My thinking is that this is a symptom of deeper societal problems (like so many other bad things). Why is it that people are nihilistic enough that they don't care about the authenticity of online content and interaction? Why is it that they turn to methods like these to make money (SEO + ads, etc)? Where was it that people began to lose sight of their own humanity?
I mean, everyone on this site probably knows the answer to that, but it's clear to me that there's a pattern to all this, that a lot of what we fear stems from people being exploited or left behind or given limited choices by how their world works.
But I also don't think it's completely hopeless. Things will get worse before they get better, but in smaller terms, the fact that websites like this exist, filled with people who share these sentiments, means that there will always be a lot of people who will fight for a better world that benefits everyone.
The important thing being: don't give up, and stick closely to those who got your back.
For nation states, this is a golden age of propaganda. It's never been cheaper and easier to disseminate, with an air of authenticity like it's coming from a friend instead of the military industrial complex.
that last bit reminds me of a post i saw that pointed out that "chronically online" is a term only chronically online people understand.
it's just a simple representation of how my social sphere is split down the middle between artists furious at AI generated art and the more tech side of it that is busy generating pictures of sentient broccoli.
and when you broaden that to people who are not online all the time, suddenly you find yourself trying to explain why modern "AI" are just really sophisticated pattern matchers and assemblers. they are VERY good and can even use context to assemble patterns but it's not true creation and often can be tricked into recreating source material.
i think what really scares me is the majority of people aren't even considering that something might be AI generated. i even fall prey to those articles that clog up google results until 3 sentences in i get a headache. now that the power demonstrated by gpt 3 in general exists the headache is no longer a good indicator.
while i look around and am scared by the misinterpretation and abuse of the power granted by this pseudo ai, i'm still hopeful, maybe foolishly so, for the future of ai. it'll probably suck but ill cling to that faint chance it won't. i just don't want ai to be seen as the villain, it will always be the people behind it who are.
