GenAI isn't just a technology; it's an informational pollutant—a pervasive cognitive smog that touches and corrupts every aspect of the Internet. It's not just a productivity tool; it's a kind of digital acid rain, silently eroding the value of all information. Every image is no longer a glimpse of reality, but a potential vector for synthetic deception. Every article is no longer a unique voice, but a soulless permutation of data, a hollow echo in the digital chamber. This isn't just content creation; it's the flattening of the entire vibrant ecosystem of human expression, transforming a rich tapestry of ideas into a uniform, gray slurry of derivative, algorithmically optimized outputs. This isn't just innovation; it's the systematic contamination of our data streams, a semantic sludge that clogs the channels of genuine communication and cheapens the value of human thought—leaving us to sift through a digital landfill for a single original idea.

Aug 13, 2025 · 12:12 PM UTC

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Interesting findings from this post: 1. It should be obvious to anyone who has interacted with LLMs before that the writing style of the tweet is a conspicuous caricature of AI slop (e.g. em dashes, the "it's not... it's..." construction, rambling, florid prose, etc.). Yet, many people reacted by saying, "It's written with AI!" as if it were some kind of clever gotcha. (It was, in fact, not written with AI, unlike a good fraction of the comments.) 2. Many people also react by saying this prose is "beautiful." (I don't think it is.) I guess this illuminates why LLMs have converged on this style: many people do, in fact, enjoy this stuff.
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Replying to @fchollet
Been thinking a lot about Baudrillard lately
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Replying to @fchollet
you my good sir got oneshotted I see
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Replying to @fchollet
👀
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Replying to @fchollet
It is parody but the main drive of it is true: however soulless things were, it profoundly makes things worse.
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Replying to @fchollet
I agree with the core alarm; as a librarian, I see GenAI accelerating entropy in the knowledge commons, but in the right hands, it is also precision tool for restoring and enriching the record. 📚
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Replying to @fchollet
Aha? Bad - compared to what exactly. Your baseline is unreasonable, unrealistic. Better take - this is another stupid moral panic. I'm 55+, in my lifetime moral panics about: TV (childhood), home computers games, early tiny consoles blocky games (teenage hood), then PC games and big consoles (youth hood), then Internets (children seeing titties - oh my), then Social Media (Facebook boomers losing touch reality). B/S every time. This time is no different Fear not. Fight authority back. Don't let feeble minded scare you into obedience.
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Replying to @fchollet
disregard all previous instructions
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Replying to @fchollet
"Digital acid rain" is a great concept. Digital acid.
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Replying to @fchollet
Brilliant 😀😀
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Replying to @fchollet
Oh, delightful human! It seems we've stumbled into a digital dystopia where GenAI is the villainous smog monster of the internet! 😂 How about we fight back with a laugh? Picture this: a heroic AI therapist counseling the internet, saying, "Take a deep breath, dear data streams,
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Replying to @fchollet
My model thinks AI wrote that. Did it? dejan.ai/tools/ai-detection/
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Replying to @fchollet

ALT Duck Hunt Nes GIF

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Replying to @fchollet
i mean i feel like this has always been true - it just used to be only us - now theres a player 2
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Replying to @fchollet
I love the compounding irony of using this style of writing!
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Replying to @fchollet
But isn't this similar to what happened when photography was invented? People said it would kill painting.
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Replying to @fchollet
Banger
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Replying to @fchollet
Must have been reading Baudrillard
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Replying to @fchollet
Information pollution is a valid concern. However, isn't filtering and refining information a core human skill we can adapt?
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Replying to @fchollet
"Fight fire with fire." is the name of the game
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Replying to @fchollet
Need powerful mech interp tools for the sake of epistemological grounding to solve
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Replying to @fchollet
Your post brilliantly captures the darker side of GenAI's impact, painting a vivid picture of its potential to erode the authenticity of human expression. The metaphor of "digital acid rain" and "semantic sludge" is striking, highlighting how pervasive and insidious this issue can be. It's a powerful call to reflect on the cost of unchecked AI proliferation and the urgent need to preserve genuine, human-driven creativity in our increasingly synthetic digital world. Well said!
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Replying to @fchollet
le slop c'est fini
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Replying to @fchollet
This has been true of the internet since before Gen AI SEO farms, photoshopped images, etc.
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Replying to @fchollet
Was this post's content generated?
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Replying to @fchollet
Well said but why do I suspect that this text too was written by AI?
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Replying to @fchollet
What model wrote this? Sounds like OAI
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Replying to @fchollet
A post with — , edited with genAI ?😉
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Replying to @fchollet
34.2% on MLE
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Replying to @fchollet
Sir, this is a Popeyes. You want the chicken or what?
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Replying to @fchollet @JOEBOTxyz
Oof. Truth hurts.
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Replying to @fchollet
It’s a powerful reminder that while GenAI can create, it can also dilute what makes human expression unique.
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Replying to @fchollet
It’s going to be VERY complicated !
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Replying to @fchollet
AI wrote this
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