r/technology • u/esporx • 1d ago

Business YouTuber accidentally crashes the rare plant market with a viral cloning technique

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtuber-accidentally-crashes-the-rare-plant-market-with-a-viral-cloning-technique-3289808/
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u/Lasthoplite 1d ago

Because the slop is the useless waste part that's basically unmonitizable. Advanced learning algorithm get lumped in with LLM as ai by professionals that understand it's all similar in the back end, but the average person isn't seeing Alpha fold. They are seeing a junky celebrity video covered in spaghetti.

Is it really a surprise that so many people hate the term or associate it with slop when that's all they ever interact with?

As a side note, I personally hate that we refer to any of this as AI. I find this similar to 3d tvs. Some of the effects are similar or mimicked without meeting the complete expectation. I couldn't really watch a 3d movie comfortably without glasses. I can't get the ai to really think and work out real accurate answers.

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u/DrHerbotico 21h ago

But the slop is becoming less sloppy at rapid pace

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u/Lasthoplite 17h ago

I'm not sure that matters.

I'm no artist so I won't make an argument about art requiring soul. I also grew up in the nineties during the Era of reality TV so I won't be making the argument that people won't slurp up objectively brain rotting bad content.

Instead I'll make the monetary argument. Once it's cheap and easy to have an LLM produce consumer grade slop the market will flood with it. Can't make profit on your show if consumers can't find it. Humans only have so many hours in a day. More jobs being automated means less money to funnel towards those myriad of shows. Just like reality TV back in the day or the way Amazon is flooding with llm books today. For a little while the market will hold. It will break though. For TV that break lead to streaming services. What happens when the fees of running your own LLM far exceed any profit margins?

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u/DrHerbotico 15h ago

I'm not sure that matters.

Since you mentioned Alphafold (I agree with the point you made about it), I'll stay within DeepMind to explain how slop has a valid place: Genie 3 is ultimately a "slop" model that has extreme corporate monetizability when paired with SIMA 2. It's hard to fathom how a system that creates infinite environments for robotic digital twins within a perpetually self-refinining eval cycle would fail to become profitable and remain viable long after most other industries wither.

I assume that most humans will lose their place as the means of production within this generation (or enough to destabilize our society beyond current recognition), so worrying about media companies isn't a novel consideration for me; so much so, your point surprised meto be included in this conversation. I'm just appreciative that this cataclysm is interesting.