we call those payments “royalties.”)…
These two posts sum up the issue of misinformation in the age of social media and hyper-partisan politics pretty well.
There comes a point when posting false content doesn't even matter, so long as it confirms your worldview and elicits the approval of your side.
— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@shayan86.bsky.social) October 6, 2024 at 3:08 PM
We need a new Smoky Bear ad in which he points at the camera and says "Every time you use AI to write a novel, you burn down a small forest."
— G. Willow Wilson (@gwillow.me) October 13, 2024 at 10:55 AM
Steve LaBonne
Goose. Golden eggs.
Suzanne
We need humor and satire on this, STAT.
Can Komar and Melamid get back together?
Baud
We should use AI to screen out the AI.
Mr. Bemused Senior
The Earth is doomed.
CaseyL
The modern digital age is dumb and self-destructive in more than one way.
Besides the Enshittification, now accelerated and enhanced by LLM/ChatGPT kaka, there is also the minor point that we no longer keep records – of anything – that will be accessible for more than a decade at a time. Correspondence, medical/financial/legal records, inventories, books… you name it, most people no longer use paper and ink to write anything down.
If humans are still around 200-plus years from now, anyone trying to do research on what was going on in the developed world during early-mid 21st Century is going to be SOL.
NotMax
Sturgeon’s Law has never been repealed.
//
Quinerly
Haven’t listened to much cable news for about a month until today while unpacking and putting stuff away. Highly recommend Nicole Wallace’s show (MSNBC). First hr was devoted to Pres Carter with some stories I hadn’t heard. She had Brian Williams on (yes, I know)….he was an intern in the Carter WH. I never knew that. The interview was wonderful. Second hr was mostly Trump crap. I must say it was nice to get caught up just listening on speakers while doing chores. All the guests today for both hrs were very good. I loved Rev Al’s stories about Pres Carter.
Steve LaBonne
@NotMax: Sturgeon’s second law: Sturgeon was an optimist.
SpaceUnit
This is why my internet diet is currently limited to BJ, YouTube, the Weather Channel, local news and a couple of sports blogs. Sometimes you just have to disengage with the crazy.
UncleEbeneezer
‘They’re dragging us to destruction’: the Gazans who oppose Hamas
Quinerly
Bob Dylan: “When I first met Jimmy [Carter], the first thing he did was quote my songs back to me. It was the first time that I realized my songs had reached into the establishment world. I had no experience in that realm, never seen that side, so it made me a little uneasy. He put my mind at ease by not talking down to me and showing me that he had a sincere appreciation of the songs that I’d written.”
Not sure the date. Quote was been floating around on the Dylan sites with great pictures of Jimmy with Bob. (I am an unapologetic HUGE Dylan fan. One of the greatest poets, along with Leonard Cohen, of my lifetime. Plus, there’s that time I am certain Dylan winked at me in NOLA. Sure, there were a lot of us but that wink was meant for me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Laughing emoji)
twbrandt
Tech writer Ed Zitron has been all over this. He refers to it as the “rot economy”, which pursues growth above all else.
citizen dave
@NotMax: This is awesome, I’ve never heard of it before. Agree with S. L., 90% is too low.
The bald community is considering Ben Affleck’s uniform hair-cover thingy, and wondering how AI will change the re-hairing of celebrities.
Quinerly
The film is a must. Think streaming on Prime.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/jimmy-carter-rock-roll-president-bob-dylan-allman-b2671736.html
MattF
Years ago, a colleague at my workplace would scoff at any predictions of computers taking over everything, saying that we won’t get Artificial Intelligence until we get Artificial Stupidity. I think now that he was right, although unintentionally so.
Another Scott
We seem to go through cycles like these. Someone figures out a “quick and easy way” to make money/get rich. Too many people jump in, and it collapses.
Google search is pretty much broken these days.
Reviews on Amazon are mostly laughable – “This is the greatest thing I have ever used in my life!” – said no honest, disinterested, human reviewer, ever. (I have taken to starting with the 1 and 2 star reviews and working up, and pretty much ignoring those with over-the-top praise.)
Etc.
There are too many junk journals demanding too many junk papers to fill their journals. I assume that the trend of “only trusting previously vetted experts” will continue. That has its own problems, of course. But serious publishers will have to find ways to protect their products, and serious readers and researchers will have to find ways to find those vetted sources.
Publishers that are only after clicks can have their clickbait web and everyone else will find a way to move on, like they always do (after enough pain).
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
dmsilev
Back in the nineties, in the ‘Information Superhighway’ era, I remember jokes that a better name was the Information Supercollider, where torrents of information and anti-information were slammed together at high speeds. Also from around that time was Vernor Vinge’s novel A Fire Upon the Deep, where the (galactic) equivalent of the Internet was called The Net of a Million Lies.
I guess now we’re living it.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud:
That is starting to happen.
Starfish (she/her)
@UncleEbeneezer: There is a lot of anonymity going on in this article. They have renamed all the people for it, and the platform is anonymous and has had 100 contributions. How are we supposed to verify anything in this story?
eemom
@MattF:
Somebody somewhere said: the problem isn’t that computers will get too smart and take over the world; the problem is that they’re stupid and they already did.
dmsilev
@Another Scott: Yeah, about those expert-curated journals, even good ones are becoming infected by AI, much to the disgust of the curating experts. Because (in the linked case) using AI instead of a human copy editor was cheaper. More accurate? Not so much.
Steve LaBonne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: The most fun will be when LLM training sets are full of garbage churned out by LLMs.
VFX Lurker
Only if audiences will accept slop instead of bespoke craftsmanship by Wētā FX.
Maybe they will.
Starfish (she/her)
@Another Scott: Amazon has been working on this by making it harder to review things. If you have made less than $50 worth of purchases in a given month, you can’t review. I learned this from experience.
Baud
@Starfish (she/her):
Smart move. AI will need to spend Bitcoin on Amazon in order to comment.
MattF
@VFX Lurker: And slop isn’t really cheaper in the long run.
And, as the gaming world is finding out, there’s a point of diminishing returns, even in high-quality computer graphics.
Another Scott
@dmsilev: I saw that headline (haven’t read the story yet). Elsevier is huge (3157 journals) and have many big name journals (The Lancet, Materials Science & Engineering Reports, etc., etc.). If they can’t see the importance of protecting quality, then, yeah, it’s very disconcerting.
Best wishes,
Scott.
ColoradoGuy
@Baud: Hmm … maybe there’s a concept there. Use ChatGPT to overwhelm Bitcoin. Fighting fire with fire, as it were.
Or … generate crazy-conspiracy content for Q-Anon. Gotta be an angle in there somewhere.
Ohio Mom
This is about AI searches and I think it says everything that needs to be said about AI (from the American Prospect);
“In the post, I offered an excruciating (to me) example: the first time I tried putting ChatGPT through its paces, not by asking it for a sonnet or a Keatsian ode, but “What does Rick Perlstein believe?” One of the things the confident listicle that came forth offered was actually the opposite of what Rick Perlstein believes: namely, the rank cliché that the biggest political problem America faces is “polarization.” No. Rick Perlstein actually believes the biggest political problem America faces is fascism, and that fighting it requires more polarization. And I should know. I’m Rick Perlstein!”
Steve LaBonne
@Ohio Mom: Great story!
Starfish (she/her)
@Baud: In 2023, a professor asked an AI if his students were cheating by pasting in their papers. If it said, “Yes,” he was giving them an incomplete. This is not a good way to use AI, and a lot of folks who do not speak English as a first language get accused of using AI because they use the language in a way that is different.
Van Buren
My bumper sticker that says Artificial Intelligence is no match for Human Stupidity seems on point.
cmorenc
@Quinerly: For all Dylan’s poetic songwriting skills, he can behave like a complete dick with his concert audiences. I neither expect nor want a performing musician to obsequiously suck up to their audience, but OTOH I do expect them to at least politely acknowledge the audience who paid for and took the time & effort to come out to the venue to see them in person.
A glaring example is years ago, he was jointly touring with Willie Nelson, who even though a given night’s performance is his ten-thousandth over his career, effortlessly conveys the vibe to the audience that they are his invited guests at his ranch listening to him play from his back porch. Dylan by contrast walked out on stage, never once speaking nor looking at the audience, and sat down at a keyboard facing 90 degrees from the audience, and walking unceremoniously and quickly off-stage and out of sight the nanosecond the last note was played. I saw him again years later doubled with another artist whose name escapes me at the moment – and he did the exact same schtick.
I will listen to Dylan recorded, but damn if he will ever get a dime from me to see him in-person in-concert. His stage demeanor comes across as conceited contempt for his audience.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Gotta be more specific. The AI was referencing that other Rick Perlstein, the one living in Burnt Armpit, Idaho.
//
Rusty
I’m a car guy, but now many of the stories on older cars that show up on the Google news feed are AI garbage. They are almost unreadable, and not surprisingly, inaccurate.
Old School
Prompt: “Write a pithy and clever Balloon-Juice comment”
Blech.
Doc Sardonic
@eemom: Back when I worked as an IT consultant, I had 2 things I always told clients. First, was that high tech box we just put on your desk is the stupidest thing in your office. It will only do what you tell it or ask it to do. Second, give it bad data and/or instructions and you will discover this. To err is human, to monumentally screw up something in 100 nanoseconds or can requires a computer.
l also lovingly(not) remember the support call about the broken cup holder on the PC.
NotMax
Even AI couldn’t come up with a title so clunky for an actual program on Hulu this week:
Dick Clark’s Primetime New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2025: Special Premiere.
;)
different-church-lady
Ironic, since old-school dystopian science fiction was trying to warn us to not do any of this
different-church-lady
Since we’re here, does anyone know how to tell Google to stop putting the A-I generated reply at the very top of every search return?
(I spend the extra time to give every single one of them a thumbs-down without reading it, and then move on to the human generated misinformation below…)
different-church-lady
@Doc Sardonic: The sales team must have loved you.
different-church-lady
@NotMax: That’s more convoluted than an Emerson Lake and Palmer suite.
different-church-lady
@eemom: Actually the real problem is nobody cares if they’re stupid.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: It drives me crazy. If anyone knows, I’d be interested.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Have you tried asking Google AI?
different-church-lady
@Baud: I did. The glue didn’t taste good on the pizza.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Are we talking about AI or Republicans?
different-church-lady
@Steve LaBonne: Followed by the heat death of knowledge.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Yeah, but with your mouth glued shut, you won’t be complaining about Google AI anymore.
KRK
@different-church-lady:
Put “-ai” in your search (sans quotes).
That works as a one-off, but is kind of annoying on an on-going basis.
This article talks about a more permanent solution, but I haven’t tried it: “Google Search’s “udm-14” trick lets you kill AI search for good.”
Scout211
@different-church-lady: That’s really been bugging me, too.
Yes, and AI seems a bit confused.
zhena gogolia
And here’s Audrey Hepburn speaking in six languages. She was so enchanting.
different-church-lady
@KRK: <– GIVE THIS PERSON A NOBEL PRIZE!
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: Hmmm, I tried searching “Audrey Hepburn-AI” and I got a bunch of hits about deepfakes of Audrey Hepburn.
Betty Cracker
All I know is Google search is now hot garbage. Any recs for a pre-enshittified alternative?
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia: I think you need to put a space before the -ai part.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: Hurray!!!! It worked.
different-church-lady
One thing I’ve noticed, even before the A-I garbage: never ask Google an actual question. That’s what leads you to all the crap videos and influencer shit. I just enter the key words. Google, don’t try to answer my question yourself, just take me to the people who can.
Kayla Rudbek
@Steve LaBonne: Hapsburg AI, as they call it because the database is so inbred.
Quinerly
@cmorenc:
I tend to agree with you. I also put Van Morrison in the same basket.
The thing with Dylan is he has gotten worse over the years. Old and cranky? (Sure hope the Ageist Police doesn’t come after me on this thread. Winking emoji).
As much as I love Dylan, I have only seen him once. Would never pay to see him now for most of the reasons you mention.
Fortunately, I saw him first weekend at NOLA Jazz and Heritage Festival, April 2003….so over 20 years ago. I was the designated runner in my group so that meant when the gates opened in the morning I ran to the Ray Ban (or Accura Stage…I forget which stage he was on that year) with our big tarp to secure our “real estate” on the “fence.” I got my group’s spot and then we all would take turns holding down the area until he came on as the last act after 5pm.
He was in that cowboy phase with boots and a black shirt with pearl snaps. Was really great with the audience and seemed to love being there. Complementary of New Orleans. I was as close as you could be. Voice was great. Tight show. And actually smiled and that WINK….I will remember to my dying day.
Total opposite experiences with Van Morrison with his Jazz Fest shows. Just an ass to his audience. Complaining about the heat while wearing 3 layers of black clothes.
Baud
Apparently if you add web to the end of your search, Google will just come back with website hits without the initial fluff.
ETA: scratch that. Doesn’t work consistently.
different-church-lady
My thought is that A-I will not replace creative writing. But it will replace human generated junk writing with machine generated junk writing. That stupid sales shit you see on signboards in the grocery store? Really bad radio ad copy? The job descriptions that already sound like they were written by machines? Soon they’ll be written by actual machines instead of humans who think like machines.
Steve LaBonne
@Kayla Rudbek: ❤️
Baud
@Baud:
Looks like you have to select the web filter first and then do your search.
Captain C
@different-church-lady: I have a friend who once entered a hipster bar, decided he didn’t like the looks of anyone in there, and went over to the Spotify (or whatever) jukebox and cued up the entirety of Yes’ Tales from Topographic Oceans and walked out.
Scout211
@Baud: see my #51. Click on “web” search on the tool bar. That seems to work.
citizen dave
@cmorenc: Ha! The first time I saw Dylan live was in the early 1990s (I think) when G E Smith was leading the band. Dylan put on a god-awful performance. Years later realized the Dylan had been drunk off his ass in that period–a few years before the Time Out of Mind renaissance. At the time I was so put off I called the promoter’s (local legends) office and told them to never have Dylan back in our area. I didn’t even listen to Time Out of Mind until a couple of years after its release. Started going to Bob shows around 2000, and did around 15 of them since. His audience interaction is hit or miss for sure. He’s no Willie, indeed. First time I saw Willie was about 12 years ago and he signed autographs at the stage when the show was ending.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
This article may be of help.
Scout211
@Baud: You can also click the “web” filter at any time in your search. It doesn’t have to be first. This looks like the simplest and easiest way to get rid of the AI content.
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
Maybe do a search for “One weird trick to stop Google Search from adding AI content” ? ;-)
Baud
@Scout211:
Yeah, but I often search using my browser web bar. No options there except typing -ai.
different-church-lady
@Captain C: I can’t imagine hating anyone that much.
robtrim
@Doc Sardonic: Right on! AI is the latest round of technological bull-shit to hit the fan in the silicone world since punch cards…although punch cards actually worked.
Just because a computer, hardware and software, churns through terabytes of dreck on servers on every continent and comes up with crap, nothing approaching “intelligence” is part of the process. AI is really just a marketing strategy – it will only produce results in the world we know as phony hype!
A Ghost to Most
Skynet is aware. Plan accordingly.
NotMax
Well, how about that?
Package dropped off outside minutes ago containing the last four items (of six total) ordered from Amazon on Black Friday.
The arc of shipping is slow but it bends toward delivery.
;)
Scout211
So I guess you don’t use Chrome.
Baud
@Scout211:
No.
different-church-lady
@NotMax: Excellent. However, it reminds me of something I experienced a few years back.
I had a long-standing computer set to disable all the auto-crap: no auto plays, no animations, ad blocker, etc.
Then one day I got into a new computer, launched the browser stock without importing my settings, and… HOLY CRAP, HOW THE HELL DOES ANYONE USE THE INTERNET LIKE THIS?!? I had no idea how much crap they had started throwing at everyone, because I was not experiencing it.
I wonder if something similar will happen with A-I if I put up a similar set of shields.
And (just to be complete), because I don’t ever watch cable news I think my experience of the politics of this country is a mystery to me because I’m not saturated in all that crap every day.
Planetjanet
@Betty Cracker: I am using duck duck go on one computer and general search results are okay. But the shopping results are disappointing.
TBone
From an IBM article on AI by 2034
Also mentions AI in the C-Suite (can’t shoot an AI CEO, but you could unplug one).
https://www.ibm.com/think/insights/artificial-intelligence-future
different-church-lady
@A Ghost to Most: Shouldn’t we be more worried about our air fryers?
TONYG
I confess that when the “AI” hype started a couple of years ago, I expected “AI” to end in a disaster, but I wasn’t thinking of this particular type of disaster. I was thinking of Skynet becoming self-aware and taking over the world with an Austrian accent. But this phenomenon makes a lot more sense. “AI” is not intelligent at all. It’s poorly designed, poorly managed software with no intelligence, and it’s filling the world with garbage. It’s like a program running on an IBM 360 in 1964 that’s in an endless loop, but with no human available to shut it down. Of course, any attempt to regulate this monstrosity is doomed now with president Elon Musk and his rodeo clown Donald Trump.
different-church-lady
@TBone: ZOT! Of course! It’s all being driven by the insurance industry!
TBone
@Planetjanet: I love Duck Duck Go, but I don’t do online shopping.
TBone
@different-church-lady: ik,r?
different-church-lady
@TONYG: As our own Cheryl Rofer says, “It’s just fancy auto-complete.”
NotMax
As mentioned before, haven’t used Google search for years. My go-to is the European-based Startpage (formerly known as Ixquick).
Planetjanet
@TBone: Google helps me price compare, even for store bought items.
mvr
@Quinerly: Another Dylan fan here. Two weeks ago visited the Dylan museum in Tulsa. Is worth going, even if you know a lot about Dylan. Not so much that you learn new things as that it is just enjoyable and there are nice video interview clips of other people saying smart stuff about him. Mike Campbell for instance about his guitar playing.
The Woody Guthrie museum is next door and also good. Has a display of something Woody had to say about Trump’s dad (his landlord). Needless to say he though he was a racist.
Baud
@NotMax:
Not bad.
Another Scott
@cmorenc: I’m not a huge Dylan fan. I’ve only seen him once. He was touring with the Grateful Dead and they were playing RFK Stadium in June 1995. It was one of the last shows before Jerry died. My J is a huge GD fan and almost fainted when they played Box of Rain…
He seemed fine. Not exactly a hugely gregarious performer, but it didn’t seem like he held the audience in contempt or was afraid of us or something.
Dunno.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
Did someone say Zot!
:)
mvr
@Captain C: That’s wicked.
eemom
I also agonized over how to remove the AI shit from the top of google search results, and did my own research, haw haw.
Now I’m using the simple home remedy I apply to the ubiquity of information everywhere about everything Prince Apartheid Fuckscum says and does: train my eyes to weed it out.
raven
@Betty Cracker: duck duck go
Quinerly
@citizen dave:
You probably saw him on that 2003 tour.
I had a 20 year plus run of NOLA Jazz Fests. Sometimes both weekends. Of course, when Buffett played it was always a big party. Those shows all run together. Reasons.
Santana was great in the pouring rain in 1993. Maria Muldaur wowed me that same year also in the pouring rain. Bonnie is always fantastic. Randy Newman never lets his audiences down at Jazz Fest. Cowboy Mouth was always high energy and fun to party with after their shows. Dave Matthews always great but really obnoxious fans, imo. Marcia Ball, Dr. John, Johnny Adams, Delbert McClinton, The Iguanas, The Neville Brothers, Widespread Panic, The Radiators…. It would take awhile for me to list all the artists who put on great shows. And, so many cool stories….waiting in line for Crawfish Monica behind Buffett and Ed Bradley, drinking beer with that good looking Adam Duritz, and being mistaken for Emmylou by some drunk 22 year old clueless boys.
I would put that Dylan show in 2003 in the top 5 I saw during those days. Probably Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions show in 2006 after Katrina might be #1. And, I am not even a huge Bruce fan. 2006 was a really special year there.
mvr
@citizen dave: I’ve never seen Bob be effusive, but I don’t recall him being an outright ass to the audience. But then I don’t find not talking to the audience all that offputting. I first saw him in 1978 or so and have seen him about a dozen times since. Oddly about 5 or so years ago, when he was doing covers of old classics he really seemed to be having fun and I really enjoyed that. But I also liked his most recent show in Kansas City where he was in good voice and did address the audience, though minimally. Much of the audience around us was pissed they didn’t recognize the songs. Most of them thought it was because he wasn’t playing anything they knew and wanted us to chant for a favorite. We didn’t go along with that but we also didn’t tell them that they had in fact already heard several they knew.
Quinerly
@mvr:
I had friends who saw him at that KC show. They enjoyed the show and also said his voice was good.
I suspect it’s probably mostly hit or miss now on what his attitude is toward his audience.
raven
@Quinerly: I almost became Widespread’s road manager back in the day! I also was backstage for Dylan at the Fox in Atlanta and it sucked, you couldn’t hear shit. He played Athens about 25 years ago and didn’t have a stage, just a riser. Great show.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: Brad DeLong tried something like this. He’s always playing with the latest computer software tools to try to come up with better ways of teaching. One of the projects he was working on was a virtual assistant for helping his students. In 2023 he was trying to create a BradAssistantBot using Chat-GPT4 and fed it his latest book.
“Page-level autocomplete” is a good description of the status at the moment. It’s not good enough for many/most real-world use cases. And someone recently proved that “hallucination-free” LLM’s are impossible, so there’s that, also too.
It’ll keep the researchers busy for a while, at least until the magic beans money runs out, but it’s not looking good for a going business concern it seems to me.
But, we’ll see.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Quinerly
@raven:
Wow!
So glad I brought up Widespread! Cool tidbit. Tell us moar!!!!
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Another Scott:
This. LLMs are just statistical models, manipulating symbols. There is no understanding.
We can speculate about a definition of “intelligence.” This isn’t it.
Another Scott
@KRK: Your last link seems to be mangled.
This ArsTechnica story talks about ways of making ‘udm=14’ permanent and what’s going on under the covers.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
raven
@Quinerly: Well, I knew their manager pretty well. I used to be able to go backstage and toke up before shows. One time Blues Traveler shared a show so I got to get loaded with Popper too. The best time was with “Little Women” with Jerry Joseph. That’s where Panic got Chainsaw City!
Starfish (she/her)
@NotMax: Wow, that one gave me very good results for nerd things.
raven
@Quinerly: Have you seen Yacht Rock? We really enjoyed it even though that music didn’t appeal to me at the time.. They mentioned Chaka and a friend of mine from high school wrote “Ain’t Nobody” and Quincey wanted it for Thriller but the Hawk promised it to Chaka and he kept his word.
Kayla Rudbek
@NotMax: that’s even longer than my most recent club yarn purchase which is taking the scenic route from the Chicago exurbs to Northern Virginia. Usually the route is through Chicago to Dulles mail facility and then to my local post office. This time, it was routed through Indianapolis and Richmond, Virginia so it won’t be here until after New Year’s.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: It wouldn’t be the same from Michael. Chaka owned that song.
gene108
Alexa and Siri at Cortana’s retirement.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/y3VDFZl4rag
Quinerly
@raven:
Have not seen Yacht Rock.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: I always thought it would have fit but I was never an MJ fan. Here’s the wiki on the Hawk.
And a picture of him and the Nomads from his.
raven
@Quinerly: it’s fun
Mr. Bemused Senior
@gene108: ahhh.
I love her “fonts hanging out.”
Quinerly
@raven:
I’m impressed.
And it would be so cool if we had Ozark in this discussion.
Those late night music threads here years ago were a lot of fun.
Another Scott
@gene108: [ snort! ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
raven
@Quinerly: Before I started going to bed an 9:30!
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: When was that? 1983?
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Omnes Omnibus: it’s not polite to make personal remarks. [Alice, paraphrased as I’m sure you recognize]
Quinerly
@raven:
You sound like me…plus, my “new” timezone makes a difference.
Kayla Rudbek
@Another Scott: the only two useful applications I have seen so far in my personal life are 1) for my food tracking app (take a picture of your full plate, it tries to estimate what you are eating and the amounts; much less tedious than going through and entering individual portions of each ingredient or dish by hand) and 2) for remodeling/painting ideas (you want to see what your house would look like with a different color scheme or a new front porch before you start spending money, or you want to paint your old dresser a different color, for example).
Garbage uses being of course as cited above, plus artwork, and even hand embroidery kits where the picture is generated by AI and is physically impossible to stitch as depicted. I belong to some embroidery and cross-stitch groups on Facebook and this is a very hot topic of “how do I tell whether this kit on Etsy or Amazon was made by a real person as opposed to AI?”
So far they haven’t been able to teach the AI how to successfully design knitting patterns or crochet patterns. Crochet will probably be the last holdout as I don’t think they have even successfully made a machine that can crochet yet. And weirdly enough, considering that computers came from punch cards which were originally developed for weaving machines, I haven’t seen anything in the hand weaving groups about AI either
And then I have to sit through all the continuing legal education classes on the various copyright, trademark, and patent issues resulting from AI, 90 minutes per class and hundreds of slides to go through. “Move fast and break copyright laws”, that’s what a good amount of this can be summarized as.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I am a huge Dylan fan post 1993. And now tales from an asshole 17 year old kid. Unfortunately, in 1993 my friend asked me if I wanted to go see him play here in Rochester. I told my friend no because I thought he was too told. Here I type only being a few years younger than Dylan in 1993. The same friend has seen Dylan about 4 times since then I and I still have never seen him live.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Kayla Rudbek: do you have a sense of when (or whether) the legal system will catch up with this? There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a serious issue.
Old School
I’ve seen Dylan quite a number of times over the years. I can’t say I’ve seen him put on a bad show, but some are lower energy while others are fantastic. I saw him twice on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour and once on whatever the current tour is called. He played the piano on that one and while he was turned up in the mix, his plinking and plunking were by no means a lead piano part.
Quinerly
@raven:
I kinda wish I could locate that late night music post here where Ozark posted a YouTube of my musician friends in St. Louis. I had been a lurker for probably 10 plus years at that point. Cole was still drinking and posting a lot of Little Feat, if I recall. I had never commented and wasn’t set up to comment. Saw that video of The Geyer Street Sheiks from my Soulard neighborhood that Ozark posted. (It was either the Sheiks or a couple of the members from the band). That’s when I knew I knew Ozark in person and that we traveled in the same social circles. I was at the show in the video. Neighborhood bar.
I quickly tried to get set up to comment but the thread was long dead. Because I had always lurked, I really didn’t understand how the threads worked. I kept going back to that post trying to connect with Ozark on it. If we ever find that thread with the video of Charlie and Mike, I am sure I look like a pure fool on it. Numerous comments over the course of several days looking for Ozark. Still makes me smile, though.
Quinerly
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
Good story. Thanks!
Quinerly
@Old School:
Heart emojis. Several colors.
Kayla Rudbek
@Mr. Bemused Senior: we’re seriously behind on it in my opinion, although ChatGPT was released in November 2023 and the federal lawsuits started in January 2024. Part of the problem is that lawsuits go slowly, much more slowly than Silicon Valley tends to move.
I don’t recall Disney currently being a plaintiff suing ChatGPT, etc, as I think that even the densest Silicon Valley techbros know better than to go up against the Mouse on trademark and copyright infringement. But if Disney and the other movie studios wind up on the plaintiff side (trying to enforce their copyright and trademark rights against ChatGPT etc) I will go out and buy all the popcorn to watch the fight play out.
Honestly at this point I’m rooting for Glaze//Nightshade from University of Chicago and University of Tennessee’s similar approach, who have come up with ways to poison digital media so that it can’t be used as a useful AI input. Chicago did the visual and I think maybe text poisoning, Tennessee is doing poisoning for music/audio.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Kayla Rudbek: thanks for the response.
mvr
@Old Dan and Little Ann: FWIW, I said no to seeing Elvis (no the other one; I’ve seen EC lots of times and always been happy) in 1976 when my college roommate asked me along. Many years later I started listening to certain periods of his that I liked, mostly pre-1959 and 1968ish. And saw one of the TV specials with James Burton on guitar. So now I kind of regret not going.
Ruckus
Let me see if I’ve got this correct.
AI is crap because humans have to think exactly how to use it because otherwise it’s crap, sort of like a percentage of the people using AI.
Which makes it seem like a complete waste of time, effort, and electricity.
mvr
@Old School: This one (which recently ended at the Royal Albert Hall overseas) was a continuation of R&RW, though there was an interlude of something else this past summer with Willie Nelson IIRC.
Old School
@mvr: I guess it was R&RW. I thought they were calling it something else.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: Amusingly, it does give fairly concise instructions on how to do so. Maybe we should ask AI how to destroy Facebook.
frosty
@different-church-lady:
Want to avoid Google AI searches? Use Duck Duck Go. If they use AI, at least it will be honest AI searches.
frosty
deleted. dead thread.
Marmot
@MattF: Holy shit, that article is itself AI-generated.
BruceJ
@Doc Sardonic:
I have this quote up in my office:
SteverinoCT
@Marmot: dead thread, but I worked my way to the end to see if anyone would notice that. I see similar posts on FB. Even though the thread is dead, someone could have brought it up. In conclusion, the structure and repetition of the article identifies the source.