And, playing devils advocate for a moment, does it matter if a robot or a human authored it if people like it? People loved Magic Eye pictures in the 90s and they were computer generated too.
But we are talking about popular culture here. That was never an industry where quality was measure in artistic excellence but instead in mass appeal.
But when I ask my realtor questions, he doesn't know anything. I get the same answers by typing into ChatGPT.
When I ask the Claude team at work about why this or that, they don't have a clue. They "will get back to me", which means they'll forward the question to Claude and Claude will output another 500-words email with a lot of things that are obvious and not part of the question, another couple of assumptions that are plainly false, and in the middle of it, sometimes, yes, an interesting insight. But the insight doesn't come from the people sending the email, they didn't produce it, they don't see it, and they never act on it.
This is all just exhausting.
Not going to comment on your workplace specifically, but I’ve found this to be an issue with other industries like real estate long before ChatGPT were a thing.
The problem is the people who pickup the phone, greet you at the shop door, or take the photos, they’re the lowest paid juniors and thus know nothing.
So in most industries, you were always lucky to get through to someone with knowledge on the first attempt.
The problem with AI is that "someone" may not exist.
I think the bigger risk is what happens when they retire if we are not training the next generation of professionals.
This is exactly what we were saying with programming during early day of LLM. But that does not stop people from doing 100% vibe-coded projects.
You can try asking.
The only way for them to prove themself to the mass is a live coding session, without AI of course
That's ridiculous... Let's vibe code everything, but with a doctrine and principles!
If I'm going to do vibe coding, I don't need principles. No rules! And no future.
Yes I know.
But the topic of this thread was "slop", not training
To me AI generated content is exactly like that. Cheap, fast and easy access.
It's fine for occasional consumption, and in some setting it's definitely not suitable to be served.
If that's true for every AI output is up for discussion, but it's reasonable that if someone is skeptical about the technology, they will also be skeptical about the quality.
That the tech is taking over many areas is not a stretch at all, that's just something that can be observed. Big companies (not just big tech) have been trying to get away with lowering (cost cutting) the quality of their products for a long time, AI lends itself to the same purpose, and will (and already is) obviously be used for it. Starts with customer communication as you mentioned, and customer service, and believe it or not I don't think every company should generate their own tech stack and software for their little products.
That's not really the point. Critics the world over LOVED the book; they only distanced themselves from it when it became clear it was AI, but when they didn't know, they couldn't stop raving about it.
Fair enough. But the real problem, it seems, is that people love slop.
My family is trying to sell a house in the South of France; the real estate people are sending us 500-words emails every so often, that are so obviously AI it hurts. Well written, and content free. Nobody cares. I'm the only one having issues with it.
At work, a new team let Claude do all their work and write all their status reports. Everybody seems to love it. It's so fast! And mostly correct! And so fast to correct when it's wrong! And here too, I'm the only one having issues with it.
A Canadian author wrote a book in French that turned out to be 100% AI ("C'était ça ou mourir"). Before that was revealed, every critic loved it, in Canada, in France and everywhere else (25 translations were started). The public loved it too: it's one of the top best sellers, and success continued even after the "scandal".
We are drowning in slop and nobody cares.