kurzgesagt – AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel / Destroying the Internet
kurzgesagt – AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel / Destroying the Internet
Maybe not that interesting for everyone here, but I found no better community for this.
kurzgesagt – AI Slop Is Killing Our Channel / Destroying the Internet
Maybe not that interesting for everyone here, but I found no better community for this.
I want an ad / DNS blocklist for AI slop. I want to not even be able to go to HiSToRiAn AsLeEp In ThE WoOdS channels on my networks and devices
You can have your Google search go before 2022. I do this sometimes
Google still does its psychotic summarys though.
Then other day I was trying to find out how to get just one AD account not to sync through to Azure without disabling it. And the AI came up with this complicated instruction set that didn't work and was totally made up from nowhere. Now what on earth was the point in doing that?
At one point it told me I had to triple click on something. Because that's totally a thing.
Their quality going down is probably what’s killing their channel. Every video is a merch ad, and the occasional shilling for the fossil fuel industry probably doesn’t help any.
These things are to be expected when you get bought by private equity, but let’s not be dishonest and say it’s all AI slop that’s killing them.
When did they shill for fossil fuel? Not saying it didn't happen, just wondering
Idk about fossil fuels specifically but they been directly being sponsored by big companies and in return making propoganda for them for a few years now.
They accepted, and continue to accept a great amount of money from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That foundation owns over $11 billion in investments in the fossil fuel industry, including coal-burning utility companies.
In return, there were quite a few videos that Kurzgesagt admits were funded directly by the Foundation, that exaggerate the positive influence corporations owned by the foundation have had. Videos which the CEO of Kurzgesagt has admitted they probably would not have made if the Foundation had not paid for them.
These things are to be expected when you get bought by private equity,
Excuse me, what?
They are owned by private equity? It's pretty common these days for the more popular YT channels. Veritasium, Astrum, Fireship, fern., and Hoog are some other examples. Basically, if it's a popular YT channel, it's either owned by PE, in negotiations to be acquired by PE, or pursued by a PE firm in the hopes that they can acquire it. Private equity is accelerating their acquisitions, actually, and they want to control everything that captures the attention of viewers.
Here's a video that talks about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ-rRXWhElI
I just looked at the public company records and they are not owned by private equity. What are you talking about?
And of course, the video was preempted by an AI slop ad of a talking monkey wearing a neck brace.
Use Firefox + uBlock Origin on desktop and on mobile. Only watch YouTube via Firefox. Never see these bullshit ads again.
Currently adblocking is winning the war of the technical evolution of control vs. resistance.
Sounds better than the fucking singing purple llama I get all the time ruining a song from Dirty Dancing by changing the ‘I’ to ‘AI’.
‘AI had the time of my life’ doesn’t even make sense!
It is literally AI taking time out of of your life, I don't see how that doesn't make sense to you.
I have noticed that I don't click on their videos as fast. Used to be that as soon as you see a video in the feed it was an instant click.
I think the topics they make videos on these days feel more gimicy and click baity so I kinda avoid them
100%. The recent videos all seem like they’re ragebait (‘alcohol is awesome’ springs to mind).
They could be good, I haven’t watched them. if they’re targeting people who respond to that tone then it’s not for me.
It’s a shame. I liked the earlier videos on ant colonies and strange matter and stars and stuff.
Kurzgesagt is annoyingly techno-solutionist but now that they are a big target of AI slop (their artistic style being heavily copied), they complain. That's good I guess.
If you actually watch the video that's not what they're talking about. They are talking about how it's difficult to fact check information in a world of AI misinformation.
I always find it's easier to know what a video is about if I actually watched the video. It's just this little life hack I've come up with.
Watch the video? Duh. Thanks I watched it, and I know they don’t talk about how AI steals their art style (even though it’s really happening). I just pointed out the irony. The video also says they are usually enthusiastic about new tech but not this time.
I know this channel well enough to have seen countless videos praising fake tech like carbon capture and that’s why I have a problem with them. Am I allowed to have an opinion?
I don't think they are techno-solutionists but that sometimes is the vibe they give off.
I just think there's some directions they won't go thanks to the threat of capital.
Techno-solutionist lol. The power of labels eh?
What is the problem with techno-solutionism? Is it just that under capitalism techno-solutionism often results in corruption? Is the development of lemmy not techno-solutionism (to the enshittification of reddit)?
I lost interest in the channel due to their overly optimistic hopium, e.g. "We WILL solve climate change."
They don't say that, though?
They say things like "with effort, we can solve climate change, or minimise its effects."
Which is very different. And personally, I hate over the top doomerism where everyone says everything is fucked beyond repair all the time.
I'm pretty sure they do say that, almost exactly.
“with effort, we can solve climate change, or minimise its effects.”
The issue is not the claim that with effort we maybe can minimise the effects, it's the techno-utopia angle. We will solve this by changing nothing about the underlying economic system driving climate change, but Bill Gates and other smart billionaires will make some fantastic technology that will save us!
There's nothing helpful about giving up though is there.
And we could stop climate change, it's entirely possible, presumably people don't want to die so they will take action but they probably not going to start to act until climate change becomes more apparent, that's depressing but that's human nature. Humans have a long history of making radical changes at the last minute, e.g the cold war.
We like to go right up to the cliff edge but we tend not to take the final step.
After all even China is cleaning up its act and they're the least likely to be cooperative so if even they're doing something about it there's hope.
We will not solve it, it's way too late for that. Still, every 0.01°C additional warming counts. People not born yet will suffer more from everything we don't do now. So, rolling on our backs and giving up is not helping at all. Going vegan is a easy first step to make a difference. Start blowing up pipelines after that. :)
going vegan has not made any difference
capitalism will solve climate change
Tangential, but thats what disgusted me about the Osaka world expo. The theme was sustainability so you had fossil fuel companies presenting wildly impractical "solutions" and art projects. The message was "things are under control, continue sleepwalking into oblivion"
Have you heard of the experiment with swimming rats and how much longer they swam when given hope? We need hope to survive.
Though they don't say we will solve it, but that we can solve it if we start now.
It was the "what-ifs" that did it for me.
Very boring stuff.
Good news, this video is not very optimistic
I watched this with my son last night. Quite enjoyed it. I find the cadences of the narrator's voice oddly soothing, although ironically it sounds very like an AI voice.
I've been watching that channel for years it's very high quality.
I mean there's been some controversy surrounding a number of their videos. Some were under fire for poor research or demonstrating a singular, not widely-held view on certain topics. And I think for one video they were accused of plagiarism iirc. This was when it was still somewhat early days for the channel, haven't followed them since so not sure what the state is now.
What do you think AI voices were trained off of?
probably using an AI voice themselves.
I feel like the title doesn't match the content.
The video gives an elaborate description on their evaluation of "AI" and it's influence on the Internet at large. And then they conclude with "we'll continue like before" directly contradicting the title.
Feels disingenuous. And ironic after they talked about their extensive investments into fact checking.
The video gives an elaborate description on their evaluation of “AI” and it’s influence on the Internet at large. And then they conclude with “we’ll continue like before” directly contradicting the title.
You missed the entire point of the video.
The claims are simple:
It's the exact same situation about climate change... we need to act now, most of us will suffer otherwise but for now we continue on living while trying to adjust where we can (recycling, reusing, less/no meat, etc) even if we know that will not be enough long term.
Also, presuming they are sincere and put in all that effort, they are competing with other sources that have no such discipline and they are able to flood the field and grab eyeballs faster than they could.
Not the guy you're answering to, but I kind of agree with him, the point is fuzzy and the title is clickbaity. With sucha title I expected they would present numbers and figures.
DeArrow shows the title as something like "why you can't trust AI with facts"
I love DeArrow so much. Best addon I've ever donated to, very worth it
Do you think if we pool every AI in the world it will be able to figure out the difference between its and it's? Seems unlikely.
Awww is it the first youtube video you watched?
Did you come into a comment section and expected not to see any comments?
Do you take everything as it is, without criticizing anything?
Do that if you want. No need to be so dismissive without actually making your point. Which I assume is that clickbait is "normal".
The channel hat always been disingenuous. It's not the first video they have where they develop a well written essay that has conclusions that make no sense with the information presented. It's the theater of research without any of the substance. The editors just do whatever they want, under the expectations that the writing team will support their preconceived notion.
They're an entertainment channel, not a science communication channel. They have said some awful, totally not fact supported stuff in the past.
They have said some awful, totally not fact supported stuff in the past.
Like?
Wow look at all of the evidence you've provided. It's going to take me all night to go through it.
If you going to make claims like that you're going to need to provide even a shred of evidence
As far as science channels go, you've got SpaceTime for college students, Veritasium for high schoolers, and Kurzgesagt for newborn infants or maybe a smart dog. It's probably at about the right level if you want to explain science to an Australian Shepherd.
!videos@lemmy.world is a good one for stuff like this. That community loves their work.
world no thank you
Boo!
Some of their videos are pretty good, but taking funding from billionaires is never a good look.
I'm curious why you have a different title than the video?
Al Slop ls Destroying The Internet
Large YouTube channels usually try different titles and thumbnails during the first few hours after upload, so the title OP posted was probably accurate at the time of posting.
Got it, thank you.
Either Kurzgesagt changed the title, or it's A/B testing with multiple titles. When I watched the video yesterday, it had the same title as OP used
They changed it.
You can still edit and change the title!
It's definitely not only that.
I and, from what I've seen discussed here and elsewhere online, many other people have stopped watching the channel because of many valid reasons completely unrelated to AI.
I haven't watched a single one of their videos for years, something changed in their content and I just lost interest. Then there have been several controversial events throughout the years, both objective bad stuff and subjective things that made many loose interest and faith in their integrity.
They definitely became one of the many channels that lost it's way because of how big it got. The animations became too "perfect" in a weird way, they lost their personality and they also got scared of having real opinions so they started doing this "all sides" shit and that's when I tapped out.
I've tried to watch new videos from them about once every 6 months or so, but I can't even make it past a minute without completely loosing interest.
You didn't even watch this video.
In that it's mostly a merch ad hidden behind a clickbait title.
So I guess it's a good test for that sort of "just read the headline" response.
It's been a rough few days and I think I may be coming around. What hope is there to parse AI misinformation if people can't parse a Reddit-like link aggregator?
I may be done with this place at this point. It's just all bad. If not the whole Internet, certainly the whole of social media.
I mean, I didn’t watch this video because I lost interest when the channel started getting really dark around 2020. I just needed a laugh during the pandemic. I didn’t need 4 videos in a row about the end of the world, then a few about the end of the universe, followed by a future civil war. It was too much.
Completely agree, their channel has changed a lot and seems to be producing videos on a conveyor belt now, while before they used to do one video or maximum two a month. Now it seems they produce a video a week, and interesting topics are more hard to come by.
When they said that they're "almost 70 full time people and a lot of freelancers on top" I almost did a spit take. I know there are big channels and operations on YT, but this seems such an unreasonable amount of employees for this type of channel and audience. No wonder it feels oversaturated and overdone, they probably feel the need to put more and more videos to keep their huge team and expences afloat.
Just find a sustainable pace and team size, don't go the corporate way of growth over all.
I think you might be referenced in this video 😉
I don't really have an issue with AI slop. It's the same level of quality as most influencer-shit out there.
I just ignore it.
Have they considered that they're just not a great channel?
Have you actually watched any of their videos? That's obviously not true
They put out a lot of really good stuff, but I guess because they're popular and accessible it's cool to hate on them.
I dont think its AI Slop thats "killing the channel" if that statement is even remotely true its due to more and more of their videos being slop sci low information videos. The target audience must be stoners who want to watch something that is visually appealing and feels educational
For what it's worth, I kinda agree. Maybe I've changed but I feel like their content over the last year or two is nowhere near as good as it was.
Maybe I've just had a change in taste, though.
They're fine. Jesus christ.
terrible animations, and its worst than other "education science channels" the least they could do is use actual footage or pictures of the things hes discussing.
Kurzgezagt is a slop channel too you know.
You can't really call it slop just because you disagree with their views and representations of things.
Their stuff is carefully researched and sourced, human crafted and open to critique. Whether they're correct in their assessments or not is of course up for debate, but it's good craftsmanship and they show their work.
Careful research ?
Eh, there's a lot of blending of conjecture, opinion and fact all presented as truth, and their handling of mistakes could be better - they've openly said if they consider a mistake to be minor then they don't even issue a correction or update.
I personally think that attitude towards production pushes it towards slop, as for things like entertainment one of the key defining things that separate slop from quality media is passion, but if you don't care about making accurate content then are you any better than just getting AI to write a script?
Eww Bad Empanada? That guy is unreasonably gross.
Reasons ? Oh wait you hate him. Me too but that doesn't mean his points are invalid.
Tell me you live in an internet echo chamber without directly saying it…
If echo chamber means I can criticize your gurus, then so be it
This video is very probably also AI slop
They have been doing this animation style since 2013.
Why do you think they use AI?
I think your AI senses are broken, you see AI everywhere where there is not. You're like the extreme opposite of AI Tech Bro. Like you have paranoid AI-phobia or something.
... wut?
Their animation style has been like this for over a decade
This whole video felt like an advertisement to me. I’d already seen it twice, was it necessary to crosspost it again? You could at least have waited a couple of weeks before reposting the same content.
Kurzgesagt became (non AI) slop itself so im not surprised. All the videos of them that i have watched in the past few years were disappointments.
I mean, you're petroleum industry apologists, so for a change I'm not that broken up.
Kurzgesagt? I didn't know this, how come?
They have gotten money from Bill Gates foundation. Still its a pop sci YouTube and does a good job at it. Some say its spreading misinformation or that context is missing. I don't really see malicious intentions. Expecting more of a pop sci publication is kind of absurd; take a real class and study if you want more.
An example:
Honestly, it isn't the AI so much as it is the suspension that rules that apply to us should also apply to AI. They are barely legal companies getting away with murder due to the residual power of a corrupt empire in decline.
Much the same as blockchain - it could have been exciting and fun, but it was immediately put to work to exploit people, and in the end that's what the tools effectively were.
I don't think blockchain has any legitimate uses. All of the proposed uses for blockchain are all tech bro nonsense.
I think they were talking about having a decentralised property permits. As if that's something that would be even remotely useful.