[HN Gopher] GPT might be an information virus (2023)
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GPT might be an information virus (2023)
Author : 3willows
Score : 44 points
Date : 2025-07-27 20:23 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nonint.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nonint.com)
| hayden_dev wrote:
| "might"
| anthk wrote:
| You are right. The web it's already rotten. There are tons of
| AI generated articles on supposed serious news sites. These
| will be worse over time.
| DrammBA wrote:
| "2023"
| andy99 wrote:
| I think it is an information virus, but differently - it's
| homogenized everything, and made people dumber and lazier. It's
| poisoned public and professional discourse by reducing writing
| and thinking from the richness of humanity to one narrow style
| with a tiny latent space, and simultaneously convinced people
| that this is what good writing looks like. And it's erased
| thought from board classes of endeavor. This virus is much worse
| than the relatively benign symptoms described in the article.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| This is how the church felt about the printing press.
| XorNot wrote:
| Who is "the Church" in this analogy?
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| Like most progress, it made some things easier ( and some
| things worse as a result ). What I do find particularly
| fascinating is that it is doing that even in professions that
| should know better ( lawyers, doctors ). That my boss uses it
| is no surprise me to. I always suspected he never really read
| my emails.
| 3willows wrote:
| Perhaps that is the real danger. Everyone except a small elite
| who (rightly) feel they understand how LLMs work would simply
| give up serious thinking and accept whatever "majority" opinion
| is in their little social media bubble. We wouldn't have the
| patience to really engage with genuinely different viewpoints
| any more.
|
| I recall some Chinese language discussion about the experience
| of studying abroad in the Anglophone world in the early 20th
| century and the early 21st century. Paradoxically, even if you
| are a university student, it may now be harder to break out of
| the bubble and make friends with non-Chinese/East Asians than
| before. In the early 20th century, you'd probably be one of the
| few non-White students and had to break out of your comfort
| zone. Now if you are Chinese, there'd be people from a similar
| background virtually anywhere you study in the West, and it is
| almost unnatural to make a deliberate effort to break out of
| that.
| 3willows wrote:
| The point being: when you find someone who is tailoring all
| his/her/its attention to you and you alone, why bother
| talking to anyone else.
| anthk wrote:
| There are public sources of information such as a curated
| WIkipedia, open content from Kiwix, Gutenberg Math books and
| OpenStreetMap for maps. Better, you can download offline and
| curated version of these so anyone can have a working snapshot
| anytime. That's good to avoid future AI tamperings. As long as
| these as AI free, we are potentialy in the right direction.
| boredatoms wrote:
| We can only trust a snapshot from pre AI years, eventually
| everything will be contaminated
| ayaros wrote:
| We're going to have to go in the opposite direction and rely on
| directories or lists of verified human-made/accurate content. It
| will be like the old days of yahoo and web-indexes all over
| again.
| DaveZale wrote:
| A few years ago, some talk briefly circulated about local
| internet efforts, possibly run by public libraries.
|
| Local news coverage has really suffered these past several
| years. Wouldn't it be great to see relevant local news emerge
| again, written by humans for humans?
|
| That approach might be a good start. Use a cloud service that
| forbids AI bot scraping to protect copyright?
| ayaros wrote:
| This doesn't seem to be structured differently than a
| standard-fare social media app. All the same issues with
| human verification on those apps would apply to this too.
|
| Unless you mean a platform _only_ for vetted local
| journalists...
| righthand wrote:
| Tie the account to the Library Card and then you can open
| it up to anyone.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I had the thought the other day that one of the most valuable
| things a human-driven website could offer would be a webring
| linking to other human-driven websites
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| virus is a good way to think about the effect radius
| resters wrote:
| It's a method of storing information that makes it far more
| useful than previous methods.
|
| Sure we can idealize feats of the human brain such as memorizing
| digits of pi. LLMs put more human behavior into the same category
| as memorizing digits of pi, and make the previously scarce "idea
| clay" available to the masses.
|
| It's not the same as a human brain or human knowledge but it is
| still a very useful tool just like the tools that let us do maths
| without memorizing hundreds of digits of pi.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| _Curious Yellow_ , anyone?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasshouse_(novel)
|
| > "Curious Yellow is a design study for a really scary worm: one
| that uses algorithms developed for peer-to-peer file sharing
| networks to intelligently distribute countermeasures and resist
| attempts to decontaminate the infected network".
|
| Hat tip to HN user cstross (as I discovered the idea via
| Charlie's blog):
|
| http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-archive/October_2002.ht...
|
| These topics were first brought to my attention through his
| amazing novel _Glasshouse_. I've had the pleasure of having my
| first edition copy of the book signed by the author, and I then
| promptly loaned it indefinitely to a friend, who then misplaced
| it. The man himself is a friendly curmudgeon who I am happy to
| have met, and I have enjoyed reading about the future through his
| insights into the past and present.
|
| Also I must acknowledge Brandon Wiley, who wrote the inspiration
| for Curious Yellow as far as I can tell.
|
| https://blanu.net/curious_yellow.html
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| The same thing could have been said about the computer in general
| and masses adopting the personal computer.
|
| That's how I view LLM's now. They are what follows computers in
| the evolution of information technology.
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