Gwen C. Katz: This is the real threat. A DDOS attack on human connection.

This is the real threat. A DDOS attack on human connection.

For TNR's 2023 review, I went a little long on AI, the arts, and the threat AI poses in it's current mediocre state

The Year That A.I. Came for Culturenewrepublic.com The events of 2023 showed that A.I. doesn’t need to be that good in order to do damage.

If you like supporting actual humans who make real stuff, here's a real thing that I made, and it has a werewolf in it: store.steampowered.com/app/2184220/...

The Wolf of Derevnya on Steamstore.steampowered.com When the villagers of Derevnya begin turning up maimed, suspicion falls on you. Track down the beast to clear your name and save the village—but to unravel the mystery, you will need to confront you...

Lol as if my inbox isn’t already flooded by emails no one actually read or wrote, including replies to emails I sent and job applications, or that Amazon isn’t already flooded with fake bot reviews for products. All these things already exist - it’s just becoming more well-known.

It’s becoming easier to do at scale, arguably

I'm so tired

Somewhere, Borges is smiling

So is Baudrillard

There is a short story by someone - maybe Stross? - where humans are extinct but their bots are continuing to send generated chat back and forth in their name.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; Do not respond to manage your subscriptions You have accepted our terms and conditions Fwd and fwd, BCC: subject line Claim 40% off for a limited time Fwd: Fwd: Re. Re. Fwd: Fwd: Re.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 40% savings of all home and lawn, Smash that like button and subscribe.

Here for Ray.

I mean Re.

I think it’s Saturns Children, maybe more than one novel, but my memory fails me.

He's got a novel named Neptune's brood where the sex bots outlived us, but it's mostly about finance

That's such a delicious weird thing to be able to say but that's @cstross.bsky.social for you

One of the Observable Radio podcast entries also covers this theme quite well.

We’d hate to miss this opportunity to pitch our show to a writer we admire! Here’s the episode, Large Models

Transmission A.03: “Large Models” — Observable Radiowww.observableradio.com The Observer grapples with his reponsiblity. By popular request, it’s Uncle Competition. Hope is all we have left. Filmed in front of a live simulated audience. The third episode of Observable Ra...

I've already had someone at work tell me that they've been using AI to reply to their emails, after I tried to talk to them face to face about particularly frustrating and confusing exchange.

Eeeeh... it seems to me like the processes that generate all the original pre-AI bullshit emails that nobody wants to read in the first place are the real DDOS attack on human connection. If people weren't wasting time with garbage we wouldn't need AI to reply with the obligatory counter-garbage

A lot of the hype around LLMs that I’m seeing seems to be LLM for the sake of LLM. Not “I don’t want y read/write that” but “isn’t it cool an LLM can do it for me”. The implication may be that not using an LLM is a waste but it honestly feels to me like just jumping on a bandwagon.

it reminds me of people trying to explain why NFTs are useful. another day, another attempt to shove shit technology down our throats

Oh yeah that's definitely true. OTOH, there's definitely a solid 5-15% of emails that I get that both don't matter at all but for some stupid reason it's obligatory to send some kind of reply. I would love to be able to click a button to make those be handled.

And then there's another 60% of emails that don't rate a reply but still need to be looked at to determine as much... actually existing non-gen AI does a great job with that already, possibly the only decent product Microsoft offers is the "focused/other" outlook inbox

I learned to be comfortable with an email inbox full of messages I haven't read a long time ago.

Butlerian Jihad Right Fucking Now, please.

Sounds great for money laundering - fake buy fake books and fake music and fake art.

Bots spamming bots filtered by bots moderated by bots until it's bots, all the way down

gives me the same feeling as when i learned that 47.4% of all internet traffic is bots. some day soon it will all be like 95% automated.

and the humans of the future, our kids, will have such a warped perception of reality, because nothing they see on the internet will be real. as bad as that problem already kinda is, it will just be infinitely worse and weirder.

Then it's up to us to teach our kids that life is much more than what's on internet :)

I look forward to us adding the "robo-gibberish" layer to our e-mail protocol stacks. (Narrator: he did not, in fact, look forward to this.)

You’re getting computer generated emails today. You have been for years, decades at this point.

bsky.app/profile/symb...

The "use case" for LLMs is: Spam. Everywhere.

Thanks for sharing!

We seem to be trying our best to make the "Dead internet" theory real :/

AI is the electric monk in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency...

That could cause a real legal humdinger for someone. “It wasn’t me. The AI…”

Print press, newspapers and letters. Lets just forget the internet

It is a dystopian prison of mirrors

It’s crazy times 👀👀

It feels like Google search is already almost there, no?

And the Spark email app I’ve bee using for some years across my devices added an ai reply feature earlier this year! Still needs user to read/edit/send it, for now.

"Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is..."

Well said. Reminds me of CS Lewis's version of hell in THE GREAT DIVORCE--an ever-expanding rainy town where everyone is increasingly separate from everyone else (though he imagined it as due to people's quarrelsomeness rather than their laziness).

who the fuck actually communicates with email anymore?

Any workplace with an office? 🧐

the reference was to personal use of an email, not business.

I would if not for all the damn spam I'm getting

i do.

Google doesn't seem to understand that we need them to *fight* AI-generated spam, not help people create more of it!

I think there’s too many emails already so that made me chuckle a bit but fair point. It is kind of insidious

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