The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed.
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The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed. The top search link went to a page of the 20 best alcohol-free ports! Except none of them were port, they were all spirits (not even other fortified wines). The ‘AI’ summary described a fictional process for removing alcohol from port and had two citations, neither of which supported the claim. The next 30 pages were all LLM slop that talked about what port is for a long time before saying that there’s no alcohol-free version.
I have been using the web since the mid ‘90s and it has never been this bad. Anyone advocating for ‘AI’ is advocating for a future where this damage is spread to all facets of life.
@david_chisnall it’s gotten bad enough I am going out of my way to search for texts from pre-2023 as the web since has been polluted with LLM slop.
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
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The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed. The top search link went to a page of the 20 best alcohol-free ports! Except none of them were port, they were all spirits (not even other fortified wines). The ‘AI’ summary described a fictional process for removing alcohol from port and had two citations, neither of which supported the claim. The next 30 pages were all LLM slop that talked about what port is for a long time before saying that there’s no alcohol-free version.
I have been using the web since the mid ‘90s and it has never been this bad. Anyone advocating for ‘AI’ is advocating for a future where this damage is spread to all facets of life.
AI circular finance fraud & fossil fuel funded fascism would drive anyone to drink.
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@david_chisnall it's like replacing libraries with smoke shops filled with tabloids
@flyingpenguin @david_chisnall
It's a nightmare of staggering proportions.
If the library at Alexandria was not just intact, but expanding-- and every book silently replaced with a funhouse mirror version of itself, leaving nothing real or true.
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Is there any search engine left that lists genuine web pages?
I’ve resorted to searching Wikipedia directly lately, a lot, since it’s human-curated.
The other alternative that I started using: discovering human-created pages via the browser add-on for human.json . See https://mamot.fr/@ploum/117211762446177153
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The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed. The top search link went to a page of the 20 best alcohol-free ports! Except none of them were port, they were all spirits (not even other fortified wines). The ‘AI’ summary described a fictional process for removing alcohol from port and had two citations, neither of which supported the claim. The next 30 pages were all LLM slop that talked about what port is for a long time before saying that there’s no alcohol-free version.
I have been using the web since the mid ‘90s and it has never been this bad. Anyone advocating for ‘AI’ is advocating for a future where this damage is spread to all facets of life.
@david_chisnall Just think, newer generations of chatbot are right now, ingesting the excreta of their predecessors, along with everything else. #Degenerative
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Is there any search engine left that lists genuine web pages?
I’ve resorted to searching Wikipedia directly lately, a lot, since it’s human-curated.
@albertcardona anything with before:2020 as an argument? (sorry not all that helpful)
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@albertcardona anything with before:2020 as an argument? (sorry not all that helpful)
I am not sure that the "before:2020" can't be faked, particularly given how some web search engines seemingly manufacture pages on the fly to suit one's target search.
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The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed. The top search link went to a page of the 20 best alcohol-free ports! Except none of them were port, they were all spirits (not even other fortified wines). The ‘AI’ summary described a fictional process for removing alcohol from port and had two citations, neither of which supported the claim. The next 30 pages were all LLM slop that talked about what port is for a long time before saying that there’s no alcohol-free version.
I have been using the web since the mid ‘90s and it has never been this bad. Anyone advocating for ‘AI’ is advocating for a future where this damage is spread to all facets of life.
@david_chisnall I agree with everything you've written here. As a sidenote, some years ago we also tried to get hold of some alcohol-free port for a Christmas guest to have with a cheese board, and we couldn't find any anywhere.
I guess you just can't dealcoholise port without destroying whatever gives it its distinct flavour.
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The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed. The top search link went to a page of the 20 best alcohol-free ports! Except none of them were port, they were all spirits (not even other fortified wines). The ‘AI’ summary described a fictional process for removing alcohol from port and had two citations, neither of which supported the claim. The next 30 pages were all LLM slop that talked about what port is for a long time before saying that there’s no alcohol-free version.
I have been using the web since the mid ‘90s and it has never been this bad. Anyone advocating for ‘AI’ is advocating for a future where this damage is spread to all facets of life.
@david_chisnall the other day I was searching for some open source software (I don't remember alternative to what)...
and it listed microsoft closed source product, listed some 4 paid closed source apps for apple and a lot of other stuff, I think only 2 were open source... this is a common recurrence and I still don't understand how people still trust those things -
The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed. The top search link went to a page of the 20 best alcohol-free ports! Except none of them were port, they were all spirits (not even other fortified wines). The ‘AI’ summary described a fictional process for removing alcohol from port and had two citations, neither of which supported the claim. The next 30 pages were all LLM slop that talked about what port is for a long time before saying that there’s no alcohol-free version.
I have been using the web since the mid ‘90s and it has never been this bad. Anyone advocating for ‘AI’ is advocating for a future where this damage is spread to all facets of life.
@david_chisnall thanks to this being mastodon my reading started with the question: an alcohol free port of what?? until I realized
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The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed. The top search link went to a page of the 20 best alcohol-free ports! Except none of them were port, they were all spirits (not even other fortified wines). The ‘AI’ summary described a fictional process for removing alcohol from port and had two citations, neither of which supported the claim. The next 30 pages were all LLM slop that talked about what port is for a long time before saying that there’s no alcohol-free version.
I have been using the web since the mid ‘90s and it has never been this bad. Anyone advocating for ‘AI’ is advocating for a future where this damage is spread to all facets of life.
@david_chisnall Enshittification of an entire generation: Make everything slop, hide from the them all evidence that anything was ever better, dumb them down AF, claim AGI, ride in on a white horse.
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P pelle@veganism.social shared this topic
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@david_chisnall it’s gotten bad enough I am going out of my way to search for texts from pre-2023 as the web since has been polluted with LLM slop.
@Infosecben @david_chisnall I do this too.
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@david_chisnall it’s gotten bad enough I am going out of my way to search for texts from pre-2023 as the web since has been polluted with LLM slop.
@Infosecben Unfortunately, there's been a big improvement in alcohol-free things over the past few years, so that would be likely to filter out useful things.
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Is there any search engine left that lists genuine web pages?
I’ve resorted to searching Wikipedia directly lately, a lot, since it’s human-curated.
@david_chisnall @albertcardona
Duck Duck Go?
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@david_chisnall @albertcardona
Duck Duck Go?
DuckDuckGo is what I've used for years, it's less bad in many ways, but it's funded by ads and doesn't filter out slop webpages.
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DuckDuckGo is what I've used for years, it's less bad in many ways, but it's funded by ads and doesn't filter out slop webpages.
@albertcardona @MarkBrigham @david_chisnall Duck duck works well for me, although unfortunately even academic sites sometimes seem to provide AI generated material. I often go straight to wikipedia as well, and can never decide whether to respond to their appeals for donations or not. I use Ecosia on my phone, which also works fine. I can't even imagine using Google!
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@albertcardona @MarkBrigham @david_chisnall Duck duck works well for me, although unfortunately even academic sites sometimes seem to provide AI generated material. I often go straight to wikipedia as well, and can never decide whether to respond to their appeals for donations or not. I use Ecosia on my phone, which also works fine. I can't even imagine using Google!
@ORIOliver @MarkBrigham @david_chisnall
Wikipedia is very well funded at the moment, so just ignore for now. Most of the Wikimedia Foundation's funds arrive from big donations, as far as I know. See:
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@david_chisnall it's like replacing libraries with smoke shops filled with tabloids
@flyingpenguin @david_chisnall
That was active UK government policy 2010-24. -
The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed. The top search link went to a page of the 20 best alcohol-free ports! Except none of them were port, they were all spirits (not even other fortified wines). The ‘AI’ summary described a fictional process for removing alcohol from port and had two citations, neither of which supported the claim. The next 30 pages were all LLM slop that talked about what port is for a long time before saying that there’s no alcohol-free version.
I have been using the web since the mid ‘90s and it has never been this bad. Anyone advocating for ‘AI’ is advocating for a future where this damage is spread to all facets of life.
@david_chisnall I have to search for names a lot at work to make sure the spellings are correct, and it's forever telling me I've misspelled something and was actually looking for Jeff Goldblum or something equally nonsensical. Last one was checking a racing driver called Jensen Mason, it told me in a very patronising way that actually his name was Jenson Button.
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The other day, I wanted to see if alcohol-free port existed. The top search link went to a page of the 20 best alcohol-free ports! Except none of them were port, they were all spirits (not even other fortified wines). The ‘AI’ summary described a fictional process for removing alcohol from port and had two citations, neither of which supported the claim. The next 30 pages were all LLM slop that talked about what port is for a long time before saying that there’s no alcohol-free version.
I have been using the web since the mid ‘90s and it has never been this bad. Anyone advocating for ‘AI’ is advocating for a future where this damage is spread to all facets of life.
@david_chisnall More information does not necessarily mean a narrower view. The real issue is not to let AI make decisions in place of our own judgment. The value of AI lies not in thinking for us, but in giving us access to more information so that we can examine, compare, and judge it for ourselves. Perhaps the challenge of the future will not be a lack of information, but our ability to distinguish truth from information that is merely convincing.
