AI companies and users of AI are littering all aspects of public space with “AI slop”, but does this term reflect what it really is? We have terms like visual pollution, sound pollution, etc. In a way, "AI pollution " seems a proper term, but AI also pollutes meaning, like with AI generated text. Is AI pollution a new form of “microplastics”? Everywhere and in everything?
I don’t see it so much as pollution as a smokescreen being put in place on purpose. It is my belief that these companies plan to so heavily flood the internet with AI generated nonsense that they can then begin to charge a premium for access to verified information.
That is why I have made an effort to collect actual physical books all printed before AI became a thing that have lots of info I can use to verify things. I have books on medical info, various crafts, construction, agriculture, copies of works from Lenin, Marx, Mao, Stalin, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, Voltaire, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, etc. Math textbooks, science textbooks. I’ve got around 80 or so right now. A lot of them I got for free and the rest I got for very cheap (anywhere from 1$ to 9$) because I go after used books. Many are from the 70s and 80s.
The idea is that say in like 2035 if I need to know something random I have a bunch of 100% human made and verified information. Even if some is a bit outdated it’s better than AI slop.