SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the avoiding-the-ouroboros-of-LLM-slop dept.
Blogger Matt Webb point out that nations have begun to need a strategic fact reserve, in light of the problem arising from LLMs and other AI models starting to consume and re-process the slop which they themselves have produced.
The future needs trusted, uncontaminated, complete training data.
From the point of view of national interests, each country (or each trading bloc) will need its own training data, as a reserve, and a hedge against the interests of others.
Probably the best way to start is to take a snapshot of the internet and keep it somewhere really safe. We can sift through it later; the world's data will never be more available or less contaminated than it is today. Like when GitHub stored all public code in an Arctic vault (02/02/2020): a very-long-term archival facility 250 meters deep in the permafrost of an Arctic mountain. Or the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
But actually I think this is a job for librarians and archivists.
What we need is a long-term national programme to slowly, carefully accept digital data into a read-only archive. We need the expertise of librarians, archivists and museums in the careful and deliberate process of acquisition and accessioning (PDF).
(Look and if this is an excuse for governments to funnel money to the cultural sector then so much the better.)
It should start today.
Already, AI slop is filling the WWW and starting to drown out legitimate, authoritative sources through sheer volume.
Previously
(2025) Meta's AI Profiles Are Already Polluting Instagram and Facebook With Slop
(2024) Thousands Turned Out For Nonexistent Halloween Parade Promoted By AI Listing
(2024) Annoyed Redditors Tanking Google Search Results Illustrates Perils of AI Scrapers
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday January 21 2025, @01:21PM (2 children)
FTFY - not all nations have the same propensity of living in alt-realities... ummmm... yet.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 21 2025, @01:34PM
There's lots of fact-free stuff happening in China, Russia, Europe, etc too. It's not just a USAian thing.
Facts are inconvenient to incompetent but powerful people. Therefor, these incompetent-but-powerful people conclude, they must be destroyed at all costs.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 21 2025, @05:18PM