Edition 524 – AI Slop
I’m reading CarSales.com and checking listings for a myriad of cars. Not to buy. Just to look. The listings are fast becoming AI generated. Same content. Same words. Same bloody mis-spelling of “kilometre” to the American way.
I’m taking a look at LinkedIn and a very credentialled and well respected Thought Leader, who has dialled back over recent years, puts up a post. One of those daily inspiration types. Except, they’ve decided to use AI to generate an image and text. The image is so-so. The text, contains misspellings again. This is someone that once charged $250K for a 6 month consulting assignment.
Then, my local favourite cafe has started playing music in the mornings. Except, I can’t place the tunes. I mention it to one of the young baristas that has perfected my order, and they confirm the owner has put together an AI generated list of music. It all sounds, well, the same.
Very quickly, AI has become a part of our lives.
Very quickly, AI slop has permeated our lives, too.
Emails that you receive, that look the same as you’ve received from someone else.
Content you see, that is not much different to someone else’s content.
It’s all become very homogenous, very quickly. Same-same. Not different.
Now, I’m not anti-AI, as I see lots of benefits in its use. It can gather information quicker than almost any other resource, and the fact checking ability, provided you push your AI engine of choice, is pretty good. However, you have to be discerning in its use, and ask yourself, when it generates an answer “is that correct?” An increasing number of people are not questioning what AI spits out. Which makes me wonder, if they’re not questioning what AI is generating, then what else are they not questioning in their lives.
Seemingly, too many people have become too lazy and have subcontracted their brains out to AI so that, allegedly, they can be more productive throughout the day.
Except, if you’re dishing up AI slop, you might be dumping out new stuff, or completing tasks, at a great rate of knots, but it might just also be accelerating your demise.
I’m seeing too many people treat AI as the new employee they’re unwilling to train, nor check what they’ve done. Which tells me, they’re not managing, let alone leading, in real time. AI is not like the employee standing before you, with their eyes glazed over, looking completely confused at the instructions that are as clear as day to you, yet have confused the hell out of them. With that employee, you need to go back and, potentially, dumb the instructions down. Or be a little more patient on your training. Yet, with AI, you’re just accepting the rubbish it sends back to you.
The one significant advantage I’m observing right now with the rapid rise of AI is that, for those of us that are not “all-in”, it’s becoming much easier to stand out in the crowd. When the crowd is defaulting to AI slop, and you’re still, for the most part, using your brain for original content, surely the crowd will be a sea of homogeneity, whilst you’re the imposing sandstone headland, rising above it all, and pushing back against the flow.
This Week’s Tip
“Have you noticed the word “BRAIN” contains “AI” in it.
It’s sad that so many people are defaulting to the latter, and forgetting the former.”