The Imminent Enshittification of the Internet
We recorded 6 claims from this post. 3 were checked against evidence. 3 can’t be checked. 4 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (6)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
“And it’s on: the LLM-driven enshittification of the internet.”
What we tested: LLM-driven degradation (enshittification) of the internet is already under way.
What happened: NewsGuard identified 49 apparently AI-generated sites using published chatbot artifacts and content inspection, including a fabricated report of President Biden's death. Its report also says most identified sites did not advance misinformation, and some operators disputed its characterization. (NewsGuard, )
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“But things have actually gotten worse than I anticipated.”
What we tested: Pollution of the internet by LLM-generated content became worse between February and August 2023 than Marcus had expected.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
“And even worse, Amazon is starting to be a receptacle for inaccurate and exploitative quickie histories of recent events:”
What we tested: Amazon is starting to be a receptacle for inaccurate and exploitative quickie histories of recent events.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
“And of course LLMs are fully capable of make up truly terrible advice, too, like this disconcerting recipe from last week:”
What we tested: LLMs are fully capable of making up truly terrible advice, such as a disconcerting recipe from the previous week.
What happened: The report dates Hehir's dangerous recipe to August 4 and identifies its LLM. It specifies chloramines and reports that attempted reproduction on August 10 was blocked. (Ars Technica, )
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Cesspools of automatically-generated fake websites, rather than ChatGPT search, may ultimately come to be the single biggest threat that Google ever faces.”
What we tested: Automatically generated fake websites, rather than ChatGPT search, may eventually become the biggest threat Google ever faces.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“After all, if users are left sifting through sewers full of useless misinformation, the value of search would go to zero—potentially killing the company.”
What we tested: If users are left sifting through floods of useless misinformation, the value of search would fall to zero, which could kill Google.
Held from this post (4)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: Once LLMs make stuff up like that, that garbage will circulate from one LLM (stochastic parrot) to the next.
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: Not just the internet but Amazon too has been infested, as people are using GPT to create low-quality books.
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: AI-powered search engines are taking in each other's errors (an echo chamber effect), as when Bard repeated a blunder copied from ChatGPT.