We’ve dug our own hole. AI was shepherded in as a force multiplier that would save us. It may have created good things in the world, but in tandem it has exponentially increased the amount of garbage the internet has on tap. You might call me an AI hater, but that would only be half true. I see its value too. The other half of me detests it.
I have started to look at every article, every comment, and every photo with the same skeptical gaze. “Is this AI?” I’ve started to craft whole theories around whether discussions are coordinated efforts by entire countries. Utterly absurd fake videos will get millions of views, and before you get mad, the views are fake too. We’ve built automated propaganda machines. Once-great sources of knowledge or entertainment on the web are now barren wastelands, sole population: bots. (Looking at you, Twitter.)
I think in the near future we will see the tide of AI slop start to reshape how we browse the web. The content we see has already changed, sure, but how we build for it hasn’t caught up. For people who still search Google or some other provider, does it allow you to keep user preferences that permanently hide sites? Have you just given up and, ironically, used AI to search? I picture a future where we’re browsing the internet in a manner that is extremely easy to block, filter by regex, and otherwise report. We will permanently scope searches like Adblock for content.
A slop-aware internet will offer advanced tools for users to filter junk.