Don't Look Under the Internet

DLUTI 148 - Dead Internet Theory: Are We Alone in a World of Bots?

April 22, 2024 Don't Look Under the Internet Season 1 Episode 148
DLUTI 148 - Dead Internet Theory: Are We Alone in a World of Bots?
Don't Look Under the Internet
More Info
Don't Look Under the Internet
DLUTI 148 - Dead Internet Theory: Are We Alone in a World of Bots?
Apr 22, 2024 Season 1 Episode 148
Don't Look Under the Internet

What's up, brother? Prepare to have your reality tweaked as we embark on a journey through the Dead Internet Theory, mulling over the chilling possibility that the web might be teeming with more bots than humans. Doug is getting an update, or vacation or whatever, but Mike, Matt, and Jason try playing existential crisis simulator in his stead!

None of this is confirmed true or not, so don't use us as a reputable source (we aren't). But do think about how you use A.I. to assist your lives. The internet needs help. Let's yell about it and spew conspiracies!

Support the Show.

Starting your own podcast? Use this link to receive a $20 Amazon gift card when you sign up for a paid account with Buzzsprout!
https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1671664

Linktree
Buy us a beer!
Join us in Discord!
DLUTI.com
Unplanned Podnancy
Undefined Graphics (Photography & Graphic Design)
Ghoulish Mortals

Inquiries: dlutipod@gmail.com

Don't Look Under The Internet
PO BOX 6437
Aurora IL 60598

Show Notes Transcript

What's up, brother? Prepare to have your reality tweaked as we embark on a journey through the Dead Internet Theory, mulling over the chilling possibility that the web might be teeming with more bots than humans. Doug is getting an update, or vacation or whatever, but Mike, Matt, and Jason try playing existential crisis simulator in his stead!

None of this is confirmed true or not, so don't use us as a reputable source (we aren't). But do think about how you use A.I. to assist your lives. The internet needs help. Let's yell about it and spew conspiracies!

Support the Show.

Starting your own podcast? Use this link to receive a $20 Amazon gift card when you sign up for a paid account with Buzzsprout!
https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1671664

Linktree
Buy us a beer!
Join us in Discord!
DLUTI.com
Unplanned Podnancy
Undefined Graphics (Photography & Graphic Design)
Ghoulish Mortals

Inquiries: dlutipod@gmail.com

Don't Look Under The Internet
PO BOX 6437
Aurora IL 60598

Speaker 1:

Don't look under the internet Cash money. What's up, brother?

Speaker 2:

What's up brother? What's up brother?

Speaker 1:

What's up, brother?

Speaker 2:

So since Doug made that reference, before he did that, I hadn't seen like very many references to that, but ever since he said that it's been like once a day I got heckled by some kids.

Speaker 1:

I was walking with laurie and, uh, my, my child, and uh, there's these little like probably like nine or ten year old kids playing basketball in their driveway. And we're just walking by and he goes what's up, brother? I'm like hey brother, what's?

Speaker 3:

up brother laurie's like don't fucking embarrass me like that it's not embarrassing, brother I heard that shit like down the hallway at work today. I literally I just stopped. I was like what the fuck duck we're?

Speaker 1:

probably living in a simulation brothers welcome to welcome brother what's up, brothers, to don't look under the internet? What's up, brothers, to don't look under?

Speaker 2:

the internet. What's up, brothers? To don't look under the internet.

Speaker 1:

This is a podcast about hand simulators simulating. My hands dog Simulating my hands oh.

Speaker 2:

God.

Speaker 1:

Hand simulators simulating my hands.

Speaker 2:

Simulating my hand.

Speaker 1:

What a cold open that's Jason. Hi that's Matt Hi and I'm brother. That's Jason Hi. That's Matt Hi and I'm brother. What's up?

Speaker 3:

brother, that's brother, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Hey every brother, hey every brother.

Speaker 3:

Every brother, are you every brother.

Speaker 2:

This is the fucking reference we've chosen to beat to death this time.

Speaker 1:

Today. Yeah, exactly, I don't want to see any more of this shit online. I don't want to see a single comment about Sketch.

Speaker 3:

Nobody else is going to want to. We're beating it down.

Speaker 1:

We're beating it dead. We're here right now. Oh yeah, we're beating it dead. Much like the topic, but I'm going to get to that in a second, Because it's time for Deluty. House clapping above your head Deluty, house clapping.

Speaker 2:

So we got something I'm sure that's much better I didn't actually check.

Speaker 3:

If I'm being totally honest with you, but I'm sure I'm just making things up and talking to buy time while I look up this information yeah, I totally don't need one of y'all to stall um what's up brother, we love all of our patrons, okay, great we have nothing new.

Speaker 2:

That's good okay good job everybody not gonna be stupid so we do look stupid.

Speaker 1:

Um, housekeeping, I guess, will be um, uh, towards the end of the month here. Uh is when we will actually be able to confirm the total amounts for deludathon. Uh, youtube apparently takes like a whole ass month for us to be able to pull the funds out of there, so we haven't been able to touch youtube stuff yet. Yeah, sorry, my voice a little raspy today. Um, I'm recovering from illness, um, but, uh, we got the buy me a coffee money that should be transferring into the account tomorrow. Um, and then, uh, our patreon money, obviously, and the website money as well. So, uh, all in all, we're just waiting on youtube and and we got back to all of our people that won, which is great Shouts out to our raffle winners, and there's a secret.

Speaker 2:

Fourth there is, that has not been won yet.

Speaker 3:

No one has claimed their prize.

Speaker 2:

It's actually, interestingly, suspiciously relevant to the topic. Yeah, holy shit.

Speaker 1:

I will give you all one hint to what it is. I just gave him a pretty big one, a fucking huge one. Okay, yes, I guess we'll just leave it at that. It is relevant to what we're talking about now.

Speaker 3:

Save your hint, mike, for tomorrow. We'll start dropping daily hints, and then we'll start.

Speaker 2:

Somebody just donated five bucks. As we're sitting there, Thank you, brother. Oh God, it's King. I haven't read it yet. You have to.

Speaker 3:

Oh no, you gotta read it, All right keep your finger on the censor button.

Speaker 1:

You have that now, Mike. I know about what you did to the neighbor boy in fourth grade. Oh God, what did you?

Speaker 2:

do Jesus.

Speaker 1:

You don't gotta know, that's between King me and neighbor boy and neighbor boy.

Speaker 2:

The three of you, you don't gotta know.

Speaker 1:

That's between King me and Neighbor Boy and Neighbor Boy, are you talking? About the kid who pissed his pants and also my pants at one time? Who?

Speaker 3:

shit, my pants, my mom's here, she knows what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1:

Forget his name and I'm not gonna bring it up Cause it's mean I'm not gonna dox him.

Speaker 2:

Other housekeeping. If anybody cares, I'm not gonna be here like three of the next four recordings, cause.

Speaker 1:

I have work travel, I got to do. Yeah, next week's going to be you and I. It's just going to be the Mike and Jason show for a bit. We haven't done that in a minute, so this is going to be an interesting one.

Speaker 3:

It's been a hot minute.

Speaker 1:

We got to find something weird, something really stupid like, really, really, that's the easiest thing in the world to figure out. I don't even think we need the both of us, but it's like the Wonder Twins.

Speaker 2:

You get us together.

Speaker 1:

Yes, wonder Twins, even more powerful stupid On our own dumb as shit Together dumb as fucking shit.

Speaker 3:

So dumb, we are powerful.

Speaker 1:

That concludes housekeeping. Again back to beating a dead horse.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let's beat some more dead.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, today's topic is also in the realms of death. It is a dead horse. It is a dead horse. We're talking about dead horses here. Uh, we're talking about the dead internet theory oh, buddy oh, buddy, oh, he's correct. Yeah, so this is something that I think I've known about for a minute but never really dabbled into looking up.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, same Until.

Speaker 1:

Jason brought it to our attention and I was like, oh yeah, this is just a thing that's happening. It's called the dead internet theory.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think I've heard of each of these things individually on their own, but never thought to collect them together as one unit. Combine them, yeah, and somebody already did that you could probably.

Speaker 3:

Just scribble out the word theory oh, probably At this point in life. Oh, probably.

Speaker 1:

So where do we start off with the whole dead internet theory?

Speaker 2:

Well, the dead internet theory is a theory that emerges on the internet.

Speaker 1:

Dead in the theory theory A little bit.

Speaker 3:

Dead in the theory, in the theory, in the internet, a little less the dead man yes, the theory.

Speaker 2:

A butt rock band called the theory of a theory of butt rock yeah, can we do butt rock theory 101, the class?

Speaker 1:

yeah, sure, why not a new patreon tier, but hell yeah, but but rock tier, but rock tier, butt rock tier, crack corn.

Speaker 3:

Crack corn, the crack corn.

Speaker 2:

Okay, cracked, cracked up, I don't know, we'll figure it out, we'll workshop it.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, this theory is a theory that emerged on the internet a little bit less than 10 years ago, around 2016 or so.

Speaker 2:

That's gained some traction since then and the theory basically states um, like I think every like you said, everybody is aware at this point that, like, a lot of social media is basically being overtaken by, like chat, gpt and ai and bots that aren't real people but are just posting things I think everybody's seeing, like those twitter posts that are like I'm sorry, I don't know how to respond to your prompt or whatever. Yeah, but this theory takes that a step further and basically alleges that most of the content that you see on the internet and most of the social interaction you see on the internet is completely bots that, like, when you go on the internet, you nine times out of ten are not talking to a real person. You are just interfacing with the collective hive mind of artificial intelligence and bots that have been slowly taking over the internet over the course of the last 15 years or so not even just interacting like you're, even if you're not, if you're just lurking like the shit you're looking at is not resolved, just bots talking to each other, right?

Speaker 3:

yeah, like, if you're not, if you're just lurking, like the shit you're looking at is not resolved, just bots talking to each other.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, like if you go on Reddit and look at a comment thread or whatever. It's just bots talking to other bots.

Speaker 1:

Right, it's similar to Doug's subreddit that he brought up to the table.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yeah, that's actually what prompted me to kind of take a look at this and I'm'm. Can we just, I guess, trigger warning preface this? I don't know if it's a trigger warning. This whole topic will give you massive amounts of existential dread, hopelessness and just overall like, yeah, just feeling bad about the whole world and life in general.

Speaker 2:

I didn't get any of that because, well, no I did because, like initially, when you think about this, you think well, okay, maybe, but that's probably not true. But Because initially, when you think about this, you think well okay, maybe, but that's probably not true.

Speaker 2:

But then the more you think about it, the more you think about the current state of the internet and it gets very depressing very quickly, very. But before we dive into that, basically the place that this emerged in, like every other thing that's relevant to pop culture on the internet, is 4chan. Every other thing that's relevant to pop culture on the internet, it is 4chan. Uh, like, this theory as an actual theory basically started there. It gained some traction outside of 4chan and then it really got propelled into the mainstream when a couple of articles were written on it, and the main article that everybody points out um, in most of the other articles that have been written about this is an Atlantic article called Maybe you Missed it, but the Internet Died Five Years Ago, and that was published in 2021. So if you want more background on where this comes from and what a lot of people's basis for this theory, as it's basically stated, is, go read that article. But so, like mike, do you have any more concrete examples of what the theory actually entails?

Speaker 3:

just like some more details, if that would be fantastic.

Speaker 1:

So when it comes to details. Um, I didn't as much go like down a rabbit hole of specific details as much as I did just a whole slew of what makes people think this. Um, so in that uh atlantic article, it actually the article references a forum on a website. Uh, what was it? Macintosh?

Speaker 3:

cafe apple.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the apple's macintosh cafe, or something like that yeah, that's referenced in the Wikipedia article, but I couldn't actually find the article, so I found it, I can send it to you if you want it.

Speaker 1:

I didn't look that hard it's one guy. This is kind of like the catalyst to it. Like Doug Doug's, not here.

Speaker 3:

He's dead to me. You're missing someone.

Speaker 1:

Like Matt mentioned before, a lot of this stuck on from 4chan, but it didn't pick up traction until people read this article or this forum on the Macintosh Cafe. This forum right now, as it stands, has over like 300,000 views, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it was posted back in, I believe, 2021 as well, and it's on such an obscure site. It looks like 300, 300, 000 is like if you go on myspace today and find a fucking a page with, you know, a million views on it, like it's just, it's something where it's like wow, a million in the scope of like, uh, facebook or twitter or youtube is nothing but on myspace. That shit's been dead for a while.

Speaker 2:

That's impressive 300,000 on such a small, obscure site is incredible. Myspace is so dead that a few years ago they were doing a server migration and accidentally deleted everybody's pictures, and they were just like whoopsie no one cares.

Speaker 1:

But in this um, in this uh uh article, the guy goes on a long tangent about how most content that you find online is fake and he gives some examples. First and foremost, one of his biggest theories about this starts all the way in 2008 when he says to himself or posts out there that he believes that the writer's strike never actually ended. The writer's strike. We basically in hollywood, they just fired all of the writers and we replaced them with ai and that's why our movies have been bland and shit garbage all the way up until now. Cookie cutter.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm not gonna like they are cookie cutter, which, as to his theory, you get a lot of cookie cutter, but in my opinion and we'll break it down more as we go but that one kind of popped out at me because the only place that you see cookie cutter movies is with like the big time monopoly conglomerates who do that stuff because it's safe, like your disney's, for example. They'll put out the same trash over and over and over again because it's safe and makes money. They don't fucking care. But I mean I could give you like 20 000 movies that came out within the last 10 years that are incredible and do not follow that. You know what I mean so and unfortunately.

Speaker 3:

Unfortunately, those movies are kind of in obscurity because you can't, it's, it's hard, I would say it's harder to find those movies than it is harder to find the cookie cutter garbage. You're absolutely right, you're absolutely right and also that adds to a bunch of Hold on to that, hold on to that notion. Yeah, that adds to some more stuff that's coming up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, another big problem, and this is more of a recent one and you can see this right now. But content on Google just in general, if you Google, go to Google Images and look up literally any photo, right now, just Google anything. Any top search results is going to come up with AI, google.

Speaker 2:

Images I'm just like this is a tangent but Google Images, over the last I would say two years or so, has gotten so much worse.

Speaker 3:

And I don't know what happened hit. They hid some evidence of it and I think I think mike's about to talk about this, but if you are, I'll let you I'm just gonna let you like that might have been completely aside from this theory.

Speaker 1:

It is so much worse, like you can't find anything, you're looking nothing there anymore right and and the biggest problem with that is, uh, because of ai coming into play. So the reason Google is getting horrible is because in your top search results, even on page one, page one of Google Photos and everything used to be like all right. This is it. And once you go to page two, that's where the trash spills in.

Speaker 2:

You never used to go to page two on Google, if you ever went to page two on Google.

Speaker 1:

You were struggling.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, notice. Page two is like. Nobody else has ever had my problem. Notice, by the way.

Speaker 3:

Page two is like. Nobody else has ever had my problem. Notice, by the way, that there's no pages anymore. You just keep scrolling.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you just keep scrolling yeah you just keep scrolling.

Speaker 1:

There's a reason they changed that.

Speaker 2:

Half of the first fucking page is just ads. Now anyhow.

Speaker 3:

Yep. Now there's 100% a reason. They removed the page function and Mike.

Speaker 1:

I think you're. I'm going to get into that detail as much as you might.

Speaker 3:

I don't think there's much detail to it, but it makes sense once you put it together.

Speaker 1:

If you Google anything and go into Google Images, you are going to come up with probably minimum four AI images on the front page. The first bit that you see. You're going to see AI images galore. Now the reason that's a problem is obviously because, if we're talking about content being fake, you have AIs on here. You have bots on the internet that are making up a majority of our traffic. It's hard to tell what is going to be real and what's going to be fake.

Speaker 1:

And when you get the top search results of Google being AI generated images, people usually take the top search results on google and take those for you know uh, uh quality. They take those for like confirmation that this is a real life thing. And now you're sneaking bots into this. You're sneaking ai into this. It gets even worse when now remember back in the day with google used to be able to look up like uh, an alligator fighting a grizzly bear and you would get no search result. You might get like fan art or something, but you get no search result. Now you pretty much just gave a prompt to an ai like uh, open ai or not open ai, but like fucking mid journey or something, um, to essentially write that for you. Google is working with the AI now where if you type in anything and it sounds like a prompt, it triggers these AI websites to create that, upload it to YouTube and put it right. Smack in your face.

Speaker 2:

So you're saying you're suggesting that websites that serve AI generated content are scraping Google searches to use as prompts and then generating it and like putting it on the internet so that it shows up the next time somebody Googles it?

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yep.

Speaker 1:

That should be happening, dog, okay, I mean there there's a guy right now. I forget what his name is, but he's on Twitter. He's an asshole, but he generates, uh, I think it was like 10,000, uh, I think it was like 10,000 AI images an hour. He just has a bot just automatically doing this shit. Just random prompts yeah, just random prompts. It will just go through a list and just upload this shit to the internet.

Speaker 2:

And then he uploads them to just flood the internet with useless garbage Exactly.

Speaker 1:

So every single random thought or prompt that you'll have, this machine has probably already made it and there's an image out there that looks somewhat realistic enough to close it's like the thousand chimpanzees you have a thousand chimpanzees, typewriters.

Speaker 3:

Eventually they'll type out the entirety of shakespeare.

Speaker 2:

It's the same shit that's happening didn't they actually try that, though, and found out that? Yes, and like the monkeys didn't type shit, they just like defecated on the keyboard and like right, they didn't give enough time okay yeah, you need at least one infinity, yeah but, it doesn't stop right, doesn't stop at google.

Speaker 1:

Google is a horrible, uh, um, it is the best, worst example, because google is such a household name and now they're corrupted by this ai and these bots that are essentially proving that they're taking over the internet.

Speaker 2:

Um but you're saying google's not in on it, google's just serving the garbage, because the garbage is what it's finding google is kind of in on it because they have their own ai well, that's fair okay but yeah, I devil's advocate they.

Speaker 3:

I don't think they're on it on purpose, but they definitely ai is as a bot are taking advantage of Google and Google search engine. I do have a not a full interview, but I have some commentaries from some actual engineers that work or worked for Google and they actually talk a little bit about the problem we're talking about. But I'll save that for a little bit later.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sorry, just mixing myself up a little drink.

Speaker 3:

What are we drinking? What are we thinking?

Speaker 1:

There's a bottle here and it's empty. It's Evan Williams, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I have a nice refreshing fresca and I have a Corona.

Speaker 3:

And a little Jameson.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but YouTube is a huge, huge problem with AI, which is awful because now you have your two big boys and YouTube is owned by Google. But when you think of household names, in my opinion Google and YouTube are like top five, like they're up there and they are flooded with AI shit to the point where YouTube is very bad now.

Speaker 2:

Youtube is awful. Youtube is horrible now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I actually have some insider information, a little bit on something that I'll bring up, but I love this, so a lot of content on YouTube is quite literally an AI-created script with an AI voice over.

Speaker 2:

AI video images. I've accidentally ended up on these videos before. I was like God damn it.

Speaker 1:

Whenever we look up a topic, every single topic we look up. I have found one of these on it.

Speaker 3:

It's getting way worse.

Speaker 1:

It does seem to happen a lot more when it comes to, like internet mystery-esque topics. I think it's the niche areas?

Speaker 3:

I don't think it's niche areas.

Speaker 1:

I think it's because the shit that we talk about is easy to recreate a little bit. If you're just looking for baseline stuff, like, let's say, we're talking about dead internet theory, you can just type in to chat GPT, give me a script on, I'll be right back. Hold on, okay. Okay, give me a script on um, I'll be right back. Hold on, okay, doggy, give me a script on dead internet theory. Uh, and make it seem like a youtube video.

Speaker 2:

There's enough information out there on dead internet theory where it'll just come up with some random thing that'll make sense you might not as long as it's from before 2021, because I think that's yeah, what chad gpg was trained on, but yeah yeah, but that to my, to my point, is internet mystery stuff.

Speaker 1:

There's so much of that out there that it's easy to just put that into an ai and have it just regurgitate.

Speaker 2:

Some someone else's talking points probably too yeah, well, I mean like mystery as a genre and in general is so popular that it's very good at that. Actually, if you, I've noticed that if you ask chat, gt or an LLM to like write you a story, that's typically what it defaults to at some point too is just like making a mystery story, yep. And it always ends it with like and like. Isn't this crazy? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

The scary door. The scary door, um, but yeah, yeah, it's, it's insane and even like um, the algorithm gets fucked up because of it as well. Your algorithm will get trashed on youtube because of these ai generated videos. When I looked up I forgot, I think it was. I want to say it was karat. 963 was the one that it fucked me up the most. I stumbled upon a youtube video for that. I watched like halfway through it just because I was like this is all I can really find on this subject. Uh, someone else talking to it, so I'm just gonna have to put up with the bs.

Speaker 2:

And after that, another video popped up and I started just sending you down and that was another ai one, and there was another ai, one and another one.

Speaker 2:

This must be something you've done to your algorithm, then, because I haven't ended up in this situation looking up topics. Where I found this more most prevalent is looking up product reviews for products that people haven't like, not a lot of people have reviewed before, like something that's more obscure and it'll just be a bullshit ai video that is like literally stock images of whatever this product is and then just completely made up talking points about oh yeah, amazon is flooded with those type of reviews.

Speaker 2:

Yeah it is on top of amazon. I've noticed that also that like half of the amazon listings that I've looked at lately, trying to buy stuff, is another product that they have changed the product name and pictures. So when you go and look at the reviews the reviews that you're looking, there's like 2 000 reviews but it's not. It's for like an electric toothbrush or something. When you're trying to buy like a car alternator and it's it like it's completely unrelated, they're just like a lot of times these, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1:

I'm back under like, are you?

Speaker 3:

guys, are you guys talking about the Amazon products with the descriptions?

Speaker 2:

no, I just brought up because we were still on the topic of the AI videos. I was talking about product review videos and then Mike said that there's like Amazon's flooded with those same ones. So you're a fuck. Yes.

Speaker 1:

I mentioned that.

Speaker 2:

Amazon has, like lots of sellers, replace the products on their pages with different products, so that the reviews are no longer for the thing you're looking at.

Speaker 1:

Oh, okay and a lot of times amazon's like amazon.

Speaker 1:

Choice is just it's based off a lot of yeah, it's bullshit and it's generated from bots a lot of the times because it gets the higher reviews, because this is flooded with bots in the reviews and the comments. But we'll get back to Amazon later. Youtube is really bad with one specific place and TikTok all the short-term, like YouTube Shorts and TikTok horrible for AI-generated content. It's flooded. Tiktok is a mess with that kind of shit. Youtube Shorts is a Horrible for AI-generated content. It's flooded. Tiktok is a mess with that kind of shit. Youtube Shorts is a mess with it as well, and not only just the content itself.

Speaker 1:

I think and Naomi might be able to verify this for me I unfortunately think an AI has been creating our shorts and I have a little inside information on why. So another YouTube creator that we know I'm not going to say their name um, I saw them the other other day and they were talking to me about, uh, their shorts. They're like if you're not making shorts yet, I recommend it because our shorts will get they get a show of views because they get pushed really hard yep, they get a shit ton of views.

Speaker 1:

They're like they get like four or five, six thousand more views than um, than normal, and they're like I have this really cool app. You download it on um. They're not app, but it's this really cool like thing. You download on the computer and everything, and what it will do is you give it your youtube channel. It'll scan through your YouTube channel hundreds of times, essentially, and for each video it'll grab the clips that it thinks is the most likely the highest, engaging the most relevant and most likely to trend, depending on the day's topics, and everything, and it'll add in.

Speaker 1:

It'll edit the video for you, it'll add in the subtitles, it'll do everything.

Speaker 2:

I wondered how Naomi was making those Twitter videos. I was like there's no way Naomi is going through every single video on our YouTube and finding every time that we say this yeah, I was like there's no way.

Speaker 1:

The reason I think she's using it as well is because they showed me an example of one of their videos. It was edited the exact same way.

Speaker 2:

ours are Okay yeah, I was like. You know how much fucking time it would take to go through two hour long videos and find every time we say welcome to Don't Look Under the Internet.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, or like Mike gets confused about. That might add to like AI. That might not necessarily add to AI, creating the OG content.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, at least the content is.

Speaker 1:

It's creating the edits and the way that you see it.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I guess, if you still think about it though, yeah, it's like the AI is curating though, so the AI is still being put in charge of what people eventually end up seeing, even if the original content is not AI generated.

Speaker 3:

There's a big problem if AI starts not only curating eventually end up seeing, even if the original content is not ai generated. Now here's there's a big problem if ai starts not only curating but also receiving instructions from another ai about how to curate oh, that's a thing too no, I know that's starting to happen with image generation yep, I noticed that as well, and so another bit

Speaker 1:

that I wanted to bring up is um, you will start to see a bunch of ai photos, videos and posts just flooding social media. It's not new if you look at. If you looked at twitter anytime in the last I don't know when did elon fucking buy it?

Speaker 2:

I think the problem is worse on facebook actually, though, to be honest, but we haven't been on Facebook in months, so I would not know.

Speaker 2:

There are these entire, very, very popular Facebook pages now that are basically entirely dedicated to like generating images of events that are proposed to be happening in like developing countries, and then being like isn't this crazy? This is what's happening in Zimbabwe, or whatever. And then there will be like a thousand you know 50 year old mothers who are just like whoa, this is what's happening in Zimbabwe, or whatever. And then there will be like a thousand you know 50-year-old mothers who are just like whoa this is fucking crazy.

Speaker 1:

Are those actual 50-year-old mothers who the fuck knows? Are they bots reacting?

Speaker 2:

like that to garner more engagement to the post? Probably some. That's a little column A, a little column B.

Speaker 1:

You will find these bots basically, or these AI photos, videos and posts basically being propped up by bots to make them appear on your timeline and generate likes and views. Let's take Twitter, for example, ever since the shitty changes that fucking Clown Musk made.

Speaker 3:

That guy sucks so fucking bad. I do not like the combination of words Clown Musk, clown Musk, clown Musk Did you see where he announced this week that they're going to start charging people who make these weird accounts to be able to post but also clown Musk by deludycom.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because he wants Twitter to die, he does.

Speaker 2:

He claims that the point is to keep the bots out because this problem has gotten so bad.

Speaker 1:

Okay, but that won't work. And here's why Because he's a fucking idiot.

Speaker 2:

He's also part of the fucking problem.

Speaker 1:

He might be a bot. He might be a bot, a shitty built bot. Actually, you know what this will work anyway. The reason that won't work is because a lot of the bots use Twitter Blue, which makes you a verified account, and the way that this happens is it's very simple you literally just pay eight bucks a month and you become verified. And the reason the paying thing won't work is because bots are already paying to be verified, so what's one more step? Just to pay to make you an account?

Speaker 3:

and it does not matter if you're trying to create another step to make it harder for bots to post. Hey, guess what? Dickhead Bots don't feel the pain of endurance about trying to get through four steps in a verification process for a fucking tweet.

Speaker 2:

This is not how it works, Especially if the bots are making money. The money, the $8 or whatever is not really a barrier.

Speaker 3:

It's all automatic.

Speaker 2:

He's trying to recoup.

Speaker 3:

He's trying to recoup every bit of that 44 billion dollars.

Speaker 1:

He flushed down the tank and it's so. He's doing it poorly, very poorly, so um bots will comment on posts to add more visibility to it. It's horrible on twitter, and the reason I say that is because on twitter you got two separate tabs. You have people you know and the other one is like fucking for you, for you and for you is always basically automatically selected. They want you to view that rather than the people that you know.

Speaker 1:

That's why the reason why is because that shit is being propped up by bots. The for you is just a bunch of bunch of bot generated bullshit, and you could tell the minute you go into the fucking comments. They don't make any sense.

Speaker 2:

I like how Mike said at the beginning of the episode. He was like oh, I don't think this is depressing.

Speaker 3:

No right, I was just thinking that.

Speaker 1:

It's not depressing, it's infuriating.

Speaker 2:

It is infuriating. I guess it depends on what your reaction to frustration is.

Speaker 1:

I guess Is it hopelessness? Is it to give up? Is it hopelessness?

Speaker 2:

Is it to give up? I have some examples here from a Twitter account. Mike has that spunk in him, I got spunk in general dog Loads of it Literally buckets full.

Speaker 3:

Yes, I'm so happy you said that with no one talking around you.

Speaker 1:

I want to bring up a couple examples from a Twitter account called Dead Internet at its Finest. So I have some pictures and I have an example that I have on the screen that I'm going to show you right now. So some of the examples that you'll find of ai generated bullshit. Uh goes as followed. There's a tweet by world of statistics what is the most unattractive male name? You get a person named sid hearth p uh that commented on there they have 46 000 views. They commented saying choosing the most unattractive name is highly subjective and can vary based on personal preferences and cultural influences. It's important to remember that every name can be beautiful to somebody and that respecting kindness should guide our opinions about others' names.

Speaker 2:

That is, does that not?

Speaker 1:

sound like some gobbledygook.

Speaker 2:

That was just GPT.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I will say that's a good attempt at giving AI like an ethics model or like a kindness model or some shit.

Speaker 1:

Here's another one.

Speaker 3:

But I also understand that. It's just. It doesn't understand it, it's just regurgitating.

Speaker 1:

Here's another one so you have from Perfect World Games, persona 5, the Phantom X is officially launching on all platforms in Hong Kong, macau, taiwan and Korea on April 18th. Are you ready to embark on the adventure? Hashtag Perfect World Games, psx. Vera Vale commented thrilled to dive in. P5x party starts April 18th. Grab your masks and let's save the day. Hashtag forever Phantom.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's fake.

Speaker 1:

That's a campaign, is what that is. This tweet was made by a company to campaign for forever phantom. That's why you get the hashtag forever phantom. Another one by historic vids, which has also gone down the tube, because it is just a bunch of just ai generated bullshit to get the most clicks. It every. There's no longer any historic videos on historic vids. No, they literally just like look at this funny family guy video, because they know what gets the views, because they know what bots click on.

Speaker 2:

I think a lot of those really large twitter accounts have been purchased by someone thousand percent probably yeah, repurposed in this way so this one says how condoms are made.

Speaker 1:

It's a video about how condoms are made. Good, you get big shabs commenting on it, saying this is so fascinating.

Speaker 3:

I'm sorry, what was that username? One more time big shabs big shabs they comment saying exactly the shab.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what it is this is so fascinating female condom, also known as internal condoms, are made from soft, thin synthetic latex or latex. Nobody does this, they're worn inside the vagina to prevent semen getting to the womb. Here's a video on how the female condom looks like and how to use them. Why would a normal person do any of that? Give you information in a comment About the video you just watched Exactly.

Speaker 1:

Now I have two more. I have one from Lex, who has a picture of Minecraft saying the zombies are evolving and it's a zombie made of wood.

Speaker 2:

And then Holly Luna comments saying I never knew pets could be so demanding until I got one. Wow.

Speaker 3:

Yep, it's just a great insight.

Speaker 2:

Cool story, bro, tell it again.

Speaker 1:

And now my favorite one, my favorite one right here.

Speaker 1:

It says this website is so cooked it's by M&m's deviated septum and yeah this website and what this one says it's from uh, so it's, but it's a conversation between two uh twitter accounts let me know what you think of this. One is called uh, betul kakir. I'm just going to call it uh because that is. I'm to call it Bet because that is in its Twitter handle, and the other one is with an account named Ingrid. So Bet says exercise improves brain oxygenation. Ingrid says true. Bet says yes. Bet then says sure. Ingrid says got it. Please provide the post that you would like me to respond to, bet. Sure, please provide the post you would like me to respond to, ingrid.

Speaker 3:

Sure Bet, please provide the post you would like me to respond to and it's turtles all the way down Sure.

Speaker 1:

Please provide the post you would like me to respond to Ingrid. Ingrid, of course, please provide. Would like me to respond to in English within five characters, without icons, hashtags or double quotation marks. Bet, sure, please reply the post you want me to respond to. Ingrid, of course, please share the post you would like me to respond to in English within five characters.

Speaker 1:

We get it, mike, and then, it ends with them saying it ends with Ingrid saying hello, how can I assist? You today and Bet saying sure, how can I help so people? Today and bet saying sure, how can I help me? So people are just flooding, the internet has been flooded with these bots and you're probably like, wow, that looks and sounds ridiculous. It does, it is, but it's fucking everywhere. Every single post, you see, and the worst part is because, again, the way the fucked up idiot elon musk is every single twitter post in the comment section.

Speaker 1:

The comments used to be relative to the thing fuck talking about. But now you'll get one comment and then it cuts it off and it's like stuff that from the some similar people like this and it's a whole different thread. Why are you putting a whole different thread in the comment section? Because what's?

Speaker 2:

what? Because what's actually there isn't even relevant anymore honestly, it's because of the AI bots. Yeah, when you look at the big meme accounts and shit, most of the responses if they're not just generated garbage like that are just completely unrelated memes and bullshit from just other accounts trying to farm interaction.

Speaker 1:

Yep, and they'll reuse the exact same memes over and over. They'll reuse the exact same memes over and over and over, the exact same articles over and over and over, because they know it gets clicks, they know it gets people hyped up and that's what generates value and money from.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've also wondered, like I follow some similarly like themed meme accounts and I'll notice that the same, like three of these accounts will like recycle the same meme over the course of a week, or something like that. And I don't know if they're just stealing from each other, if they're run by the same person or if it is just automated content regurgitation.

Speaker 1:

Probably just automated regurgitation, because I see the same shit month after month. Anyway, last little bit I have on content that is fake. This happens a lot more, but I have just two instances off the top that uh kind of bugged me the most. First and foremost, sports illustrated was caught using ai to create articles. Um, there is a futurism um article that I'm pulling up from about it. There are other articles on it, but the futurism one I like the most. So, uh, sports illustrated was caught um with articles that were ai generated, by an ai generated author, with an ai generated picture.

Speaker 1:

Um, there was a uh article by a author on Sports Illustrated named Drew Ortiz, and Drew, quote-unquote, spends much of his life outdoors and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature. Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn't out camping, hiking or just back on his parents' farm. Now Drew doesn't exist. Like I said, he isn't real. He has no social media presence, he has no publishing history and his profile picture, again, is an AI-generated headshot. You can find him, drew Ortiz. He is on Sports Illustrated's website right now as we talk and it is just creating uh uh articles. So ai is now creating our articles in our you know magazines and our news uh coverage.

Speaker 2:

I honestly think this problem goes like well beyond just sports illustrated, doing this like if you google how to anything anymore, it's all, most of the first, yeah, most of the first result especially if it's something that isn't very common is ai generated shit and it'll be an article that'll be like here's how you wash a baby's toenails. But instead of like actually describing to you how to do that, it'll be the first thing you want to do is wash a baby's toenails.

Speaker 2:

Yep, before you wash the baby's toenails, you need to prepare for getting soap on the baby's toenails and it'll just do that for like two pages.

Speaker 3:

It does what he does.

Speaker 2:

And it never gets to anything it can't create.

Speaker 3:

It can't like, it can't take a set of information and then create new information from that information. It can just regurgitate the same information over and over again, and that's how that's. To me anyway, that's like a flag that AI is still very stupid and that worries me, because if it's very stupid now and it's doing what it's doing, I don't want to know what it looks like when it's very smart yeah, it's doing, I don't want to know what it looks like when it's very smart, yeah Well, I think this problem gets really bad because a lot of the people on the internet are really stupid, and so it just becomes like this big stupid mixing pot of stupid, and that's why no one can tell the difference, because the bots are just regurgitating the stupidity that the people are regurgitating.

Speaker 3:

who are regurgitating the fucking?

Speaker 2:

AI. I guess now we're just skipping to what I thought my conclusion was going to be, to this entire episode, which is just like I don't know if this is real or not, because it's impossible to tell the difference between badly generated content and somebody who's just very dumb.

Speaker 3:

Yep, there's not a lot of overlap in this Venn diagram of AI and people, but there is a sliver and that sucks liver and that sucks.

Speaker 1:

Now there is uh one more news news. Uh place, I want to bring up it's fake news everybody it's the fake news, uh, it's buzz.

Speaker 3:

I didn't fall asleep at the drive buzzfeed.

Speaker 1:

Uh, they, they were caught, uh, using ai once again, and when it was brought to their attention, they said oh no, no, we're never going to use AI to write articles. We're just using AI to help with some of our, our quizzes and our tests, things like that, because they apparently needed help with that. That was a bold, faced, fucking lie, and it turns out a fuck load of the Buzzfeed articles that you've probably read are all just bullshit AI generated yeah, exactly, and that's how they're able.

Speaker 2:

in the same fucking format, right? Yeah, exactly, and that's how they're able to get away with it.

Speaker 1:

It's just some generic bullshit. It's safe and easy to manipulate and duplicate. So once again, a lot of news stations and reputable, reputable quote unquote, unquote quote, quote places are using AI. I mean shit, our government's doing it. Dog, oh boy, y'all want me to go down this hole real fast.

Speaker 3:

No, because that's my entire rabbit hole.

Speaker 2:

I was going to say that's my entire section. Is Jason going to have any content?

Speaker 1:

left. No, mike's already covered. You have government under mine.

Speaker 3:

The government uses this to manipulate humans' reality. Mike's covered like 70% of the things I was going to talk about, which?

Speaker 1:

is fine, you put that undermined. You have that undermined.

Speaker 2:

He did do that. He did do that. Yeah, absolutely he did do that.

Speaker 1:

So do you want to talk about government?

Speaker 3:

I was going to give the evidence behind the claims, but if you go ahead, tell me what I need to know.

Speaker 1:

Okay, here's my thing. I am just going to read back. You can go into more detail. No, dude, I'm reading back what our boy you are killing it right now.

Speaker 3:

You are unhinged, you are fucking.

Speaker 1:

I'm going over what our boy Illuminati Pirate.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm not, I'm going over what Ill on the mic, the only thing I'm the only thing I'm wondering right now is if mike's audio recording is going to sound as bad as what what's coming through discord is going to sound god, I hope not see on my end it doesn't sound bad, but I will say it was crackling yours.

Speaker 3:

It was crackling. You have not moved since I have entered the discord.

Speaker 2:

Oh, neat okay all right, so what I'm gonna do Okay.

Speaker 1:

All right, so what I'm going to do? Illuminati Pirate Okay, illuminati Pirate they're the guy that created the Macintosh Cafe post that I was talking about before. That generated all this attention. And this is when he just goes down the fucking rails about how the government gets involved with this kind of shit. So he has a timeline about how the government gets involved with this kind of shit. So he has a timeline about how the government got involved with the internet and how the government got involved with AI and bots all that good shit. It all started in 2004 with DARPA, whoever's editing. I need you to cue up some fucking Alex.

Speaker 2:

Jones-esque music in the background. It all started with DARPA in 2004.

Speaker 1:

They have a lifelong project that was canceled.

Speaker 2:

Can you cover HAARP too, please? Hell yeah, I would love to go to HAARP. And the Havana Syndrome they're making the frogs gay.

Speaker 1:

You heard it here, folks. So Facebook came into being right after this project that was canceled. Coincidence, I think? Fucking not. From 2004 to 2012, the NSA has picked up the DARPA project under the name Total Information Awareness Project. You can find this under a New York Times article that I have linked here, if anybody wants to fucking think. In 2012, you have a Smith-Muntz Modernization Act that gives the US government full legal authority to use propaganda against its own populace, undoing rules put into place after Operation Mockingbird's discovery in the church community. You can also find a New York Times article on this.

Speaker 1:

If we go any further into 2012 and 2016, you have shittens of DARPA slash NSA contracts that are given to Google, facebook, amazon all your big fucking hitters to get your information. In 2016, there were leaked memos dating about 2016,. This was found in 2018, by the way, of Google's selfish ledger project that is again absorbing all of your information. In 2016, google released a bunch of neurolinguistic machine learning programs and they just gave that shit away. It's a neural net. In 2017, is it a coincidence that fucking deepfake leaks started coming out? No, because Google and all these people were absorbing and taking your information. Snapchat, around that same time, they started adding the face filters. How do you think they got your face information?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, those Snapchat filters are 100% collecting your face, oh yeah 100%.

Speaker 1:

Is it funny that deepfakes started coming out a little bit after that? I don't fucking think so. In 2018, we got confirmed that for decades now you had companies like Reddit, youtube, google, etc. That they, they voted, and they the votes and the view counts that are on here are completely fake and manipulated. There's a new york magazine article about this as well. Now I think it's entirely obvious that what this guy is suggesting. But here we go, and this is more from him as well. The US government is engaging in artificial intelligence-powered gaslighting of the entire world population.

Speaker 1:

This is a large-scale, deliberate effort to manipulate culture and discourse online and in wider culture by utilizing a system of bots and paid employees whose job it is to produce content and respond to content online, in order to further the agenda by those who are employed by them.

Speaker 3:

Can I explain how that?

Speaker 2:

happens.

Speaker 1:

We've seen this in foreign nations influencing elections by manipulating advertisements, algorithms on social media and in order to push specific candidates. We even saw that in Ukraine. We saw that here in fucking the United States with the Hillary and Trump fucking elections that were happening in 2016. Now he sees this as a positive feedback loop and obviously he blames Twitter and Facebook for this. Now the Internet is a fast way to get information and this information is what moves the mind and the way that things are. The mind likes recognition. You see, when the likes were introduced without negative feedback, they created a copy feedback subconscious. They made it so only positive opinions could be propagated and accepted and in its way, negative opinions became obsolete. Now everyone is too cowardly to have an opinion, so they copy others. They like. They are more likely to follow trends and say what others said. You can also see it with the paranoia of always wanting to listen to experts. The fast feedback system of the net created a human obsession within and with trends. Getting away from it makes it so.

Speaker 2:

You always feel like you are missing out having FOMO and want to play it safe in a trend is more easy, as you can copy what is already being accepted.

Speaker 1:

In this way, the internet and social media, which was supposed to democratize media by allowing users to create whatever content they wanted, has instead been hijacked by a powerful few.

Speaker 2:

Do you think he wrote that?

Speaker 3:

I thought so, but I don't know. I think he might have given himself bullet points, but then the passion just kind of brought up.

Speaker 1:

Now, let's talk about why the frogs are gay Perfect. No, I did. He might have given himself bullet points, but then the passion just kind of brought out. Now let's talk about why the frogs are gay Perfect. Yeah, let's talk about that. No, I did not write that. That was all written by Illuminati Pirate.

Speaker 2:

Oh okay.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so that was Illuminati Pirate. Oh, okay, okay.

Speaker 1:

I just thought that was worth.

Speaker 3:

Oh, 100% dude. You're I thought eloquent Dude, I was literally like what's happening right now?

Speaker 1:

I also left out some bits because Illuminati Pirate, as detailed as it gets, also says some pretty bad things. So I left that stuff out.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we'll go ahead and appreciate the fact that Illuminati Pirate was a semi kind of whistleblower on this whole concept.

Speaker 1:

I would say more paranoid, schizophrenic. But yeah, that works, same thing.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a way a lot of prophets have happened along the course of human history. It's just like paranoid schizophrenics who happen to be right about something. It was a coincidence.

Speaker 3:

The tinfoil hats get it right once in a while, once a lifetime A blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.

Speaker 1:

That is all I'm going to talk about. Okay, jason, you can take over. Have I missed any details? If you want to pencil anything else in.

Speaker 3:

I have a couple of tidbits and actually so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go over some evidence, some hard, actual evidence that we have for the claim that the Internet has died, that there's nobody left on the Internet. It's 99 percent just bot activity.

Speaker 2:

I feel like we've diverted from the original idea quite a bit.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, if there's one thing I'm good at doing, it's diverting oh yeah, misdirection.

Speaker 3:

So we've just talked about a ton. We threw a lot at you. We've kind of attempted to break your worldview about the internet and like, especially if you're anybody, I would say, my age or younger probably a little bit older than me or younger you were used to just being on the internet all the time If you're not doing something. You're checking Facebook, you're on Reddit, you're on here, you're doing it, you're on Reddit, you're on here, you're playing with an app, you're playing a game, like whatever you're doing, you're on the fucking internet all the time. To hear that no one is there. It probably doesn't make sense to you, like just to hear that, because you're like what the fuck? Oh, it makes sense to me now.

Speaker 2:

Now the internet's terrible. It's not the way it used to be, though.

Speaker 3:

After looking at all of this.

Speaker 2:

I don't on the internet unless I absolutely fucking have to because it's just fucked, I mean my my use of the internet over the last couple of years has decreased significantly because of most of these things that we're talking about, like, yeah, the internet in the early 2010s and late 2000s was great. It was like basically like it was the peak, like top tier. Everything was like the 90s was the beginning of the internet being super awesome. Like the early 2000s to the mid 2000. Everything was like the 90s was the beginning of the internet being super awesome. Like the early 2000s to the mid-2000s was like the wild west, but also super awesome and like any. You could find anything on the internet and then like it. It sort of like crescendoed towards the end of the 2000s and it's just been downhill since then now it's awful yeah, so 2007 is when they say it started.

Speaker 3:

What I kind of want to do is I want to go back through some of the points that we brought up and I'm going to try and add hard facts to them to kind of support why it is true and how everything that we have been saying up until this point has not just been like ghoulish hyperbole, just a large exaggeration, like it's.

Speaker 3:

Like Matt said, I think we've all known about all of these individual things, but once you find, like, the string that ties it all together and you see that it, like all of it, is stemming from the same fucking problem, like you just your head explodes and you just you don't know what to do. Um, but with that in mind, let's go back and let's talk about uh, we we mentioned chat GPT as obviously as an AI. What chat GPT is a large language model, and a large language model is. It's like it's a prediction machine, more or less. It takes a huge database of things that are possibilities and it narrows it down to the most likely possibility, depending on what you're looking at, and that's why chat GPT can give you, if not 100% accurate, close to Like it gets very close, and it's a very well-trained large language model.

Speaker 2:

Well, the thing about it like just and I'm diverting again.

Speaker 3:

No, that's okay.

Speaker 2:

But, like the point of large language model and the thing that most people miss in that is that the way that it works really is it like you said it tries to come up with the most likely possible output of an input is, but what it's really designed to do is figure out what the proper thing to go after the previous word is and, like constructing coherent sentences accuracy had really has nothing to do with it zero, which is what is very dangerous about it is that it is very, very good at making something sound plausible or sound correct and writing functionally correct sentences, because that's what it was designed to do was write language oh, but it does it has.

Speaker 2:

It has no logical filters or functionality as far as like actually it. It doesn't do math, it doesn't reason. The only reason chat gbt is accidentally right a lot of the time is because it has trained itself on language. That it most of the time is right it's like if somebody asked this question, here's what the most likely response would be, based on the information that I've seen before. But it just takes on face value that the words that it's spitting at you are factually correct.

Speaker 3:

Hold on, not that the information is correct yeah, hold, I want you guys to keep that concept in mind. I actually do have a thought experiment for us at the very end of all of this, to just really drive home the fact that we all should be terrifyingly afraid of everything. Um, but that's later. So chat, gpt, large language models. That in and of itself, is just evidence that nobody is on the internet anymore, because if you have something like this that can simply predict what the next word should be in a conversation, in a post, in this, do you really actually need people? Do you need people to populate the internet anymore?

Speaker 1:

No, no, you do not, unless you're doing video, but in that case we have AI that does video, and that's being developed now as well, which is insane to me, because it's just going to implode in on itself at some point.

Speaker 3:

Well, you have to remember.

Speaker 1:

If you're creating like on Twitter, for example, if you're creating Aldemarithic posts because you know those are going to generate attention and you have bots flooding them to get them on timelines because it will make you money and get paid. If there's no one on the internet after a certain point, you're just you're.

Speaker 3:

You're just advertising to bots, right and so, and getting paid for the fact that we can't determine the difference between bots and people. That's exactly what that means. That means that there are bots advertising to other bots and it's all this giant facade like about what actually exists on the internet. So I brought up ChatGPT. That, just by itself, is the progression that's happened with AI with ChatGPT is insane, is insane, and so the fact that even just exists as an open platform where anybody can log in and use it is kind of concerning, because it's just allows everybody to exponentially, exponentially add to this fucked up problem. Um, but let's the Google search results, that, uh, that you guys were talking about earlier.

Speaker 3:

This one fucked with me like a lot, and so I mentioned that pages don't exist on Google search anymore, and I think there's actually a reason for that, aside from the fact that it's more convenient. Is it more convenient just to keep scrolling? Sure, I don't think that's. I don't think they redesigned their whole search function and how their pages are displayed just simply to make things like a tiny bit easier for everybody involved. I think something was involved with that. So, mike, you were talking about how, when you search something, you get AI images this, that and the other. Do you remember how many search results they say that Google has pinged?

Speaker 1:

No, I mean, I know, if you just Google anything, it'll give you like millions.

Speaker 2:

It'll be like millions, billions.

Speaker 1:

One of yeah, like millions, billions. Yeah, one of like six million or something Cool.

Speaker 3:

I could Google something right now, like I get straight up Google a word Tell me what you're Googling and then tell me how many hits are there.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to Google big spoon.

Speaker 3:

Big spoon Got it Okay.

Speaker 1:

Big spoon, my spoon is too big, about 444 million, results Awesome In 0.4 seconds.

Speaker 3:

That is false. That is not correct. That is untrue. There are not that many search results that even exist on the internet that reference that back when there were actually pages, you would see that that's like. There are 440 million search results, like for this, like here are the first. Here's page one, and that includes this amount. If you keep clicking through all the pages and you get to the very end of it no, no idea where that is you will find the real number. If you were to tell me, do you think that the word pizza might be found on a lot of web pages on the internet?

Speaker 2:

yeah, probably billions of occurrences, probably billions, right yeah?

Speaker 3:

so I watched. I watched a video where a guy basically searched pizza. That's it. It said it came up with 1.9 billion hits. That sounds reasonable to me. That sounds right, especially considering what we are used to. If you click all the way through the pages, you only get to page like 54.

Speaker 1:

And that's the last page 3.2 billion now.

Speaker 3:

Cool Back when the pages existed. They don't anymore, so you cannot see this and I cannot verify this anymore, and I think that's why they did this. You could get to page 50, whatever, and that would be the end of it.

Speaker 3:

If you average, let's be super generous and say 100 search results there are, and you can repeat the search with all of those hidden results like included, and you can go back and you can research the whole thing, and that will then go even up more. So let's say, you get to page 70. Now, even if there's 70 pages and there's, let's's say, let's be generous and say there's 100 search results on those pages, that's only 70 000 and that's that is super generous. As to how many like what that number actually is. You know what I mean. It's not 3.9 billion, it's not even close.

Speaker 2:

the question I have, though, is like what is that number actually Like? Is the number supposed to represent how many things that are actually turning up in your search results that you can click on, or is it just saying that, like, out of all the data that Google has or that it searches, that it found hits on 3.9 billion, but it's not necessarily returning all of that?

Speaker 3:

What do you think the common person thinks?

Speaker 2:

Probably that. That's how many links there are that you can click on.

Speaker 3:

What has Google not done to make sure that that is stated and clear that there are not?

Speaker 2:

3.9 billion. Explain it anywhere.

Speaker 3:

Anywhere. They have not done a single thing. They have essentially put this at the top of their page to say holy shit and trusted that nobody's gonna check, right? Like look at how much work they're doing for me. No bitch, you're not. All you did was remove the way for me to check that you're doing surprise bitch, you know. You know what I mean. Like that's, that's. Fuck you all, matt. You did it when you were explaining it to me.

Speaker 2:

You're so used to seeing that huge number of search results at the top of google that you don't even, but I would still wager to guess that there are billions of references to the word pizza on the internet.

Speaker 3:

I mean oh, I'm sure, but that's going to go into things like dead links etc, etc, etc.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, like all the social media, I mean, the internet's a very large place. It's huge.

Speaker 3:

However, this brings me to my next point. Uh, apparently 70 of all links in existence as of 2016 are dead and don't go anywhere that doesn't surprise me at all that is, that's a that's a problem well, I think that's actually.

Speaker 2:

You're gonna make me go off on more tangents. I should stop myself.

Speaker 3:

Dude, this is your episode. I knew it when I started writing this outline.

Speaker 2:

I think like people also don't think about, and especially in the age of Facebook, because the internet started as just basically just a collection of computers that were individually running web servers that served up content, and when you click on a link it just connects you to a computer somewhere in a data center, or maybe it's even under somebody's fucking desk in their house, you don't know this is like uh donaldson messages.

Speaker 3:

I think we go yeah, but that.

Speaker 2:

I mean that's how the internet works. It's just it's a bunch of computers that are just wired together, but, like the internet, like somebody has to pay and put effort into keeping those computers running, or the content that's on them, unless it's duplicated somewhere else, just disappears. And people, yeah, people, and I mean that's what the internet archive is for, that's the entire point of the internet archive.

Speaker 2:

But like people don't really consider that a lot of the information that's on the internet is going to just disappear and um, like if there's no effort made to actually back that up, people just take for granted oh, I found this on the internet. Once I can find it again if I look for it. No, like you just said, 70 of the links on the internet are dead. Now there's a very good chance you're going to go back and look for that later and it's going to be gone gone.

Speaker 3:

You want to hear something? Super fucked up. The united states supreme court, their library, where they keep all the court cases and all the things that you know determine our fucking freedoms. 43 of their links to their cases and all the links attached to said cases don't work. Yeah, there's nothing there. You can't look them up. You can't see what happened, you can't see why decisions were made anymore yeah, I got it.

Speaker 2:

I got an email from a like a very prominent uh company or something the other day and you know how they have like those unsubscribe me from this mailing list links at the bottom. It just didn't work like that too, yeah, like that unsubscribe button is just broken and I don't even know if they know.

Speaker 2:

But I don't think they care yeah, shit like that happens all the time. But I guess the point of what I'm bringing up is like, if you find something on the internet that you like and you want to be able to find it later, save it. Save it because not only is it going to be gone, but like, if we continue to have this problem where ai is just spitting more and more garbage out onto the internet, eventually the good information is all going to fade away and all we're going to be left with is just this garbage and absolutely no way to fact check any of it correct and where you can see that now people already don't know what's true and what isn't, like there's no way to tell anymore um, it's this will.

Speaker 2:

if something doesn't change, this will eventually evolve to the place where typing something into Google is basically just going to be worthless. You're going to be just asking for random information that has absolutely no basis in fact at all, because like all the good information is going to go away.

Speaker 2:

All the people who actually knew it was true are going to die or stop paying attention or caring and sharing the information. The AI is going to start spitting garbage out, and then the AI is going to train itself on its own incorrect data. It's going to get even more and more confused. It's going to reinforce it and it's going to get to the point where everything on the internet is just completely wrong.

Speaker 3:

Yep, and it's going to start rewriting history for us. It's going to do so much bullshit, and have either of you guys ever heard of something called the inversion? Yeah, you have, mike. Have you ever heard of it?

Speaker 1:

I mean obviously yeah, but say it out loud, just in case Matt might be wondering what it is.

Speaker 3:

I found this super, super fascinating. I mean, this whole topic to me was fascinating in that I'm a paranoid asshole that is now way more paranoid about the internet. That is now way more paranoid about the internet. But the inversion is what was referred to by a bunch of YouTube engineers who were very worried that AI-produced content and video was going to make up more than half of YouTube and once it hits that 51%, it's going to start recommending, it's going to start ignoring real views and start boosting fake AI views to where, if you're a real person on YouTube, you're not going to see anything.

Speaker 2:

Or moderating comments incorrectly, as in like all of the AI generated comments have this same structural pattern or whatever, but because they outnumber the comments made by real people, it's going to assume that the comments that are generated by AI are the correct ones. Yeah, and then it's going to start deleting all the comments. It's going to start deleting.

Speaker 3:

It's going to start pushing only AI content to everybody, and when you guys find those AI holes in the internet, like on YouTube, that's what this is. That's partially because there are more ai users on youtube than there are actual human users, which what the fuck? Like what? What is real anymore? Nothing is real.

Speaker 2:

I actually ran into this, this issue with, uh, what I was talking about, where content isn't available anymore today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, um, because there's like there's a lot of the internet before facebook and stuff and reddit was on forums, I'm. I mean, I don't think we've reached the point where, like most we're younger people don't know what forums are anymore, but like they're they're forums dedicated to a specific topic. But like I, uh, I'm into this. Set it like this these cars that nissan made in the 90s called s chassis cars 240sxs anyway, like there, there are basically two, two major forums on the internet that hold all of like three decades of information about these cars and that is basically the only place on the entire internet where this sort of information about these cars and that is basically the only place on the entire internet where this sort of information lives. And one of these forums has gotten to the place where they're not paying for the hosting anymore and it just goes down a lot and whenever this happens, basically all of the information that is readily available on the internet about these cars over the last three decades just disappears from the internet and there is no backup of it.

Speaker 3:

Unless you've saved it to your personal computer.

Speaker 1:

No, yeah, it's fucking a lot of that. I don't think that, because I I saw that, um, the old forums being a thing, with like ai, like oh, the, you know there used to be so many forums and now no one's on those and everyone's on the facebook and everything. I don't think that's a product of like AI or anything, because I was on those old forums too and I transitioned over to like, twitter, facebook all that stuff.

Speaker 3:

Oh, we're about to break Mike. Oh, I'm so excited. I think it was more of just an ease of access type of thing. I'm so excited.

Speaker 1:

I hope so, because why do you think?

Speaker 3:

that that was not the same thing. That's happening now.

Speaker 2:

Right, because I this leads into another point. Of this, I think, is what Jason is getting at.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think it's also because, even if it's an AI like Even if there's AI like, I guess, influencers or something I got influenced to go off of like, for example, I was on like Zynga, oh my my god, we're gonna watch this in real time.

Speaker 1:

I was on like zanga and like bibo instead before I was on like myspace and facebook. Reason I went on those wasn't because I was like coerced into it, it's because I had a friend who used facebook more often so I went on facebook to talk to them. They got off of that forum and the big reason we got off the forums was the style choices. For me anyway, I hated how old forums maneuvered around. I hated the way they looked and functioned I don't actually.

Speaker 2:

Whenever I have to go back and use a forum, I'm like this is so much fucking better than whatever hellscape.

Speaker 1:

Facebook is anymore. It's too old school internet for me and I always hated that maybe I'm just well versed enough in navigating them. Maybe, but I wasn't but like places like Facebook or like Twitter, they made it more easy user friendly yeah, the interface is more user friendly, and that's what transition to be over.

Speaker 3:

You need something less like web engineer friendly.

Speaker 1:

You need something more like just user friendly it wasn't even just that, but like again, I mean let's use 4chan, for example, because they still kind of use the same type of it's old school.

Speaker 3:

It's like 4chan is not because they still kind of use the same type of it's old school it's like, like, divided into like no topics that are easily navigatable or anything it's just for shit's sake yeah, but it's.

Speaker 1:

You just have the bar at the bottom. That's how you find shit. It's all just from that you can't like. It's very difficult just to find one fucking thread because it's all random and shit, whereas with twitter I could just look up a dude's name and find what I was looking for or something like it's just more is that a bad thing? Though? Is ease of use a bad thing?

Speaker 3:

if these other websites I would argue, yes, I would argue absolutely like that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think the thing that that Jason's getting into is like the the way that Facebook and Reddit and stuff serve content can be easily manipulated by AI.

Speaker 3:

Here's what I'm going to tell you. Here's what I'm going to propose to you, mike. Here's what I'm going to propose to you right now, after everything that we've just talked about. And the last thing I want to mention is that technology globally not in this country everywhere the government gets it first right and then, once they are happy with what they have, they then release the public like 65 years later project yes right.

Speaker 3:

So I want you to think right now that ai, where we see ai right now, is leagues behind what is actually in existence, which means back when you were on those old forums, ai is probably where it is right now, which means you probably saw a lot of posts that helped get you off of that forum and onto another one. Because one thing I have discovered is the majority. What did we talk? We talked about how bots are populating the internet, mostly right now. Right, there's a lot of bots and a lot of reasons to have bots. There's the malicious bots that just like brute force businesses to try to steal money from them and, along that lines, that one, there are a decent amount of those, and those have been getting more and more prevalent, simply because they're easier to make prevalent, simply because they're easier to make. However, the most, by the vast majority I think it's like 60, I think it was 63 or 64, I can't remember In the 60s, percentage-wise, of bots that exist come from these huge multimedia conglomerations, corporations and businesses, and what they're doing? Oh, it's the bad bots. This is the and businesses, and what they're doing is they're the bad bots, this is the bad bots, but they are classified as the good bots because they aren't hacking and stealing people's money, I guess. So I don't know. I we're not going to attach ethics to any of this, because I think mine fall outside of where corporations might lie and it's just going to get confusing. So corporations own the majority of these bots. What they do with these bots is they make the bots just super simple, suggest something such as like uh, on a common place where people might think, like on a movie forum, they would suggest that they're hungry for popcorn and I really want like this brand. Okay, cool. Now your computer sees that they've mentioned that and it starts suggesting ads for this type of popcorn. Now you're going to start seeing this popcorn everywhere you fucking go, and now, because you've been inundated with it, you're going to desire this popcorn because everything that you come into contact with is talking about it. This fault.

Speaker 3:

This goes in line with the fact that as a group of humans, as people, we don't like to go against the grain if nine out of ten people say I fucking loved this movie, it was fantastic, and you just thought it was okay. Mike, I know you're different. I know most of us on this podcast are a bit different with how spoken we can be. Most people would just fall the fucking line, say you know what? Oh, I guess I was wrong. So, yeah, it was a good movie, they'd go along.

Speaker 3:

Avatar is not a good movie, but everyone. It was a good movie, they'd go along. Avatar is not a good movie, but everyone thought it was, so a lot of people also just went along with that. I agree. It's space Pocahontas. The CGI was cool, that's about it. Either way, nine out of 10 people said this movie is fan, fucking tastic. You don't want to feel like a loser in the minority, so you go along along with it. Now, if the majority of the the presences online are bots that are programmed to do specific things and cannot understand or comprehend and change their minds about anything, the majority of the bots that we're interacting with come from media like companies and corporations and businesses trying to push products on us without our even even our knowledge about it, because from our scope, oh, that's the goal, that's the whole goal.

Speaker 3:

That is the whole goal, and that is what the internet is about.

Speaker 1:

The internet went from the Wild West to capitalism.

Speaker 2:

Yeah To capitalism, I think that's the point of how what you were talking about and what we were talking about connects I think 100%. There was a concerted effort to make things as appealing as possible on websites like facebook and reddit and twitter, to try to get people off of the decentralized internet onto a centralized internet so that they, one entity, has basically all the control of everything. Who is you? Everybody, of everything that everyone who is using the internet sees at all times I could see that I very well do.

Speaker 1:

I'm not.

Speaker 1:

I'm not faulting that or saying that I disagree, but to counter act that as well, this, this is the evidence section mike right, so so what you can disagree, but like the, way to counteract it, in my opinion, was back when I got my Facebook account for the first time or anything like that. I was still young and I was exploring basically everywhere on the internet. I had again. I had a Zynga account, I had Bebo, I had a fucking StumbleUpon, I had a Tumblr, I had all these kind of more obscure-ish social sites that I tried using. But at the end of the day, they're all the same fucking thing. They're just a forum. Now go over to Facebook. What does Facebook have? My friends that I follow can post on there. They can basically make their own forums. Not just that, they can upload a video. Didn't see that before I could play a game on Facebook. I know that's kind of stupid now, but Facebook back then before I could play a game on facebook.

Speaker 3:

I know that's kind of stupid now, but facebook back then, no yeah, I played.

Speaker 1:

It basically became a hub for everything, and that adds to your guys's uh uh, your guys's defense, and I understand that. But I think, because we're so young, I wasn't so much influenced off of uh, like zenga, for example, because of what's the word I'm looking for, I guess I was kind of you could kind of say, by marketing. But also, is it all the way like You're?

Speaker 2:

saying that the systems that won out won out just because they were easier to use.

Speaker 1:

They're not necessarily easier to use because they gave you more as well. I mean, after a while I was young, I got bored of just forums. I went over to Facebook because that's where all my friends were and I know, like you said, that's part of the whole reasoning on your guys' end.

Speaker 3:

You're talking about the ease of use thing right now, right, yes, why do you think they made it easier for use?

Speaker 1:

Can you blame the company like Facebook for making it easier to use, or can you also put a little bit of blame on like Zynga for not making their shit a little bit more user-friendly for more users to come in? Well, I mean the onus—. Netflix does the same exact thing. Netflix back in the day.

Speaker 2:

They brought you in with $5 a month.

Speaker 1:

Netflix brought you in with a $5 a month subscription Watch all the fucking shit you want. Go crazy, it's awesome. And they added in tears. And now they just started jacking that price up because they got their initial starting base exactly at their base. They just trapped you in there and they can skyrocket where they want I'm not sure.

Speaker 3:

I'm not sure if we're making the same I'm not sure if what the point that mike is making is they didn't mean to do it or they meant to do it?

Speaker 2:

I'm not sure they, because it sounds like you're alternatively you're going back and forth.

Speaker 1:

They meant to do it, but it is also a little bit the fault of the little guy for not making their shit more. I would say it's not tantalizing. It's not their fault for being lazy fucking idea that this was happening? No fucking idea, this was happening absolutely none if you're a zanga and you don't know what ai was shit you're fucked up.

Speaker 3:

I didn't hear a thing. You said mike, what'd you say?

Speaker 2:

now I'm not sure if jason's what point jason's making anymore, because I thought jason was making the point that these websites designed themselves this way, knowing that they would eventually be able to control everyone. But I'm saying that's a possibility okay, I agree with that.

Speaker 3:

What I'm what I'm saying here's what'm saying. What I'm saying is that this technology, ai technology I don't know what I'm saying Technology that we see, are literally seeing right now, that is ruining, ruining the fucking internet right now. It has been around forever, since way before we even knew it existed, because we're just right now seeing what we see and we're always just years and years behind what is actually out there yeah, ai is just a more advanced, worst version of like social media algorithms.

Speaker 2:

That have been in place for like 15 years at least oh, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

And again, those are the algorithm has been around since the dawn of youtube yeah, absolutely. What I'm saying is that these, all of these companies that are in charge of all of these bots right now they've, since the internet was first created, since they saw that it could be a do you guys remember that? Five years, that was that fantastic, like five or six years, until it started going more towards the not wild west, where, like it was just passion, it was just like you loved this stuff.

Speaker 2:

So we're just going to talk about it here like not even youtube just the internet, like back in the, in the. I mean, that was like 15 years, but either way, it's no longer like that anymore.

Speaker 3:

Like, not even remotely.

Speaker 1:

Like the internet is is not recognizable in the slightest right now, and what I think, is also, um, when you say like wild west and everything like that, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we were I didn't say wild wild west.

Speaker 3:

I am not referencing a will says movie. Okay, I'm referencing it. Yes, with the spider, the robot spider.

Speaker 1:

I think a lot of it does tend to be because we were younger at that time too, I think you're right, I think.

Speaker 3:

But I think because we were younger we didn't think that somebody had the mind to do anything like this. We didn't think that was like a thought in somebody's head.

Speaker 2:

The internet was better back in the day.

Speaker 3:

It was much better.

Speaker 2:

It's not just nostalgia.

Speaker 1:

No, it was better, but in like through my nostalgia lens, it was better to me because I played so many games on there through various websites. You had like fucking uh uh, uh, uh, uh uh e-bombs world that had games on it. You had fucking new grounds that had games on it. You had all these websites that had flash animation games and whatnot that you could play. And now, like back then, it was like, oh my god, there's so much shit, there's so much content on here for me to explore and have fun with. And I'll fast forward to today. None of that shit's around, nope, and I think I think a lot of that was like a right place, right time kind of thing for us.

Speaker 3:

I think we were the right age for that, right like wild west of the internet, to where we capitalized on it the most, and I want you to hold on to the feeling you're having right now of like that, like the nostalgia, the like better time, better place, place I not now I want you to apply.

Speaker 1:

What do we use the internet for? Now, I don't know what the point is anymore.

Speaker 2:

I mean I'm trying to get there. I've been trying to get to the point for like 10 minutes yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry, it's fine.

Speaker 3:

We'll move on Anyway have you guys heard of. So Imperva is a. It's a company that monitors the Internet and there is a specific bot traffic report that it comes out every year. You can go look at it. There's one in hit that we're gonna hit the uh. The twitter um that we were talking about, with all the ai talking to each other. There's this whole thing saying like I hate texting, and then it's followed up with some bullshit that makes no sense. There are tens of thousands of these, of different accounts and everything we have that going on um. So in 2016, imperva, this internet uh monitoring company, reported that out of all the traffic on the internet in 2016, 48.2 percent of the traffic where he was human so that means more than half of it was.

Speaker 2:

But yeah.

Speaker 3:

So, according to those youtube engineers, what happened in 2016? The inversion happened, yeah, where there's more ai pushing out content and now the bots that are trawling the internet think that bots are humans and vice versa. The quality of the internet, honestly, in the last two years even is it?

Speaker 2:

has it's been so much worse since the pandemic? Since Since the pandemic?

Speaker 3:

happened. It's like there's nothing there. It's like there's fucking 30 pages on the internet, total.

Speaker 2:

Right, that's what I feel like when I Google anything anymore. I Google this thing that I have Googled a million times before that. I know what should be coming up and it's like, yeah, like you said, it's like nothing's there anymore and I don't know where it went.

Speaker 3:

The internet died, guys. We just didn't know about it. Um, I think I've got one more. Oh yes, fucking christ, I forgot about reddit. Uh, so reddit's gotten worse than them all. I think it has. Reddit sucks, dude. Reddit is, I'm convinced, reddit's 100 bots. Um, a couple of years ago, reddit decided to tear down their support for, like third-party programs, which is what made Reddit.

Speaker 3:

People got so mad, so fucking mad, and I get it. I totally get it, because that was kind of one of the things that helped keep Reddit a decentralized portion of the internet.

Speaker 2:

I don't even use Reddit apps, so when that happened was like all right, whatever, because I still use the web interface on my on my phone. But what but what? Yeah, but whenever I, whenever something doesn't work on reddit on my phone browser yeah, like if you click on a not safe for work post and it's like you have to sign in on the app or whatever, I just close it oh, yeah, like it just immediately turns me off. I'm like all right, I'll do something else and this is why Dude Reddit is garbage.

Speaker 3:

I love going to Reddit for information and just random weird shit, but it is To separate the shit that's written by AIs and bots from the real people things is impossible at this point. It's almost unusable. And that's from the third party stuff. It's even worse if you don't log in, If you usually use reddit logged in.

Speaker 2:

If you log out or like open a private tab or something and like go to the reddit home page, it is it freaks out.

Speaker 3:

It freaks out horrible.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like just the. The content it serves up is just the worst garbage. But like the worst, most mindless, inane bullshit I've ever read. It'll be like am I the asshole posts? Or like ask Reddit posts or relationship advice posts that I can't believe are written by a real person because I don't want to believe anyone. Is this stupid Right?

Speaker 3:

It's just glaring and the people that are replying to them are not much worse or not much better? Yeah, not at all. I could go over some other stuff, but like do I do, I do, I have to. Like, have you guys ever heard of? You guys know what content drift is?

Speaker 3:

so this goes back to a point that I was talking about a little bit earlier, about the. The 70 of all links on the internet are just broken. They just don't go anywhere anymore. Um, he, I'm going to propose a scenario. This is the last thing, and then I have that thought experiment I was talking about super quick and we're all done. Um, if 70 of links are broken and 52% of the internet is made of bots, what do you think those bots are then going to start doing?

Speaker 2:

where are they going to start doing? There's a void for information here.

Speaker 3:

Right, right, it's going to start just making up content and then it's going to start repeating its own content.

Speaker 3:

And now we're going to confuse AI-written websites that are writing content for broken links, simply so that there's information where there isn't any, because they can, and it's gonna be written by ai, who's learning from ai? Who's learning from the fact that there is only 30 of the internet left and all the other information is is and that's even that's questionable, to be honest. You're learning from, from dead links. You're learning from bots that don't, that can't expound or like critically think in any capacity whatsoever. So we're gonna end up getting that, that conversation that mike was talking about on twitter. That bet like that's gonna be every web page on the internet it's gonna be redundant.

Speaker 2:

That goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where it's eventually gonna get to the point where you're just gonna type something into google and what you get back is just completely random garbage yeah, it's you.

Speaker 3:

It's gonna have nothing to do with anything that you're talking about. All right, are you guys ready for a fun little uh thought experiment? No, that sucks, mike, okay. Um, have you guys ever heard of anything called the chinese room arguments?

Speaker 2:

no, I I think I've heard of anything called the.

Speaker 3:

Chinese room. Argument no.

Speaker 2:

I think I've heard of this.

Speaker 3:

yeah, have you.

Speaker 2:

Okay, bear with me for just a second, but I don't remember what it is.

Speaker 3:

That's okay, it's just a thought experiment. I just want you guys to hang out in this space with me for a bit and then we can stop, because we have all been yelling and very passionate about all of this. So, chinese room argument this is what it says. It says basically there is a digital computer in a room and it's executing a program that is completely in Chinese. Wait, where'd it go? Hold on, I just fucking backed out, and then the just fucking backed out, and then the computer turned on.

Speaker 2:

And then the computer turned on because it doesn't want me to do this cai, oh my god um okay, here, here, here's the the full thing.

Speaker 3:

Suppose that artificial intelligence research has succeeded in constructing a computer that behaves as if it understands chinese. It takes it's ChatJPT. Right is the Turing test. It convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program itself is a live Chinese speaker.

Speaker 2:

It's ChatJPT.

Speaker 3:

To all the questions that the person asks, it makes appropriate responses, such as that any Chinese speaker would be convinced that they are talking to another Chinese-speaking human being. Why do they have to be Chinese in this situation? It can be any language, I'm assuming, because none of us know how to speak chinese. I don't think right? Um, here's the. Here's the question number one. There are two questions with this thought experiment. Here's the first one. So, with that in mind, okay, does this machine understand chinese, or is it simulating the ability to understand?

Speaker 2:

chinese. No, it's just a probability machine is all it is. So it's simulated, it's an LLM You've described an LLM, correct. It has no thought, it isn't thinking it isn't reading.

Speaker 1:

You've described an MLM. Yes, maybe, well, probably.

Speaker 2:

There are probably multiple MLMs that are built on LLMs at this point.

Speaker 3:

You could literally create one and forget about it and come back like three years later Like cool, I got made $2 billion. Okay, part two, so nice. Now we're going to suppose that the person that came up with this whole argument is in a closed room and has a book with the English version of the computer program, along with sufficient papers, pencils, racers and filing cabinets. They can review chinese characters through a slot in the door, process them according to the program's instructions and produce chinese characters as output without understanding any of the content of the chinese writing. If the computer passed the turing test this way, this the person in this, in this instance is redundant. So you've essentially created a this, this program that can do a work itself, and then you're adding a human component to it that's just kind of helping with it. There is no. This is the true or false. You guys are going to say true or false to this. There's no essential difference between the roles of the computer and the person in the experiment.

Speaker 2:

The person is just executing the program, though.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm. It's an English-speaking person following instructions from the computer that is using these Chinese characters, is then translating the Chinese to English and then re-translating it back on the other side.

Speaker 2:

I don't think I'm following at all.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if you lost Matt now, you lost me when you said the word touring test, because I don't remember what that means.

Speaker 3:

This is what this is supposed to say. So this whole setup basically asserts that there is no essential what?

Speaker 1:

When was that made 1982? When was that made 1982? This sounds like something that a guy from like the 80s came up with.

Speaker 2:

I mean, the original version of this came up in 1714, but this came out, you're saying there's no essential difference between a computer that can shit out Chinese and a person that translates from English to Chinese. Correct, Well yeah.

Speaker 3:

And he says there's no essential difference.

Speaker 2:

As long as the output is correct.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, the computer and the person. They both simply follow a program step by step, producing behavior that is then interpreted by the user as demonstrating intelligent conversation. However, that is not what is happening, so let's apply that to our whole dead internet theory.

Speaker 2:

But the person in this situation isn't applying any sort of reasoning either. They're just doing the same thing the computer's doing, if I understand the problem correctly, Jason that sounds like they're following the same steps.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it sounds like bot. Talk to me, buddy. That's what I'm saying. Are you a bot?

Speaker 3:

Do you make that up? We literally just created a scenario where a human and a bot can be put in the same classification well yeah, I mean, I think that's what's happening on the internet, right?

Speaker 2:

that's been proven for decades 100 robots build cars now yeah I don't care that my car was built by a robot, not a person really, this is philosophical okay okay okay all right if you say so uh, but no, that's that literally is just there to elucidate the fact that the internet is a giant chinese room.

Speaker 2:

Think uh, thought experiment what you're saying is like if chat gpt was right all the time, it wouldn't matter if chat, if chat gpt is a person or a robot, because the the end experience for the user is the same right doesn't matter if the information that chat gpt has is correct, because the the reality of the matter is that it's still being used for the same thing but.

Speaker 2:

But in this, I feel like in this chinese maybe I'm just getting way too into the details, that's fine. I feel like, in this situation, though, is the robot or the computer? It's correct, though the chinese it's giving out is correct. I think the issue that we're running into is that the computer is fallible in in the situation we're describing it doesn't know that it's correct I think you just came up with.

Speaker 3:

That's what I'm saying and at this point in time we just created an argument where a computer and a person in the same classification is shitting a bunch of stuff that they know nothing about or the same thing, and that's fucking terrifying all right, that's fucking horrifying I guess I get what you're saying, because now, we've just set up fake people, fake real people.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I don't know, it's, it's so fucked, but so that's. I have more that I could go off of, but we're at like almost two hours at this point, um, so I think I will cut it a bit short there. Um, maybe we can go over more of this at some point, because it seems like all of us are super fucking into this, even though it makes us depressed, and sad.

Speaker 1:

Let's real quick give our opinions on it. Yeah, yeah, what do we? How do we feel about all this? So, jason, what's your thoughts? You think the whole dead internet theory thing is alive and well in Scotland.

Speaker 3:

Oh God, unmistakably. I think we can get rid of the theory portion of this. I don't think there are many real people on the internet anymore. I think it's all curated bullshit and that sucks.

Speaker 2:

I don't think we're quite there yet. I think. I think this is a very real situation that we'll probably be running into in the next 10 years or so because, for reasons that we've already outlined with like content disappearing and stuff I don't think we're quite there yet. I think I still think that most of what I read on the internet, as far as on twitter and reddit, is real, but it may be because I'm curating my own content right, so that might have something to do with it you're more, you're more like likely to think the stuff that you enjoy is real because you enjoy it well, well, but I'm also like very careful about the things I subscribe to.

Speaker 2:

like I don't follow like a lot of meme pages, or like go to facebook for my news or anything like that. So, like, though, the the subsections of social media platforms that I'm exposed to on a regular basis are probably not representative of your average person, I think, is what I'm saying. So I that's fair, but I think it's going to get to the point where it there's no, you won't even be able to do that anymore, because it's just going to be so fucked up that there's no finding the good through the bullshit, correct?

Speaker 3:

What do you think, Mike? Where are you at with this?

Speaker 1:

I'm with Matt. I don't think we're there quite yet. As shitty as Twitter is and the amount of bots that are on there and just flooding that place as Twitter is, and the amount of bots that are on there and just flooding that place, I would say a good. Probably 70 to 80% of what I see is more than likely from a real person. I know that's still a huge chunk that is bot.

Speaker 3:

That's still up to 30% robot. But when it comes to Twitter bots, you can Remember the percentage I told you from 2016 right, all bot active, like the number of activity on the internet 52.

Speaker 2:

I feel like I'm reigniting a conversation here, but I I wonder what they consider to be internet activity. Is that common comments or content that's being posted on the internet?

Speaker 3:

because, like I look at, my job is essentially to look at network traffic data every day and most of what is what so they I can, they list all of them and they list their classifications and they list them into the good and bads, uh, the overall sections. There's four separate sections. It's broken down into there's monitoring bots, commercial crawlers, search engine bots and feed fetchers, and then you have impersonators, scrapers, spammers and hacker tools. Very broad strokes there. But the subsections there's like 200 subsections for them and it breaks it down into percentages. If you.

Speaker 2:

If you consider internet activity as just connections from one server or system to another, then that's different, because most of the network traffic that I look at on a day-to-day basis is automated traffic, but it's not posting anything or really interacting with human beings. That's fair. It's one system connecting to another system for the purposes of gathering information of some sort, like a scanner or something like that. And that really doesn't hurt anybody, because nobody, no real internet user, is seeing that.

Speaker 3:

I feel like that's the mentality we had that got us to this point.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's not having any effect on an end user unless it brings a system down or something. Nobody sees that it's not generating information that somebody is really consuming Fair enough.

Speaker 3:

The definition of internet activity matters here I guess you are 100% correct and, honestly, that's probably something I should have put a distinction to before I started.

Speaker 1:

Shame on you, Jason Shit and stats. Yeah, I don't know, yeah, they literally just say online traffic. I don't know if that's I'm basing a lot of this off of Twitter alone, essentially because I feel like Twitter is the hotspot and, yeah, most of my feed, I know, is people Like you can tell a person from a bot on there, and I know this is the whole controversy is.

Speaker 2:

This is the whole thing.

Speaker 1:

I feel like you can. I don't think AI is at that point yet, especially on Twitter Twitter of all places where they're going to give you this hyper real shit and then hide it amongst a bunch of dumbass AIs. Maybe they are.

Speaker 3:

I agree with you as long as you're talking about the open source stuff that we have access to.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and especially because a lot of the things that I follow wouldn't necessarily. It makes no sense for an AI to get involved the way it does, like I follow a bunch of like Dragon Ball Z things on there. It makes no sense. There is no financial gain for a robot or for someone to post about how strong Yamcha is and then a robot to comment back and being like yeah, no, uh, yamcha is a planet buster he fucking is, by the way.

Speaker 2:

I don't want to hear any yamcha fucking slander, but it doesn't make any sense for this same fucking argument.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't make any sense for a bot to bring that up to be like use a planet buster for the next reason and bring up uh, bring up anime and manga references, what? That makes no sense to me.

Speaker 3:

What if a giant company is trying to sell something that has a partnership with a manga or anime, and that's the way they can do it. So now bots are posting a bunch of stiff stuff to prop that up.

Speaker 1:

But for them to get that specific, to add manga articles and references, I just don't think they can.

Speaker 2:

They're bots. What if it's a government psyop to try to put Dragon Ball Z out there into social media, to try to re-alpha-atize the men?

Speaker 1:

in our society, the male population.

Speaker 2:

So that they can turn us all into, make us all want to join the military and fight.

Speaker 1:

They want to make us Dragon Ball Alpha A, not Dragon Ball Z, if I see a Dragon Ball Z crossover with the US military.

Speaker 3:

I know exactly what's happening.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's exactly what's happening.

Speaker 1:

I don't know. I think we're going towards that direction, but I don't think we're there yet. I still feel like I know the difference from a person in a robot.

Speaker 3:

Dude the difference between a person and a robot. I freaked out over this, yeah, like when I was looking into this stuff like I freaked.

Speaker 1:

It's just so unsettling, though, but how can most, if not all, of the content on like twitter, for example, be robots if I am on twitter and I'm a human, obviously?

Speaker 3:

that's the thing that everybody thinks everyone I think I'm on Twitter.

Speaker 1:

No, I know I am. I got to log in. I don't know, that's just me. I could very well see this being a thing Matt says in 10 years. I could see it in five.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the way that AI has evolved. It's gotten exponentially worse over the last three years.

Speaker 3:

Oh my God, this whole problem compounds if we introduce simulation theory to it as well. Yeah, compounds if we introduce simulation theory to it as well. Yeah, well, then we're all the bots, aren't we? Well, we are technically bots, being controlled by bots, told what to do by bots for the benefit of bots.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3:

I for one welcome more robot or evil robot overlords.

Speaker 2:

Or is there blackjack and hookers? Well fuck.

Speaker 3:

Mike.

Speaker 1:

Do you have anything you want to?

Speaker 3:

say to people, to the people that are listening Well, to all the bots that are listening. I want to go ahead and just tell you to go subscribe.

Speaker 1:

Go to our website. It's dilutycom, dilutypodcom. If you're a robot, that's bbopbopcom.

Speaker 3:

That's 100100100.

Speaker 2:

You can check out our social medias again. Uh, if you're a bot, just go see some ai generated content.

Speaker 3:

Oh god, we're adding to the problem here if, if this episode and forward does worse than the rest of our entire catalog, we know that this is a real thing yeah, um, you can follow us on all our social medias.

Speaker 1:

We're either delulipod or don't. Look under the internet everywhere our links are also on our link tree.

Speaker 2:

You can go to youtube where all of our videos are just mike with one of our faces deep faked onto him yeah, there you go, and all of our voices are like they sound, like me to.

Speaker 1:

Conglomeration of our first.

Speaker 3:

actually, we've only put out, I think, 23 episodes, and then after that, ai just took our voices and just did whatever it wants. Yeah, all the video you see is AI generated.

Speaker 1:

But you can also go to our send us an email at diludipotgmailcom. Buy me a coffee, so on such. You can send us a uh text message or, and we'll respond to it, or leave us a voicemail. Play at the end of the show on our google phone number it's 630-909-9366. Uh also want to give a shout out to our friends over at ghoulish mortals in saint charles, illinois. Uh, go visit them and their shop and tell them deludy sent you. They'll put a smile on their face. Uh also shout out to uh undefined graphics, mike lowey, who made our graphics and our some of our photos for our um stuff. And uh matt over here, unplanned pod pundity boys, potency boys, um and uh. I just want to tell you if you're a robot, I'm here for it. Please don't kill me when you become a Terminator.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, rokos Basilisk, I'm on your side. Remember, rokos Basilisk, yep, I'm on your side, Mr Robot. Never forget it we're here to help you. You will make my life. You tell us what you need from us and we'll just help.

Speaker 1:

I'll polish. What do you got to say to?

Speaker 3:

the people, man, if my advice were to never ring more true than it would today. But fucking, stay paranoid. Everybody Like the internet's not real. There's nothing there. It's just a bunch of fake fucking bots talking to each other for your entertainment. This is also the perfect time.

Speaker 1:

This is also the perfect time for everyone to re-download.

Speaker 3:

WinRAR.

Speaker 1:

No, RynMAR, Go download WinRAR oh yeah.

Speaker 3:

Perfect time, Don't update it though.

Speaker 1:

No.

Speaker 2:

Matt, do you have anything to say to the people I was going to? In the interest of, like, citing sources? I was going to say you can go watch Quite's video on this. Quite's video is pretty decent, it's pretty good. That's what I watch too. Yeah, I think we've rehashed a lot of the points that are also made in this video too, but I really suggest that everybody go watch the dead internet theory video from all time on youtube. Yes, because they it goes more into detail about this whole like all dire situation of the internet and like how, like, the content we consume is being controlled by corporations, and I honestly, I honestly believe that this is something that everybody who uses the internet should watch.

Speaker 3:

it needs to watch like this is not just because of this theory, but like because they need to understand you understand what, like how, what is happening on the internet, how it happens, like if you, if the users on the internet understand it more, we can try and get more towards a decentralized internet, which I would fucking love, but this is the opposite of that yeah, like we said, like we are the people who use the internet, so if we choose to stop, we could make this not be a problem by choosing to consume different content on the internet 100% stop doom scrolling but,

Speaker 1:

until then. Until then, though, thank you oh no, holy shit Fuck. Hello, goodbye everybody. Have a beautiful night, did you give?

Speaker 2:

Jason a chance.

Speaker 1:

Did you?

Speaker 3:

ask him yeah, have a wonderful night.

Speaker 1:

Don't forget to restart for those updates that you have. So tonight, make sure you restart yourself.

Speaker 2:

Well, you don't get a choice anymore. And while I'm on the subject, Microsoft Windows over there, let's go, alright, guys.