Not a sneer but a question: Do we have any good idea on what the actual cost of running AI video generators are? They're among the worst internet polluters out there, in my opinion, and I'd love it if they're too expensive to use post-bubble but I'm worried they're cheaper than you'd think.
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
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I've often called slop "signal-shaped noise". I think the damage already done by slop pissed all over the reservoirs of knowledge, art and culture is irreversible and long-lasting. This is the only thing generative "AI" is good at, making spam that's hard to detect.
It occurs to me that one way to frame this technology is as a precise inversion of Bayesian spam filters for email; no more and no less. I remember how it was a small revolution, in the arms race against spammers, when statistical methods came up; everywhere we took of the load of straining SpamAssassin with rspamd (in the years before gmail devoured us all). I would argue "A Plan for Spam" launched Paul Graham's notoriety, much more than the Lisp web stores he was so proud of. Filtering emails by keywords was not being enough, and now you could train your computer to gradually recognise emails that looked off, for whatever definition of "off" worked for your specific inbox.
Now we have the richest people building the most expensive, energy-intensive superclusters to use the same statistical methods the other way around, to generate spam that looks like not-spam, and is therefore immune to all filtering strategies we had developed. That same blob-like malleability of spam filters makes the new spam generators able to fit their output to whatever niche they want to pollute; the noise can be shaped like any signal.
I wonder what PG is saying about gen-"AI" these days? let's check:
“AI is the exact opposite of a solution in search of a problem,” he wrote on X. “It’s the solution to far more problems than its developers even knew existed … AI is turning out to be the missing piece in a large number of important, almost-completed puzzles.”
He shared no examples, but […]
Who would have thought that A Plan for Spam was, all along, a plan for spam.
It occurs to me that one way to frame this technology is as a precise inversion of Bayesian spam filters for email.
This is a really good observation, and while I had lowkey noticed it (one of those feeling things), I never had verbalized it in anyway. Good point imho. Also in how it bypasses and wrecks the old anti-spam protections. It represents a fundamental flipping of sides of the tech industry. While before they were anti-spam it is now pro-spam. A big betrayal of consumers/users/humanity.
Signal shaped noise reminds me of a wiener filter.
Aside: when I took my signals processing course, the professor kept drawing diagrams that were eerily phallic. Those were the most memorable parts of the course
The beautiful process of dialectics has taken place on the butterfly site, and we have reached a breakthrough in moral philosophy. Only a few more questions remain before we can finally declare ethics a solved problem. The most important among them is, when an omnipotent and omnibenevolent basilisk simulates Roko Mijic getting kicked in a nuts eternally by a girl with blue hair and piercings, would the girl be barefoot or wearing heavy, steel-toed boots? Which kind of footwear of lack thereof would optimize the utility generated?
The last conundrum of our time: of course steel capped work boots would hurt more but barefoot would allow faster (and therefore more) kicks.
You have not taken the lessons of the philosopher Piccolo to mind. You should wear even heavier boots in your day to day. Why do you think goths wear those huge heavy boots? For looks?
And thus I was enlightened
Her kick's so fast the call it the "quad laser"
Ed Zitron's given his thoughts on GPT-5's dumpster fire launch:
Personally, I can see his point - the Duke Nukem Forever levels of hype around GPT-5 set the promptfondlers up for Duke Nukem Forever levels of disappointment with GPT-5, and the "deaths" of their AI waifus/therapists this has killed whatever dopamine delivery mechanisms they've set up for themselves.
In a similar train of thought:
A.I. as normal technology (derogatory) | Max Read
But speaking descriptively, as a matter of long precedent, what could be more normal, in Silicon Valley, than people weeping on a message board because a UX change has transformed the valence of their addiction?
I like the DNF / vaporware analogy, but did we ever have a GPT Doom or Duke3d killer app in the first place? Did I miss it?
Lol, Ed Zitron is a one person neo-luddite machine.
His entire website is one continuous anti AI spam.
Which is fine...but I was trying to find out why #chatgpt5 launch was a failure, according to him. But he fails at a "writer" to communicate that, so he's probably right that he fears he will be replaced by 2000 lines of code.
🍿
@BlueMonday1984 Oh, großartig - thank you for this expression. I hope I’ll remember “promptfondlers” for relevant usage opportunities.
i think it's possible that's a cost cutting measure on part of openai
well maybe not, i hope for the worst for them https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/09/open-ai-chat-gpt5-energy-use
@BlueMonday1984 @dgerard can we have a Duke Nukem personality for GPT5. Start a nostalgic wave of prompts?
Anyways, personal sidenote/prediction: I suspect the Internet Archive’s gonna have a much harder time archiving blogs/websites going forward.
Me, two months ago
Looks like I was on the money - Reddit's began limiting what the Internet Archive can access, claiming AI corps have been scraping archived posts to get around Reddit's pre-existing blocks on scrapers. Part of me suspects more sites are gonna follow suit pretty soon - Reddit's given them a pretty solid excuse to use.
Good news everyone! Someone with a SlackSlub has started a series countering the TESCREAL narrative.
He (c'mon, it's a guy) calls it "R9PRESENTATIONALism"
It stands for
- Relational
- 9P
- Postcritical
- Personalist
- Praxeological
- Psychoanalytic
- Participatory
- Performative
- Particularist
- Poeticist
- Positive/Affirmationist
- Reparative
- Existentialist
- Standpoint-theorist
- Embodied
- Narrativistic
- Therapeutic
- Intersectional
- Orate
- Neosubstantivist
- Activist
- Localist
I see no reason why this catchy summary won't take off!
I'll buy that for a fully-depreciated H100 GPU
[...] it actually has surprisingly little to do with any of the intellectual lineages that its proponents claim to subscribe to (Marxism, poststructuralism, feminism, conflict studies, etc.) but is a shockingly pervasive influence across modern culture to a greater degree than even most people who complain about it realize.
I mean, when describing TESCREAL Torres never had to argue that it's adherents were lying or incorrect about their own ideas. It seems like whenever someone tries this kind of backlash they always have to add in a whole mess of additional layers that are somehow tied to what their interlocutors really believe.
I'm reminded, ironically, of Scott's (imo very strong) argument against the NRx category of "demotist" states. It's fundamentally dishonest to create a category that ties together both the innocuous or positive things your opponents actually believe and some obnoxious and terrible stuff, and then claim that the same criticisms apply to all of them.
I have a better counter narrative:
- Consequentialism
- Universalism
- Meta-analytical
- Singularitarianism
- Heuristicationalism
- Autodidacticalisticalistalism
- Retro-regresso-revisionism
- Transhumanisticiousnessness
- Exo-galactic-civilisationalismnisticalism
- Rationalist
Can’t think of a good acronym though, but it’s a start
- Accelerationism
- Consequentialism
- Conservatism
- Orthodoxy
- Rationalism
- Disestablishmentarianism
- Intellectualism
- Natalism
- Galileianism
- Transhumanism
- Outside the box thinking
- Anti-empiricism
- Laissez-faire
- LaVeyan Satanism
- Kantian deontology
- Nationalism
- Orgasm denial
- Western chauvinism
- Neo-Aristotelianism
- Longtermism
- Altruism
- White supremacy
- Sinophobia
- Orientalism…
Inside Yud there are two wolves, one is sinophobic, the other is orientalist
they should just touch GRASS
Guided Rationalist Acceptance of Socionormality Studies
Also "orate" is a fucking verb
They probably conflated it with ornate lol
https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.social/post/3lwcvfzwjuc23
Robert Evans quoteskeeting dgerard's mic drop
I'm a little surprised there hasn't been more direct interaction between my "watching the far-right like heavily armed chimpanzees in a zoo" podcast circles and our techtakes sneerspace. Zitron's work on Better Offline is great, obviously, but I've been listening through QAA, for example, and their discussions of AI and its implications could probably benefit from a better technical grounding.
You love to see it, though.
Yall ready for another round of LessWrong edit wars on Wikipedia? This time with a wider list of topics!
On the very slightly merciful upside... the lesswronger recommends "If you want to work on a new page, discuss with the community first by going to the talk page of a related topic or meta-page." and "In general, you shouldn't post before you understand Wikipedia rules, norms, and guidelines." so they are ahead of the previous calls made on Lesswrong for Wikipedia edit-wars.
On the downside, they've got a laundry list of lesswrong jargon they want Wikipedia articles for. Even one of the lesswrongers responding to them points out these terms are a bit on the under-defined side:
Speaking as a self-identified agent foundations researcher, I don't think agent foundations can be said to exist yet. It's more of an aspiration than a field. If someone wrote a wikipedia page for it, it would just be that person's opinion on what agent foundations should look like.
From the comments:
On the contrary, I think that almost all people and institutions that don't currently have a Wikipedia article should not want one.
Huh. How oddly sensible.
An extreme (and close-to-home) example is documented in TracingWoodgrains’s exposé.of David Gerard’s Wikipedia smear campaign against LessWrong and related topics.
Ah, never mind.
PS: We also think that there existing a wiki page for the field that one is working in increases one's credibility to outsiders - i.e. if you tell someone that you're working in AI Control, and the only pages linked are from LessWrong and Arxiv, this might not be a good look.
Aha so OP is just hoping no one will bother reading the sources listed on the article...
Looking to exploit citogenesis for political gain.
If I ever get the urge to start a website for creatives to sell their media, please slap me in the face and remind me it will absolutely not be worth it.
Iris van-Rooij found AI slop in the wild (determining it as such by how it mangled a word's definition) and went on find multiple other cases. She's written a blog post about this, titled "AI slop and the destruction of knowledge".
choice quote from Elsevier's response:
Q. Have authors consented to these hyperlinks in their scientific articles?
Yes, it is included on the signed agreement between the author and Elsevier.
Q. If I were to publish my work with Elsevier, do I risk that hyperlinks to AI summaries will be added to my papers without my consent?
Yes, because you will need to sign an agreement with Elsevier.
consent, everyone!
"usecase" is a cursed term. It's an inverted fnord that lets the reader know that whatever follows can be safely ignored.
names for genai people I know of so far: promptfans, promptfondlers, sloppers, autoplagues, and botlickers
any others out there?
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