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878 - You Will NEVER Regret Listening to this Episode feat. Max Read (10/21/24) (Patreon)

Published:
2024-10-22 02:21:02
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

Journalist Max Read joins us to discuss his new piece on the proliferation of “AI Slop”: unwanted, low quality, often surreal content flooding the internet and degrading its various platforms. We talk about the dystopian quality of the trend, the economic factors encouraging it, and how it portends poorly for the future of online.

Max’s AI Slop piece: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-generated-content-internet-online-slop-spam.html

Subscribe to Max’s newsletter READ MAX at https://maxread.substack.com/

Order Matt’s Book (and check out the new merch!): https://chapotraphouse.store

Come to our 11/4 Election Eve show in LA with E1: https://link.dice.fm/b1eb3de54f54

Files

Comments

Coyotes

Love my slop

Jake Zydek

a pox on ai and its proponents (in minecraft)

Goonba

I love chapo so fucking much

ploob

Eats the slop Born to slop

Zach H.

Yeah, the death of the internet!

Jacob

True Anon sloppy seconds

SpongeGunderson

AI could actually be a new way to analyze our collective unconscious. It has no mind of its own, so whatever we get out of it is created by the detritus of what we put out into the world.

JD Nonce

Slopdrop subject: SLOP!!!!

Matelda

But only a select "we" is putting out loads of content where it can be used. AI can't read any paper diary but it will read five million articles commissioned by faceless managers

Khemith

Don't worry, all the governments will combat AI porn and AI child porn to pretend to be doing something, but allow the internet to flooded with stable diffuse trash.

Ellyn

oof that thumbnail

mooglesuit

In incoherent “slop” permutations that would rarely if ever occur naturally/organically. So it’s actually unnatural, obfuscatory “noise” that would be counterproductive to analyzing the supposed collective unconscious.

Noah Mingus

I got Matt's book on October 1 cuz I ain't no b****

Walking Bones

I will never recover from Matt speaking Mandarin. It's like the language he was born to speak.

SpongeGunderson

For sure! It would def be biased towards the imperial subject and the idle nonsense of American culture. I don’t mean to suggest we’d have access to the “true” human soul, or anything. But we could see the… idk, scaffolding/ sewage, expressed in the bombastic language of a dominant world power.

SpongeGunderson

I agree. A lot of nonsense is transparently manufactured and inorganic. But McDonalds is extremely popular and profitable. Even in a purely cultural sense. And I think an analysis of McDonalds is a perfectly valid ingredient in an analysis of the American/ western subject. I think AI’s output is directly linked to the prompt, or input, that it creates. And I think those prompts are going to be super valuable.

Michael S. Judge

No sweat, Sarge. Those fuckin' Krauts barely knicked you. We'll be back in the 6ix before you know it.

Shiv

i pretend i do not see it

Shiv

slop slop for hogs

Jon

I gotta tell Will, his New York Liberty earned a Mickey Mouse title over the weekend

Mayor McCheese

Thanks for doing this. I'm a new sci-fi author with one novel published and it means so much that you're putting a spotlight on the "Entrepreneurs" trying to wallhack prose fiction. They're [in]selling us out. i wrote an article myself on how to naviagate generative AI products effectively for a publication called Swordfights and Spaceflights if it is of any interest. :) https://swordfightsandspaceflights.com/2023/06/06/intelligenc-ai/

interzoa

ai produced media has a disturbing tension. it's like staring at the alien from The Thing mimmicked as my dog and we both are aware what's going on but there's a moment of silence where we're both pretending nothing is wrong and it hasn't killed my friend.

Travis

Felix begins speaking at 2 minutes and 56 seconds today

lake

Except the alien from the thing is cool

Jake MacLennan

If you already purchased a non-signed version because the signed ones ran out is there a way to upgrade your purchase or do you just have to order a new signed copy?

Shiv

Max is right: we CAN make 9/11 memes ourselves

Agent Grange

The idea "dead internet theory" being about cranks thinking they're the last people on the internet and everyone else is a robot hologram is just the most extreme example. The more nuanced take on it is basically true-- yeah there are still real people on the internet but it's been so diluted by the influx of AI slop that it's pushed people further and further away from being able to authentically engage with others while breaking a lot of its functionality. Just try image searching *anything* and you'll see that current search engines have become entirely unusable. At the same time specific areas for online discourse have been sort of forcibly distilled onto platforms that are fully captured by corporate / government interests that we *know* use bots and deceitful moderation tools to maintain a stagnant, sterile web ecosystem. Like I get really freaked out when I start thinking about how every private web forum that used to be managed by one guy about someone's special interest with its own community ecosystem has been entirely subsumed by Reddit. If you grew up on Web2 forums, you can't avoid this very real feeling that the Internet you used in the 2000s is well and truly passed if not intentionally strangled. Combine web consolidation with AI, and it really does feel like Metal Gear Solid 2's apocalyptic vision of a deluge of meaningless, unparsable information smothering out all other digital information that isn't explicitly fed to you by the media has come to pass.

Waffle Poet

Fantastic episode, Mr. Chapo. Mr. Read is a smart, funny guest, and he seems far more creative in his approach to examining this stupid fucking phenomenon than most. Really looking forward to reading his article after the show. Oh, and thanks for dropping “Pay for the Printer”, Mr. Menaker. I had no idea it existed. Just permanently borrowed my copy.

Last Years Man

I want a running bet on how many times more Will calls the book "Matt Christman's Civil War"

Agent Grange

Small addition, there's something to be said too about how all of the bot engagement on bot generated slop is all creating click through revenue for SOMEONE even though it's not based in absolutely any actual value. It's like the very mechanisms of our self-perperuating stock-based economy has infected our world through this digital space. Freaky shit.

Sai

The important use-case for "AI" or iterative computer algorithms is unprecedented mass surveillance and maybe "threat" identification (black box tells powers that be who to bomb)

Evan Pitkin

Will sounds like he stuffed his cheeks with Zyn. Funny ep tho.

Last Years Man

I'm a pro translator. Unfortunately, Mr. Read is incorrect. The translation quality of generative AI is superficially impressive and collapses upon any in-depth analysis. And the biggest problem with AI translation is that the people using it for output have no clue of what the output they're getting actually says. The job of the pro translator is NOT to efficiently transfer words from one language to another. It's to take responsibility for the output and guarantee that it's an effective reproduction of what you wanted to express. We are not going to end up with a world where everyone around the world communicates effectively. We're going to end up with a world where everything is polished and surface-level comprehensible but completely lacking in any depth or context. ANd it won't be because depth and context don't exist. Rather, it will be because we destroyed our only method of engaging with those things across cultural lines.

Andrew Cross

I can suggest an equation that has the potential to impact the future: E = mc2 + Al This equation combines Einstein's famous equation E=mc', which relates energy (E) to mass (m) and the speed of light (c), with the addition of Al (Artificial Intelligence). By including Al in the equation, it symbolizes the increasing role of artificial intelligence in shaping and transforming our future. This equation highlights the potential for Al to unlock new forms of energy, enhance scientific discoveries, and revolutionize various fields such as healthcare, transportation, and technology.

Eileen

Highly recommend looking into Yanis Varoufakis’ book/videos on technofeudalism as a way to frame the AI slop economy He does a beautiful job laying out how tech companies have essentially brought us into a new phase of capitalism - it’s no longer just our labor that’s extracted for profit, but our “free time” now too (as these platforms increasingly function as our dominant modes of communication/sources of leisure), with the owners of the platforms generating profit from every second we spend on them looking at ads and slop

Joey Fazzoli

I was running through auschwitz with my woes

Front Dogs Go To Heaven

At first I was disappointed that the Homer cover wasn't Born Slippy, but the outro was 10/10

Luggi

Love a literary moment

Chapo Bath House

What this always reminds me of are the 2 ecommerce child trafficking panics First, there was the Wayfair panic in 2020. When, TBF, we were all bored and losing our goddamn minds and a feedback loop of pricing algorithms made industrial cabinets cost like a million dollars ergo child selling (truncated for space). Then earlier this year, you've got the Etsy ai slop pizzagate bullshit. Irredeemable ai slop, that wasn't even funny!, up for sale on Etsy, including one that had a picture of a pizza and all hell broke loose. What's worse is that someone had bought this shit for an absurd price, imo most likely sock puppets being used to farm engagement. I think the money laundering theory is kinda fun, after all, that is how the real art market works. But of course there is a pizzagate/OG q contingent out there, down to only their strongest soldiers, who were convinced this was the Lucifarian govt buying and selling children. (Because they don't believe the children their kids are watching die in Gaza every day are real and the fault of of our government and you've got to do something with all your dispair)

Chapo Bath House

I've used Chatgpt to write cover letters for jobs that never called me back, and to make a cool picture of JCVD doing the splits over the twin towers

Michael Xin

That Mandarin thing is incredible. The pronunciation is 95% there, but feels unnatural because it lacks any discernible dialect. Next time someone should make you guys speak in a Changsha dialect like Chairman Mao

Salt M. Bank

Alien from the Thing also struggled with forming accurate human hands

Gordon Schmidt

The Chapo in Chinese segment reminded me- has anyone else had a dream where Matt was back on the podcast again?

Last Years Man

Wait, is the outro Hank Hill singing "Fast Car?"

Last Years Man

That's exactly the type of uncanny valley that results from all AI translation. It's aggregating the voices of millions of divergent mandarin speakers and playing them back like speak and spell. In the world of pure systematic grammar and syntax, there are no dialects.

Christian Johnson

Hey Chris, why no mention of Central Time? It's Midwest erasure & I'm sure our large son from Wisconsin doesn't approve either

D.O.D

It's our moral duty in fact

Christian Johnson

I work as a high school counselor (ready for the jokes, fire away) and multiple times a week I get referrals that my students are using A.I. to do their homework

D.O.D

Sloppo Chap House

Hardcore Virgin

Usually true anon does much better with their guests (ie nick bryant) but , 25 min in, this seems fresh Way to go

D.O.D

Luke Combs. Somebody made an AI version of him covering Fast Car, then he did it IRL, then he and Chapman dueted at the Grammys IIRC. It sucks ass except the original song is so good it's still listenable

Hardcore Virgin

Also, on the utility of the ai, I’m programming a video game solo and it is extremely useful for iterative tasks and debugging….of course you gotta know how to code to interface with it and know what it is doing but it is really helpful.

Last Years Man

I looked it up. It's actually "Hank Hill covering Luke Combs" (this is likely in reference to what Will was saying in the ep about Homer Simpson doing covers). I had no idea about the Luke Combs cover and have no desire to listen to it but cool that Tracy Chapman got to be on TV again. I'm with you. THe original is classic.

Last Years Man

Fast forward a few years until some dipshit does a cover that edits out all the latter verses about the couple ending up unhappy and turns it into an inspirational song. Barf.

C. Ries

Good for them

C. Ries

Guess what, five million awful articles commissioned by faceless managers is a better representation of contemporary humanity than your gay diary

C. Ries

Listening to TF2 mercs sing songs with AI is funny. We just have to ban boomers from using it on pain of death. We can use Israel’s drone bombing AI network to enforce this.

CS

More and more people are saying it

Karim El-Hayawan

I find it strange that Sinwar's death hasn't been mentioned yet on the show.

Jabroni Ludd

Dead internet theory + state funded misinfo bot armies + infinite jest hypermemes = personalized slop echo chamber that doesnt look fake to you but does to other people

max longtin

Mandarin Chapo and AI Homer are legit so good, unfortunately everything else is so bad

Doug Cartel

You talk Philip k dick but my reflexive response was to think of that ray Bradbury story where the dude is running around an empty town on mars trying to find whoever is on the other end of the telephone line

etienne

Tom Clancy's Matt Christman's Spain's Civil War

Podcast subscriber 78

Thank you. Because you did not also give an end time, I must assume he is still speaking. Does anyone know where I can find that?

GG Allin Dulles

No but I had a dream last week that I took a tour of a preserved royal navy ship of the line with Matt and Alex from fym and later Alex dragged a dead body onto some train tracks as a prank

IlIIllIIl llII

I had a dream that they realized they couldn’t do the show without Matt and ended it lol

kron

A.I. pictures just give me the heebeegeebees. I just feel like there’s worms in my pants whenever I see them. My brain just has that instinctive uncanny valley reaction to it. Like how cavemen are programmed to react to a monkeys face emerging from the darkness. Immediately recognizing it as not human and your fight or flight activating is important for survival

Pædiekeix

But it’s his birthday You will never regret liking this photo

Jaime Christley

My unified field theory about AI is that Big Data has hoovered up exponentially far more data than any existing processing/parsing technology can handle; thus the market for buying, selling, collecting, whatevering data is going to experience a subsidence, it won't be very nice, and the whole AI circus is a way for "disruptors" and tech promisers and other self-appointed gurus to prolong the inevitable. Some may even believe it - that some monstrously self-sustaining, swelling AI application will be able to manage the unmanageable. That maybe we should just put Tetsuo in charge of Kaneda and it'll all be jake.

triplehashbrown

Alternate Title: Neon Genesis Evan-Jelly Roll

MonsoonMoon

Why did you cuck me out of a "yub nub"?

etienne

[guy who's currently on page 1823 of Infinite Jest] maybe social media is like InterLace and AI is The Entertainment

Al

*Crysis Suit Voice* MAXIMUM READ

THEKILLERWHALE

That google dipshit saying that AI will fix climate change is either the stupidest thing I have ever heard or the most cynical. For the raw cynicism, a lot of this is opaque, but the publicly available information indicates is that what we call AI is just natural language processors trained on enormous data sets culled from the internet (and consuming enormous amounts of energy btw) and deployed to predict conversations/images/etc (auto-predict on steroids). In no world could this possibly be utilized to "fix" climate change. There are scientific advances that come from NLP's (the same underlying prediction model can predict protein structure for example), but there is a clear training set (known protein structures) and a limited problem. So these men (generally) know that they are deploying a very limited technology that predicts what a humanish response to a given query could be and, since this resembles conversing with a living person, they call it AI and then write a million op-eds about how they invented god and how it will kill us all (humblebrag) while their coffers fill with investment money to pay for the enormous power consumption that fuels this illusion. So if he actually believes that there is a process by which an NLP can be trained to save us from climate change (again, auto-complete on steroids) then he is an idiot that does not have a rudimentary understanding of his own product. If he knows this, then he is somehow the most cynical of all of these horrible men who have enriched themselves by exploiting an utterly credulous tech media. I do not know which is worse.

plainwrap

I think at some point AI, overwhelmed by having to search the AI-swollen internet, is going to turn into Bartleby the Scrivener and just tell users it can't make an image or prompt or answer their dumbass question. "Google it," it's going to say, "That information is already out there. I'd rather not generate any more." It's already lying and making up answers; the next logical step is saying no.

Ryeman

God that image is cursed

Jaime Christley

she Yub on my Nub until Ewok (no, I don't like it either)

Matt M

It’s funny, given the NIMBYism pervasive in the area, how the drive across the San Francisco Bay bridge into the city is plastered with billboards. Something funny about them is how they’ve gone from mostly crypto to now weird AI cybersecurity and other AI tech shit. Makes sense given it’s the source of this shit.

Drew

AI for programmers is just a much better autocomplete. It's usually wrong and has to be fixed but at least I don't have to type as much.

Jaime Christley

What kind of monks listen to Chapo? Trappist.

Йълмаз Асанов

i live in the fuking Balkans so i also can not afford it.it will be too much. maybe doing ebook?

Tea for the Tillerman

If you’re complaining about the cost of Matt Christman’s book here you are too stupid to be able to read it anyway.

njellingson (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-09 10:00 Im a software engineer and AI code completion is neat 5% of the time and absolute garbage the rest of the time. I rely on code completion to learn about new APIs, and tab to complete is necessary. AI tools keep suggesting APIs that don’t exist, and do not understand anything about my local environment. tech companies have been absolutely deceived into thinking AI models are useful in anyway for their bottom line, and its adoption and hype among over paid tech people is a testament to the myth of meritocracy
2024-10-22 17:30

Gucci Brandt

Quit whining about Matt’s book price. Either buy it or don’t either way shut up. It will be out for less $ in digital format or even used at some point in the near future. Printing small runs of books isn’t cheap. Get your bread up or wait patiently. It costs less than a single xbox game ffs.

Dan

Love this, bold new topic! Hurray

叔叔六十四 (Uncle64)

Idk A.I. video seems to be our best bet for getting Chapo and E1's movie Sodas to into a reality.

Schwartz666

Damn it, all I got was dream w/ Steve Bannon in it.

David Woodward

Anybody have a link to the Mandarin live show clip?

Steve Powell

I don’t completely agree with the idea that it’s a toothpaste-out-of-tube problem. For one thing, AI requires huge amounts of compute, requiring huge datacentres that use enormous amounts of energy and water. Tech Won’t Save Us—another great podcast—is doing a really interesting series about how people have started pushing back against those.

Burrito_Bandito

He’s right about generative AI images being useful for leisure purposes. I only ever use it for throwaway NPC portaits for my Roll20 rpg group but I still always feel a little guilty even though I have paid multiple commissions in the past.

Jerry Cornelius

I understand Max’s generalized hopelessness vis à vis the future, but I wonder if the enshittification of every web app and platform will eventually drive people off their devices and machines. What if the web experience becomes so devoid of meaning, so diabolically surveilled, so hostile and impossible to trust, so difficult to use for work or school that we (humanity) undergo an analog Renaissance? A second Enlightenment in which our compulsive addiction to digital novelty is overridden by the impenetrable misery of being online? We’d reject digital communications in favor of interacting with people and information in person, so we can parse with intuition and reason in a slop-free environment. Just a thought!

Rxk Lenderman

I think it could go either way. I hope/think that what you say will happen is the logical outcome, but also everything we know about how capitalism works tells me that if there’s enough money thrown around to entrench AI, we will basically just be forced to live with it

Emmett Butler

Dead internet theory is just the premise of Breakfast of Champions

Kinetics Video

Going to start running into America's disdain for building infrastructure of any kind more and more

sean the horny corpse ghost 👻

general AI is useless. AI agents are what everyone will be using. very specific ai bots you use instead of co-workers.

William

More like stable refuse amirite folks

Yoshi

Who?

William

I use it for letters of recommendation

William

No. Source : I’m normal

Matt James Rich

I listened to Homer performing Starlight by Muse like thirty times.

William

A Star Wars story

T

I had a profoundly emotional reaction to that ai generated country music song. My brain didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or burst into tears. What a surreal experience.

Rory Schreiber

Even this guy knows that United’s fans don’t live in England. Manchester is Blue

William

AI is just “what combos of data produce the mean response with the lowest margin of error compared with what we think is the correct answer” It’s not so much being more than the technology can handle, its more than humans can conceive of technology handling; I can’t explain it well enough. There’s also so much data that spurious correlation is much more likely and measurement error isn’t even being taken into consideration

Jason Matthews

Writing prompt: grindset guy realizes, upon seeing an eldritch AI generated fractal cat meme that such a creature has been following him his whole life, and until now he had no cognitive framework to conceive of it.

Gabe P

I like my slop the old fashioned way, served to us piggies by our favourite dirtbag left podcasters.

Gabe P

This is the plot of the new Mission Impossible movie

MKatieUltra

The best use of AI is that Girlie Girl Productions music, it’s this super upbeat stock-sounding pop music about cocaine and smoking your best friend’s vape and the man I accidentally killed on purpose.

Tim O'

Will the bots recommend shows on Hulu like my coworkers do?

Last Years Man

This has already happened in a few instances. I remember an ep of Trash Future where Riley was reading from reddit threads where programmers complained that ChatGPT was refusing to do certain tasks and ordering them to do it themselves.

Last Years Man

Your first paragraph is actually a pretty decent explanation. And it's why it will never have any actual use. It's like consulting an extremely perfunctory reference book, only it's more prone to error.

Antipaganda

That's not how an equation fucking works, you art student wannabe

Antipaganda

Who the fuck is Luke Combs?

Last Years Man

Beats the fuck out of my gen-x ass. I don't really care to know either.

Natalie

what you just commented is HEY GUYS!!! I DONT KNOW HOW TO READ!!! AND IM PISSED OFF!!! Also I made it

Patrick Blodgett

It’s interesting that he mentions Russian being prominent in weird AI books. I’ve noticed that sites which specialize in being databases for mostly books are generally in Russian. Differences in copyright law is probably part of it, but that doesn’t necessarily explain the AI part.

Jingle Jangler

I do love the seemingly common idea that if not for AI, I would just pay an artist a commission to make a high def drawing of Gollum with big rocking tits

WizLizGiz

The people who create this shit don’t understand people, and therefore do not understand human intelligence, so cannot actually model or generate anything that represents a step forward.

Michael Wasniewski

One interesting thing is that my friend whos a proffessor at wayne state and cancdr researcher was telling me how they use a more advanced gen ai to improve legders and imputting informatio into datasets lol

C. Ries

That sounds awful

treat

That “Baby when it rains I drink” AI country song is definitively not slop

Sean

I don't know at my job it's pretty usual and I with say is definitely save me at least 30 minutes each Day helping me with the huge PDF documents I have to deal with. Also it's a far better way to search for things online than doing a basic Google search

Rod Hodges

It’s a good thought. I’ve thought about ditching it all but haven’t been able to yet.

Chapo Bath House

I'm a disabled artist (ADHD) and without AI I would not be able to create pictures of Mac from Mac and Me but with tiddies and a big one. PAY AI ARTISTS

Reece Coren

so true. dick is everywhere these days

Bob Al-Greene

Felix twitching in his seat when Max calls it the “wheel” of the plane

Nathan

Tbh, the driveway song wasn’t that bad and sounds like all other modern country music to me.

C

Non-PKD relevant book rec: Starfish by Peter watts

Reece Coren

the AI country song is literally better than anything jellyroll’s ever put out lmao

Luke F

People should check out the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

Bobby Lasers

The USA farm woman looking for. Man AI adverts on FB were gold

pq

homer singing sounds so good to me. I can't get enough.

Conor Meaney

Hate how much I don't dislike that Driveway song

Donald Darby

Honestly, most local environments in IT are a cesspool of shit that was cobbled together with no discernible rhyme or reason on implementation. They were setup over decades now by a mishmash of devs each doing their own thing.

Donald Darby

I know the guys hate current "AI", but how about they have someone on that can speak to the actual benefits that are currently happening in research with the assistance of LLMs? This guy was at least more knowledgeable than that British dude that didn't know what AGI stood for, but someone from the tech world who could actually layout what is going on and the potential for advancement would be a nice change of pace from stuff like this being shoved out every couple of months.

etienne

yeah this is usually where i get my news about really cutting edge research chemicals and experimental mathematics algorithm, really annoying they dropped the ball on this

Sam Tung

Thanks for the episode on this. The Animation Guild (L839) is currently in contract negotiations and AI protections are a huge part of our negotiations asks.

Magic

Booze-cruisers are the most oppressed ninority.

The Adventures of Mac

One use for ai is as a functional search engine now that all of the legacy search engines only provide sponsored results.

Autarken

digital copying hinted at the promise of unlimited perfect distribution... remember when copying a magnetic mix tape or VHS over and over would create garbage over time? ahhh, the mp3 can free us from this waste!! and here we are 30-40 years later, with AI incestuously mating with itself, like a .jpg opened & re-saved w/compression artifacts over and over and over and over and overanedaeovnearjeklarjklawrjavnuqoa87hf3akjh....

Tyler Sutherland

If you really want information search help, go to your local public library. We are TRAINED to help you!