AI Is Creating "Doom Loops" All Over the Economy
futurism.com
The AI industry is creating "doom loops" across the economy with products that undermine the economic incentive to create cultural content.
  • TheVoiceOfRaison@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    8 hours

    When AI removes the need for so many jobs and people can’t afford purchases and the economy collapses (again), how will the world’s governments act? I can’t see the US ever introducing universal basic income and the vast majority of countries simply can’t afford it. I think AI might be one of those moments where it seemed like a great idea in the zeitgeist, but in retrospect, they just didnt plan for it, because all they wanted to do was just make as much money as possible. The current crop of James Bond baddies at the top of the ladder are happy to see the world burn, because they won’t be around to give a shit when it all comes crashing down.

  • eicker@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11 hours

    AI’s business model is starting to look like a snake eating its own tail: scrape human work, replace the humans who make it, flood the web with synthetic sludge, then wonder why there’s less quality data to train on. Silicon Valley calls it disruption. Everyone else might call it burning the furniture to heat the house.

    • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9 hours

      Burning the furniture to heat the house is such a good analogy, wow.

      • dustycups@aussie.zoneEnglish
        6 hours

        Shitting the nest is a more abrasive analogy for when you really mean it.

        • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lolEnglish
          34 minutes

          I think “Shitting where you eat” works a little better, given they’re shutting all over the internet, which is where their training data comes from

        • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2 hours

          I’ve heard shitting on your own doorstep. Doesn’t fit as nicely as the furniture analogy though IMO 😆

    • TheVoiceOfRaison@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      8 hours

      I cant recall the source (I think it was a Telegraph article) but it only took current AIs 7 “rounds” to confuse its data amongst each other and it was 11 or 12 before it becomes completely corrupted. The testers basically used ChatGPT, Grok etc etc to search each other and they just had massive brain farts at the 7th round of questioning.

  • assembly@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10 hours

    This is pervasive throughout any segments where AI is leveraged. I’ve heard it called a Diamond-shaped market. What used to be a pyramid of entry-level to mid tier to experienced staff no longer has entry level. So it’s just mid tier and experienced staff. There is no one in the pipeline to move up. What happens then? The genie is out of the bottle. The big AI shops could close up now and it would only slow the decline as local models are getting more performant. I’m impressed at what Qwen can do on a MacBook with 32 gig of ram. The question I have is, what’s the solution? I got nothing other than hoping the process of decline drags out longer than I think it will.

  • obvs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10 hours

    I’m very concerned about this.

    But I’m even more concerned that the jobs that AI kills are jobs that no one gets trained to do, and that no one will know how to do them when the computers stop working.

  • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
    11 hours

    Oh yeah, the AI companies realized this from the start, maybe not that it would happen this quickly, but that it would happen.

    This is why they are hyping AI up further now, as they want to squeeze the final drop of blood from the stone.

  • ikt@aussie.zoneEnglish
    11 hours

    The closer you look, the more you see doom loops everywhere. Journalists, for example, used to publish work under the assumption that online platforms would drive readership to them. But now, tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini simply summarize their articles without sending readers to their sites, sparking a crisis that seems poised to wipe out the independent media.

    Do people just read summaries?

    What are people so busy doing these days?

    Also that’s not true for me, when ai summarises something or gives me stats I usually click on the links to read more

    • Kristell@herbicide.fallcounty.omg.lolEnglish
      29 minutes

      I used to work for a company that had a built-in AI summary in their search engine.

      1: We were required to click the links that got printed out in the summaries. 2: That rule also applied to our helpline with worse consequences.

      I’d occasionally call our helpline when I couldn’t figure something out/wanted a second opinion on a judgment call. The amount of times I got told “The AI said-” yes but WHAT DO THE DOCS SAY??? I don’t care what the digital meat grinder that tells me to break the law once an hours says!

      All to say, yeah, people don’t click through on those links. I’d wager most people who use it don’t

    • hume_lemmy@lemmy.caEnglish
      4 hours

      Consider the news articles lately about restaurants using AI-generated pictures of their food. It takes only the briefest glance at the picture to see and think “Holy fucking shit, that looks fucking revolting.”

      But they post, and sometimes even print these pictures. Which indicates that they’re not even giving that one, brief glance at the output.

    • brackled@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10 hours

      You underestimate how many people have just forgone the usage of search engines. Most people these days just go to their preferred AI site or app and just take at face value whatever slop it spits out. No one reads or verifies anymore. It would be something if they were using that “saved time” on something productive but alas it’s just to go back to doom scrolling or something else just as meaningless. It’s depressing :/

      • PlantJam@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2 hours

        Search engines have been corrupted by SEO garbage and ads presented as legitimate search results. Calling an ad “sponsored” is disingenuous at best. Using LLMs instead of searching is a logical progression. Slightly related to that are the people that search and just read the LLM summary at the top.

        I’ve heard from marketing people that they’re starting to publish blog spam to try and steer people’s LLM conversations, so I think even the current LLM usage will eventually be even worse than search is currently.

      • myyass@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9 hours

        I think it’s intentional. It’s a royal pain in the ass to search for anything now. I’m resorting to using old hard drives to find old memes and software.

        It wouldn’t surprise me that companies collaborate to get rid of things. I still can’t find the original iShit meme from 2006.

        Introducing the iShit; It looks so good, you won’t even notice the smell.

      • ctrl_alt_esc@lemmy.mlEnglish
        9 hours

        Do you have any data to back up that claim? I have the same feeling with some people, but I wouldn’t go as far as stating this as general truth for most.

    • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      8 hours

      There are a few things at work here:

      • big search engines deemphasizing going directly to a source and instead offering AI summaries as top result
      • and the results below that are ads
      • people having less time to actually engage with things they search for because of rising economic pressure
      • large amounts of different media forms vying for the users attention
      • in addition to that the absolute flood of ads penetrating every area of our life, making many people disregard even important information
      • social media distorting reality or outright lying to your face
    • psx_crab@lemmy.zipEnglish
      9 hours

      I agree, they don’t read summaries, they stop at headlines.