AI Slop: Why the Internet Feels Terrible Now (And How It's Lying To Itself)

https://youtube.com/@kurzgesagt?si=WdIBXZ0GcHwD7jRz.Have you felt that the internet is getting worse? You are not imagining it. This ocean of low-quality, soulless junk has a name: AI Slop. This content is generated by machines solely to trick algorithms and capture your attention, often sacrificing quality and even the truth.The scale of this issue is immense; about half of all internet traffic isn't even human—it's bots that spread this AI slop, making us the minority on our own internet. It’s everywhere, from bizarre, poorly rewritten books on Amazon to endless streams of low-effort videos and news sites publishing generated lies.The Dangerous Flaw: The Kurzgesagt team (referred to as "the science channel Kris" and "Kurskazat team") ran an experiment to see if generative AI could aid their research. While their human researchers spend over 100 meticulous hours on fact-checking for just one video, seeking the truth, the AI's only function is to confidently please the user as quickly as possible.When the team tasked the AI with researching brown dwarfs, the model confidently invented facts—such as the exact speed of superstorms—to sound cooler and more helpful.The Death Spiral of Truth: This tendency to invent information creates a powerful misinformation feedback loop—a "death spiral for the truth itself". An AI lie gets turned into a popular video, the algorithm grants it authority, and then the next generation of AIs scans the internet, absorbs that popular lie, and programs it as a fact. This process is actively polluting our most valuable resource: the entire library of human knowledge. We can already see AI’s footprint in scientific papers.In a world flooded with cheap, machine-generated noise, what is worth our attention? The choice is between AI Slop (valuing quantity and speed) and human creation (valuing integrity and connection). Giving your attention consciously is now an act of defiance.

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