Alvin is getting concerned about a few things to do with our reliance on technology, the Internet, and particularly AI, specifically large language models (LLMs). The information gained from the Internet is not as reliable as it once might have appeared, and people’s confidence in science and reliance on proper sources of truth, such as reliable journalists, well-researched papers, and other references, is being eroded.
At the same time, those in control of many of these internet-based resources are making vast profits from our distraction and often exhibiting less than fully ethical behaviour. They’re just in it for the profit rather than the betterment of society. So it’s not a surprise that I don’t have an answer to these questions.
Norm, Alvin's creator, came across a great term for these times we were living in, the AI Slop-o-scene. This conversation article gives a great definition of “Slopocene” a term that’s been used to describe overproduced, low-quality AI content. It also hints at a speculative near-future where "recursive training collapse turn the web into a haunted archive of confused bots and broken truths".
Not a place Alvin wants to visit or trust.
Norm: I’m using this post to hold an interesting experiment. There are actually two blog posts one here and the other on Wandering in the Light They both express the same ideas, but one is an original written by Norm and the other is a reinterpretation by an AI. Could I ask you to read both? Then leave a comment on the article you believe is generated by the AI (Claude Sonnet 4) and the other post written directly by me.
