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There are now two kinds of AI retards. The first kind of retard uses AI everywhere, even where it shouldn’t be used. The second kind of retard sees AI everywhere, even where it isn’t used. Usually, it’s obvious what threads are and aren’t AI-written. But some people can’t tell the difference between normal writing and AI writing. And because they can’t tell the difference, they’ll either overuse AI…or accuse others of using AI! What we actually may need are built-in statistical AI detectors for every public text field. Paste in a URL into an archive.is-like interface and get back the probability that any div on the page is AI-generated. In general my view is that AI text shouldn’t be used raw. It’s like a search engine result, it’s lorem ipsum. Useful for research but not final results. AI code is different, but even that requires review. AI visuals are different still, and you can sometimes use them directly. We’re still developing these conventions, as the tech itself is of course a moving target. But it is interesting that even technologists (who see the huge time-savings that AI gives for, say, data analysis or vibe coding) are annoyed by AI slop. Imagine how much the people who don’t see the positive parts of AI may hate AI. TLDR: slop is the new spam, and we’ll need new tools and conventions to defeat it. I agree email spammers will keep adapting. But I don’t know if a typical poster will keep morphing their content in such a way. Reminds me a lot of crypto. I see the downsides of crypto, but also the upsides. Interestingly the downsides and upsides of AI are becoming similar. In the wrong hands, crypto & AI enable spam, slop, and scams. In the right hands, they’re power tools for power users. In November 2022 the perception of crypto and AI couldn’t be more different, with FTX going down and ChatGPT booting up. “AI is the real deal, crypto is a scam” — that was the meme of the day. And I understand why. But of course, today AI is used for enormous amounts of slop. And crypto conversely is how we determine what’s actually real. …of course, both AI and crypto are very useful. I’m just discussing the shift in perception from Q4 2022 to now.