All threads that have... certain keywords... are like this. Talk about meta. Looks like I'm now in the positive (+5) after being in the negative just a moment ago.

Anyways, I got really interested in this topic around mid 2010s because of some really interesting reporting by Codastory[0] covering Russian "troll factories" especially used to influence opinion in eastern Ukraine, but also in many other circumstances. In Houston in 2016, Russian troll accounts planned both an ANTI Muslim rally AND a counterprotest to that rally all on Facebook.[1] Hundreds of real human beings showed up!

Russia got a ton of attention for their use of troll farms but the truth is that the US and certain allies have actually been using stuff like this for far longer and, imo, with much more success. In fact, Coda Story itself is funded by the NED which is a massive pillar of global US, uh, "soft power".

[0] https://www.codastory.com/

[1] https://www.npr.org/2017/11/01/561427876/how-russia-used-fac...

Because cognitive biases are one of the hardest things to even acknowledge, let alone suppress. All the media out there has such a strong bubble effect, because people hate being challenged and love to stay in their comfy echo chambers. Remember labubu? Bao buns certainly do not.

There have been so many bot armies exposed over the years that one would think every narrative being pushed should be considered to be backed by bots. Some state-level actors even operate their narrative-pushing campaigns openly, yet people still happily deny their entire existence.

HN is very much not an exception to this rule. It's very hard to accept that maybe some thoughts you have were actually installed.

You're not supposed to acknowledge that think-tanks are sort of endemically propaganda outlets. You're supposed to think it's special this time.

you can still find books published within last 50 years, you don't have to read books published this year, unless your library went through destruction of "old" books which are now more relevant than ever...

FILTER BY Publish date:<2024

Of course they are. It’s everywhere, especially thr online retailers these days. [1]

Thankfully the resources at our local libraries are a) selected by a combination of librarian curation and public demand, b) often published before 2022, c) heavy things printed on paper or stored in a database and unlikely to suddenly change their content or disappear overnight when a new news cycle breaks. Written works aren’t necessarily credible even if they aren’t slop, but thanks to curators who care, our libraries are significantly less susceptible (although definitely not immune [2]) to ai slop, and propaganda and manipulation efforts than a search engine. The internet continues to enshittify, and truth becomes further eroded by this coming wave of ai enabled propaganda, we are going to have to turn somewhere if we want to find trustworthy resources. Personally, if it gets to the point that verifying sources from public search results becomes too hard with all the new misinformation and slop, I’ll start propritizing human curation over SEO and start visiting my local library’s website a lot more.

[1] https://thenewthings.com/p/apple-big-ai-book-slop-problem

[2] https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-slop-is-already-in-your...

Some nuances here. There’s a variety of different roadblocks at different levels that will work to prevent pure AI slop books ever turning up in a typical public library of physical printed works; I think they never will.

Probably a handful of books in such libraries already have some text in them where the author has tried to pass off fragments of LLM-generated prose as their own and have got that past editors, reviewers and publishers, and that will sadly get worse.

No? Maybe soon but not now

But they don't have library cards.

I know my library system at least won't be purchasing AI books. They have a pretty rigorous acquisition process for books and other media thanks to the "concern groups" who sprang up complaining about themes and content they didn't like in libraries. We did have in my state a rural school district figured out recently that their Texas-based reading and instructional materials are AI-slop but they at least figured it out before the school year began. It was unclear how these materials were approved but it apparently bypassed normal curricula approval.

It's so obvious when a book is generated by an LLM that I would blame the person buying the book moreso than I would the person who generated it for it. You can tell in a few sentences if something is AI generated (and by proxy - if it's worth reading or not).

I think using LLMs to research is completely fine, as long as authors would take the information and synthesize their own opinions based on the findings. I read books/articles/posts/comments to hear other PEOPLE's opinions, not LLM generated opinions.

"Quantity is/has a quality all of/on its own."