The New But Very Old Word
That is Trending on the the
Internet: Slop
There are many words that might describe how Artificial Intelligence is changing the face of the Internet. Gigabytes of data have been posted describing the increasing prevalence of misinformation and disinformation that now clog the arteries of the Information Superhighway. One new term seems to best sum up this deluge of verbal and visual dreck that is now so pervasive on the Internet. That word is "SLOP."
The consensus among the digerati is the etymology of the term "slop"— when used to denote the ever greater accumulation of AI generated textual, aural, and visual junk that permeates our digital world — can be traced back to a blog posting by Simon Willison, May 8, 2024. Willison himself, however, credits an X posting of May 6, 2024.
Regardless of its origins in our digital culture, the term slop is indeed apropos here. Miriam-Webster's Dictionary list several different definitions for the word "slop." Most relevant to this discussion is "food waste (such as garbage) fed to animals." Whether it is an image of Pope Francis in a puffy coat, or an AI creation of a crustacean Christ, this misuse of AI technology is indeed nothing more than "garbage fed to animals."
Images generated by Artificial Intelligence can certainly seem quite real. Thus, I call this slop a clear example of sophism. Miriam-Webster's Dictionary offers a single definition for the word, "sophism." Sophism is defined as: "an argument apparently correct in form but actually invalid." And herein lies the dangers of slop. If it looks real, then it must be real, or so many might so think.
A recent report by NPR, dated May 14, 2024, lays much of the blame for the growing prevalence of Internet slop on Facebook. Sloppy images are listed as things users "might be interested in." Indeed, in an April 24, 2024, print out of the "First Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call," CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that, "30% of the posts on Facebook feed are delivered by our AI recommendation system." Instagram hosts even more AI generated content. According to Zuckerberg, "more than 50% of the content people see on Instagram is now AI recommended."
The Masters of AI are doing there best to rid the Internet of the most dangerous examples of the slop generated by their technology. In an article titled, "Russia and China are using OpenAI tools to spread disinformation," posted by Ars Technica, May 31, 2024, reported that networks associated with Russia, China, Israel, and Iran were posting AI generated misinformation on X and Telegram social media sites. An extensive report by OpenAI, titled "AI and Covert Influence Operations: Latest Trends," dated May 2024, the parent company of ChatGPT described the efforts by OpenAI to disrupt "covert influence operations that sought to use AI models in support of their activity across the Internet." Five separate entities were listed whose disinformation operations were disrupted by OpenAI.
● A previously unreported operation from Russia, which we dubbed “Bad
Grammar”, operating mainly on Telegram and targeting Ukraine,
Moldova, the Baltic States and the United States;
● A persistent
Russian threat actor posting content about Ukraine across the internet,
known as “Doppelganger”;
● A persistent Chinese threat actor posting
content across the internet to praise China and criticize its
critics, known as “Spamouflage”;
● A persistent Iranian threat actor
posting web content that supported Iran and criticized Israel and the
US, known as the International Union of Virtual Media (IUVM);
● A
commercial company in Israel called STOIC, generating content about the
Gaza conflict, and to a lesser extent the Histadrut trade unions
organization in Israel and the Indian elections. We have nicknamed
this operation “Zero Zeno” for the founder of the stoic school of
philosophy, and to reflect the low levels of engagement that its various
campaigns attracted.
This increasing proliferation of AI generated disinformation belies the notion that our bot infested Internet is now a dead entity. Like how Frankenstein's monster was reanimated by jolts of electricity, if it ever were dead, the Internet has now risen from its grave with its life having been regenerated by AI. The Dispatches reported on the emerging theory of a Dead Internet, January 14, 2024. The idea of a Dead Internet comes from the fact that a large percentage of the content found on the Internet today originates from or is communicated by bots and other forms of material that derives from automation. Much of this slop is entirely created by machines. Little to no human intervention need be employed at all in the generation and/or distribution of much of the slop now found on the Internet.
Another term used to describe how the Internet has been taken over by automated content generation is the idea of a "Zombie Internet." The notion of Zombie Computers derives from the language of computer security. According to Techopedia, a Zombie Computer is a machine that has "become part of a zombie network through malicious software (malware) that is unknowingly installed by users or automatically installed."
Facebook is cited as a quintessential example of a Zombie Internet. Website 404 Media says Facebook isn't an example of a Dead Internet. Instead, Facebook is considered by the journalists behind 404 Media as something worse.
Facebook is the zombie internet, where a mix of bots, humans, and accounts that were once humans but aren’t anymore mix together to form a disastrous website where there is little social connection at all.
See, regeneration by bot. And the author of the 404 Media article cited above concludes that the real threat here lies in the fact that:
Even if we assume that the overwhelming majority of AI spam on Facebook is coming from the “Dead Internet” of bots interacting with bots, the fact remains that this bullshit is making its way into real people’s feeds and is poisoning the platform.
Whether caused by too much exposure to a Dead Internet or a Zombie Internet, this extensive proliferation of AI generated dreck on the Internet is contributing greatly to the increasing spread of "brainrot" among those who spend a large portion of their waking hours with eyeballs glued to their screens and focused on social media. Among other uses of the term, according to wikiHow, brainrot is a medical condition characterized by "mental decline from too much internet." Noted symptoms are: "brain fog, poor attention span or critical thinking, falling prey to misinformation, or even just having questionable opinions."
We certainly have been here before. In his seminal work, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985), author Neil Postman posited that the proliferation of television and its endless stream of commercials had warped the American psyche in ways very similar to what is said and written today about social media and the Internet. Most prophetically, Postman wrote in 1985:
Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.
Postman also uncannily predicted our current political and cultural predicament in the midst of the rising influence of misinformation distributed by electronic means. In his time, the medium was television. Of course, in many ways television and social media share many similar characteristics.
What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this word almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information–misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information–information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
Postman also recognized that while there is more information about events, both public and private, widespread ignorance is pervasive — with true knowledge having been supplanted by simple emotional reactions to events.
Even when events get widespread news coverage, people still know little in terms of history, context, or implications. Yet everyone has an opinion. But today, opinions are more like emotions than they are like the nuanced and informed opinions people formed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Polling indicates that today’s opinions change, like emotions, from one day or week to the next.
The harms that might be done both to the political culture and to everyday life must be reckoned with when opinions and feelings matter more than do whatever are the true facts of the matter at hand.
When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.
Of course, what was beamed into American homes and psyches in the last half of the twentieth century seems quaint — indeed, somewhat innocent — when compared to the propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation pushed at the digital public by our nation's adversaries. All that, coupled with AI generated pornographic deepfakes of celebrities and political leaders alike have turned the Internet into a far more putrid and even greater "vast wasteland" than twentieth century TV could ever have been. Or, maybe it's all just more sloppy than ever.
Huxley feared we would become a trivial
culture,
preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies,
the orgy porgy,
and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited,
the
civil libertarians and rationalists
who are ever on the alert to
oppose tyranny
"failed to take into account man's almost infinite
appetite for distractions."
—
Neal Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)
And from, Shortform, "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Quotes by Neil Postman."
Gerald Reiff
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