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AI as a writing and editing tool is one thing (I still think it’s a double edged sword that leans negative, but that genie can’t be returned to the bottle so no use debating it). What is AIslop imo, is not the quality of the AI output, but the motion of:
“I asked AI x and here’s what it said…”
Where the human has contributed nothing more than the prompt, and the substance of the piece is what some LLM had to say about the prompt.
It’s slopped because it’s just been ladled out into your bowl without much more effort.
It’s not about the content, in fact that’s a red herring. It’s the ‘prompt’ What is being criticized is the implication that there’s something interesting or even contributory about having typed in a particular prompt and seen what comes out. Everyone can do that for themselves.
This kind of shit is all over Twitter. “I asked grok…” is the most tediously vacuous and self indulgent post possible.
I prefer to judge each case on its merits, but I agree that the expectation is that an AI generated post has less effort put into it than otherwise. I prefer that it has enough effort put in, by the human using it, to overcome that detriment.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. LLMs represent an enormous amount of knowledge, grossly superhuman levels. Even the most erudite and educated human pales in comparison, likely even with the ability to Google the topic. If that sounds doubtful, you can look at benchmarks like GPQA, which, as the full name would imply, is supposed to be "Google Proof" unless you have immense domain knowledge.
They are great didactic tools, especially when you don't know where to begin on a topic. If someone wrote something that seemed to me to be wrong (intuition, a hunch I can't articulate) but I wouldn't be able to engage closely enough to disagree on my own, it's a worthwhile endeavor to ask an LLM to scrutinize it, and sometimes using that information to push back.
Hey, I asked ChatGPT to do a vibes check on your comment. It pointed out these objections, which look sensible to me. Why ought I disregard them? Is something I would not object to if I was done to me. A human is asking the question, through an intermediary.
The average LLM is more trustworthy than the average Twitter or Reddit commentator, though for now I would hope the Motte does better. While I still prefer engaging with humans, I think what the machines can say is often enlightening.
Again, my primary objection is not with the 'quality' of the AI output
In other words, hey, can you talk to ChatGPT for me?
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FWIW I agree with this wholeheartedly.
(I don’t think it’s how ‘slop’ is conventionally used though. I’ve mostly seen it used to mean ‘bad/cliched forms of writing’ that usually derive from too much influence of early-era GPT synthetic data and bad romance novels. So for example Project Unslop was a project to produce a dataset free of “sent shivers down her spine” and “I’m yours, body and soul”.)
I do agree that it’s not how it’s conventionally used, but I think it’s better. Slop as a quality of writing commentary is slop of the gaps as LLMs improve. But the fundamental issue with nobody cares about your prompt engineering will remain
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