Posts by glyph@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #B85tlWIEuY1c9O312u by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @dianea I frequently think "the metaphors I am coming up with are way too bleak. surely someone with direct experience with ionizing radiation / lead / biohazards would chastise me for catastrophizing this" and then people with experience in the fields keep showing up and telling me that I'm not pessimistic *enough*
       
 (DIR) Post #B85tlWn53sh9h2Te7M by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @matt I haven't seen any evidence to indicate that. It's tough to know, because there are hardly any studies of the harmful effects at all, let alone big, rigorous, methodologically sound studies that have large populations involved, which is what you'd need to start making claims like "irreversible".
       
 (DIR) Post #B85tlWzUJkcUJWHYSO by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @matt From what I understand, most modern psychology & neuroscience seems to indicate that adults have far greater neuroplasticity than was previously thought, so it seems unlikely that LLMs could do anything that would permanently negate that. I know people who have largely recovered from severe physical TBIs, so getting better from AI psychosis or vibe-sickness seems like it's probably not all that difficult.
       
 (DIR) Post #B85tlXDfT1xj1UusYi by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @matt If you want me to give you a gestalt of the anecdotes I've heard, I'd say that there are 4 parts of the damage:1. addiction to the constant validation & stimulation that chatbots provide2. a general sort of hypomania; over-optimism, ambitiously taking on other projects3. this might be the same as 2, but "poor decision making". particularly skipping steps in assessing risks4. skill loss, from delegating whatever intellectual activities you were previously doing to the bots
       
 (DIR) Post #B85tlXSYZfs7lfsllY by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @matt 1 isn't legible as damage *until* you stop, but once you stop, it can produce a bit of withdrawal / depression, which the user has to fight through. But particularly if they're committed I haven't heard about this being particularly bad, just … noticeable.2 & 3 seem to go away fast. without the constant validation, critical thinking returns. this can take a little while too.4 is the big one that takes a long time to recover from, the only one that might plausibly be permanent
       
 (DIR) Post #B85tlXh5hdUwUkgNQ8 by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @matt but even the skill loss is weird. Like I am "rusty" at a lot of things, and it doesn't feel odd or distressing to me at all that when I pick up the violin every few years, I'm out of practice, because I haven't been practicing. It makes sense. I mean I wish I could hold on to that skill over years of inactivity but nothing about it is incongruent with my self image, just annoying.
       
 (DIR) Post #B85tlXvcpb7lDpTz4i by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @matt heavy LLM users who forget stuff, who talk about being "made dumber", feel distressed during the recovery period because they feel like they _have_ been practicing their craft; whether it's writing, coding, art, whatever, they typically won't have realized just how much they've delegated thinking to the bot, and so it is quite distressing to reach for a cognitive skill that you think is very much active, only to find that you're 18 months out of practice, because you actually *are*
       
 (DIR) Post #B85tlutHSTumRDYw76 by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @matt people who are deep into dramatic AI psychosis have a similar issue with 2, because even though they have stopped using the bot, they are still holding on to a bunch of ideas, many of which they may not even realize or remember *came* from the bot.
       
 (DIR) Post #B88slWBHoLPHK46uBc by glyph@mastodon.social
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       There have been a bunch of "moderate" AI pieces (including a few that I have boosted) that have objected to being tarred with the term "slop", and I think there's a real effort right now in the AI booster camp to define the term as an explicit *judgement of quality* — i.e. "this is bad, and it was made with AI, so it's slop" — which retroactively allows every "slop" discussion to center around subjective evaluations of quality / merit / utility etc. For me that's not really what the word means.
       
 (DIR) Post #B88slXCk0QAGUrna5o by glyph@mastodon.social
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       Like, sure, slop does *on average* have a bit of a "quality smell", as it were, but the low quality is downstream of the definition, which is that it was extruded through an "AI" in the first place.To my mind you can make slop that is delightful, inspiring, moving, extremely functional, bug-free, etc. That's a big part of the problem; it's not always possible to tell. You *usually* won't, of course, it's usually bad, but that's not always true.
       
 (DIR) Post #B88slZEETqXum4VnhA by glyph@mastodon.social
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       Yet, if you make something genuinely enjoyable with an "AI", and then you tell your audience about it, as we have seen over and over again, the majority of your audience will not be grateful that you have shown them the error of their ways, *they will be mad at you*. Because it doesn't matter if it's good, it's still slop. You still pointed the slop hose at the audience and sprayed them with it, and the fact that you momentarily tricked them into thinking it was something else makes it *worse*.
       
 (DIR) Post #B88slaxI3oBM86bIZ6 by glyph@mastodon.social
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       There are lots of people right now being coerced into using "AI" tools, who are themselves quite suspicious of the tools in the first place. Not to mention that they don't like being coerced. So they're trying to find the "good way" to use these tools. I am very sympathetic to such people; they are *trying* to walk an ethical tightrope, they believe that if they are being presented with this challenge it _must_ be possible to resolve. So they endeavor not to "make slop" with the slop dispenser.
       
 (DIR) Post #B88slcs2wHAy4QA8fY by glyph@mastodon.social
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       So I think we need to find ways to kindly, but firmly, hold the line. It's slop, you can't make it not be slop just by thinking really hard about it. You can do what you need to do in order to keep your job, and maybe slinging slop is the only avenue still open to you, and I am not going to judge you for that, especially not in this economy.
       
 (DIR) Post #B88slds5DcndApBgMi by glyph@mastodon.social
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       But if you allow yourself to resolve your moral contradictions and compromises by saying "well it's not really a compromise at all, I figured out how to beat the system" then you end up here, getting yourself Orbed https://skepchick.org/2025/05/adam-conover-ruins-his-own-reputation/
       
 (DIR) Post #B88slem5rNbPyXOPfU by glyph@mastodon.social
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       also I gotta say it's pretty fucking gross to watch the people pushing their subordinates onto this tightrope over a moral abyss and then jerking the tightrope back and forth and attempting to cut it, visibly annoyed that those subordinates are attempting to not jump head first into the abyss. "we shoved you out over the abyss so you'd fall in! why are you trying to be THOUGHTFUL about this!"
       
 (DIR) Post #B8ARkGD1Os5b3C1A7E by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @mntmn first thing I would check is sleep hygiene. that sounds scary even if normal though!
       
 (DIR) Post #B8NZB88CSQAXosjTpw by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @ariadne holy shit. this is like watching Gimli pick up the One Ring, casually stroll into Mordor, and then flick it with his thumb and forefinger so hard that it punches a hole clean through Sauron's helmet, killing him instantly
       
 (DIR) Post #B8utdJwSD8tkShwPTs by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @mntmn this advertising strategy is working on me and I am probably going to eventually buy one of your computers even if I can’t really justify it economically
       
 (DIR) Post #B9sZTtteZZqOCxkEfQ by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @ariadne @whitequark @rabbit_fighter 👍🏻
       
 (DIR) Post #BAVfrj3X76cK0YX2WW by glyph@mastodon.social
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       @davidrevoy I have not been keeping up with the comic as much as I should, perhaps, but the black-haired mage here has shown up on my timeline having universally negative experiences with AI so this seems a bit overdue :)