The AI-generated Garbage Apocalypse may be happening quicker than many expect. New research shows more than 50% of web content is already AI-generated.
Its obvious when watching Google and Bing results.
Try to find any sort of objective information and the first 3-4 pages will almost all be AI generated garbage that took most of the information from some other highly outdated source that was garbage to begin with.
And as the engines are AI, they can automatically manipulate search results and keep dates and time stamps updated, so that whenever google visits, the page is always the "newest" information.
When the first five results are the same sentences worded slightly differently like a freshman essay it is not a good sign that I will find a real answer.
The most annoying thing is that almost all tech information has fallen victim to this shit.
We now have to go back to pre-2000's methods of searching sites, by first identifying sites as reliable and then by relying on the sites own search engines to not suck.
In some cases, this is workable.
In cases where the sites have integrated Google searches, this is even more useless than using Google itself.
To quote - "It found that most of the internet is translated, as 57.1 percent of the sentences in the corpus were multi-way parallel in at least three languages. "
So in other words, that majority of web content is AI translations of other content. As its often poorly translated, or entirely mistranslated, it qualifies as "AI-generated garbage" - hence the headline.
Technically, but I think I and a lot of other readers thought it was talking about original content from AIs, as opposed to translated.
I have noticed those sites with answers to commonly searched questions, which look very convincing and have AI generated "authors" as well as a topic-specific URL, but then sometimes lose the plot of the question half way through. I almost fall for them, and I'm a crusty internet person, so I can only imagine how many people are just totally swallowing the info.
I was trying to install a mod for a game yesterday. Gave it a google search. The first 5 links were trash sites that literally just said "download the mod files," "install the mod," "enjoy the game."
No other instructions, no links, irrelevant images and captions. Just random filler details about the base game.
Man, I have been accused of being AI tons of times in the last few years. I don't think people are very good at distinguishing reality from AI when it comes to text.
Researchers at the Amazon Web Services AI lab found that over half of the sentences on the web have been translated into two or more languages...
They attribute this to machine learning algorithms, yet even without those translations of translations of translations also have decreasing accuracy when done by people.
One of the ironies of Google leading so much cutting-edge AI development is that it is simultaneously poisoning its own business from within. Google Search is getting worse and worse, on an almost monthly basis, as it fills up with ever more SEO-spam. Early adopters are abandoning it for Chat-GPT-like alternatives; which means the mass market probably soon will too.
The other irony is that it will probably take AI to save us from AI-generated SEO spam. For everyone touting AI products that will write blogs and emails, there will be people selling products that detect their garbage and save you from wasting your time reading it.
I would argue that most of the webpages have been generated without human input for a long time. So much automated scam with sketchy download links was the norm years before any 'modern AI' have been a thing.
I hear the message but to be honest, I can't believe it.
There must something I don't get. But at a second thought, in the google search resolutes, I see a lot of dubious resultes.