AI Slop Startup To Flood The Internet With Thousands Of AI Slop Podcasts, Calls Critics Of AI Slop ‘Luddites’
from the badly-made-gibberish-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see dept
So look, I’m not one of these people who thinks “AI” has no useful applications. Just this week I had an efficient conversation with a Gemini chatbot when trying to cancel a Google subscription. I used ChatGPT to help me fact check my own work debunking false claims made by a different AI (an aggregation AI analysis newsbot) while doing research on broadband policy. Isn’t the future grand.
But I do think there’s useful automation, and then just a massive layer of hype, bullshit, fraud, fake profitability estimates, and vast product misrepresentation by the kind of VC hustlebros who profit off the front end of hype cycles, then disappear when the check comes due. These additional layers surrounding “AI” is where the coming bubble pop will happen, something Gartner analysts call the “trough of disillusionment,” which they expect to hit the sector hard sometime next year.
Meanwhile, the rushed application of undercooked automation is having hugely problematic impacts across privacy, energy, climate, propaganda, mental health, public safety, and labor. Often thanks to the kind of people in power who are shaping AI’s application across the culture. A lot of these folks (see: major media owners) aren’t looking to make our lives better, they’re looking to leverage automation as a way to attack labor, mislead people, or create a badly automated ouroboros of ad-engagement bullshit.
Case in point: a new startup named Inception Point AI is preparing to flood the internet with a thousands upon thousands of LLM-generated podcasts hosted by fake experts and influencers. The podcasts cost the startup a dollar or so to make, so even if just a few dozen folks subscribe they hope to break even:
“The company is able to produce each episode for $1 or less, depending on length and complexity, and attach programmatic advertising to it. This generally means that if about 20 people listen to that episode, the company made a profit on that episode, without factoring in overhead.”
Of course just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Podcasting is already a very saturated space full of a lot of useless noise. Flooding the zone with just an endless parade of human simulacrum isn’t going to do great things for the Internet’s already hugely problematic signal to noise ratio, or the public’s ability to differentiate the wheat from the chaff.
And that’s before you factor in the extreme energy and climate costs of generating that noise.
Inception Point CEO Jeanine Wright seems a little sensitive about whether her company is engaged in anything useful or good, quickly dismissing critics of the plan to flood the Internet with focus-group-tested, homogenized slop “Luddites”:
“We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI, and we are the company that’s bringing those people to life,” said CEO Jeanine Wright, who was previously chief operating officer of podcasting company Wondery, which has recently had to reorganize under the changing podcast landscape.”
And by “reorganize,” The Hollywood Reporter means they recently fired a bunch of human beings in a “pivot to video,” a common dysfunctional siren song across badly managed modern media empires (see Vice and countless others) trying desperately to be relevant in ever-shifting media markets. It’s very possible this “pivot to video” ends like the rest, but many of the questions it presents still stand.
I desperately want to believe that flooding the Internet with homogenized, focus-group-tested blather probably isn’t a winning strategy. I very much want to believe this approach will create a premium value on real people, artists, creators, and journalists who actually have something real to say. But I’ve met many of my fellow Americans, and I’m simply not sure that’s going to be the case.
Inception Point CEO is just one of hundreds of companies flooding this space with cheaply produced simulacrum. What happens when you have an internet packed with quickly made, cheap gibberish? In an era when expertise and real journalism are already under fire by an unholy alliance between corporate power and modern authoritarianism?
Will people flock to informed, intelligent quality? Or will they simply get lost in a maze of badly-automated lazy engagement porn built by people whose singular interest is making money at unmanageable scale with zero concern about the ethical impact (see: Mark Zuckerberg), making informed consensus and factual reality harder to collectively grasp than ever?
I’m not sure anybody knows yet. You’re certainly not being a “Luddite” if you ask. Meanwhile, Inception Point AI already has more than 5,000 shows across its Quiet Please Podcast Network and produces somewhere around 3,000 episodes a week, with 10 million downloads since September 2023.
Filed Under: ai, automation, bubble, hype, llm, podcasts, simulacrum
Companies: inception point
Comments on “AI Slop Startup To Flood The Internet With Thousands Of AI Slop Podcasts, Calls Critics Of AI Slop ‘Luddites’”
So what? Just don’t listen to them, which I imagine you wouldn’t anyway.
Re:
So flooding the internet with more misinformation and hallucinations isn’t a good thing.
Re: sO wHAT?
Wow, thats like Standing back and watching Christians Using a Jewish Bible, and waiting for them to Figure out, that Under Jewish Law, they AINT going to heaven, as they Aint Jewish.
Re:
Missed every point of the article, summarized it as, “I don’t like thing,” and posted idiotic comment.
With folk like you, who needs AI?
Re: Re: Since
Mine was a reply to the Above Comment…Whats your grief?
Hass to be Hemorrhoid’s.
Re: Re: Re:
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Luddites
It’s a common misconception that Luddites were anti-technology and anti-industrialisation. Not so. They were anti-capitalist. They were against the factory owners keeping all the profits while paying the workers starvation wages. They were painted as being against “progress” by the extraction class, much like what is happening today.
Re:
No, I’m pretty sure smashing machinery because it takes away jobs from manual laborers is anti-technology and anti-industrialization.
Re: Re:
Except that they weren’t smashing machinery “because it takes jobs away from manual laborers”.
Re: Re:
You’d do well to educate yourself a bit more on the subject. You are buying into a centuries old propaganda campaign. Places where the industrializers didn’t undercut skilled workers wages by buying orphans to operate the machinery didn’t suffer from the sabotage and destruction that the ones who did suffered.
I’d highly recommend reading ‘Blood in the Machine’ by Brian Merchant. It is a extremely timely look at the Luddite movement and how it intersects with our current woes.
Re: Re:
That n00bdragon is sure of it doesn’t make it factual. It’s a fair opinion, but there are historians that dispute it. “Malcolm L. Thomas argued […] that machine-breaking was one of the very few tactics that workers could use to increase pressure on employers, undermine lower-paid competing workers, and create solidarity among workers. ‘These attacks on machines did not imply any necessary hostility to machinery as such; machinery was just a conveniently exposed target against which an attack could be made.’”
Re:
One does not negate the other. Their primary focus was their anti-industrialist stance.
By focusing first and foremost on the machines being used to immiserate the workers, and not the people intentionally using those machines to accomplish that end, they ensured that their efforts would accomplish nothing of lasting value. Of course they couldn’t “stuff the genie back into the lamp” – people wouldn’t spontaneously lose the understanding needed to make and use industrial machinery. And even if they did, the same bosses who had used those machines to squeeze more profit from “their” workforce would simply use another tool to accomplish their ends.
Ludd and his followers are not anything to be idolized. They are a cautionary tale about how easily one can be distracted from root causes to the ephemera of an issue.
Re: "
According to Wikipedia, “The Luddites were members of a 19th-century movement of English textile workers who opposed the use of certain types of automated machinery due to concerns relating to worker pay and output quality.”
Karl wrote:
But these things seem quite similar to me.
Re:
Here’s the first sentence from the first paragraph of Encyclopedia Brittanica’s article on Luddites:
That sounds pretty anti-technology and anti-industrialization to me.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re:
Ah yes. Quote the winners in history.
Let me update things for you. “democrat” “a terrorist organization that sought to bring down the US”
Re: Re: Re:
You misspelt “republicans” again.
Re: Re:
It’s not fair to call people anti-technology for being against one specific technology. They were in favor of manual textile-making, which is also “technology”. They used technologies such as language and hammers to make their displeasure known.
Similarly for “industrialization”. Their work was already an “industry”, a term that goes back to the middle ages (“The Industrial Revolution” refers to industry being revolutionized, not coming into existence). They were against one form of industrialization, which they considered exploitative, rather than the concept in general.
What if those people had been offered a chance to buy the machines themselves, and use them to cut their work days in half while making the same pay? I doubt they’d have had a problem with it, assuming the work remained tolerable and the quality didn’t decrease.
And the AI world, profit means revenue, and net profit doesn’t exist.
AI (I mean LLM in this case) is still a thing because all computing costs are absorbed by very few companies (like OpenAI and Anthropic) that could only work because they’re receiving heavy funds (like from Softbank and Oracle), and that few companies are tremendously investing in computing datacenters (like Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon).
Being an AI startup is pretty much like an Internet startup in 2000s where internet cost were absorbed by telcos (and where an unknown company just making a search engine could operate with only few computers), a social network startup in 2010s (where the cost of distribution where absorbed by the App/Play Store), or a Blockchain/cryptocurrency startup in 2015 (where the computing cost where absorbed by clients). Very few will survive by the end of the year.
It’s pretty sad to know that Mark Zuckerbling and its superintelligent glasses will survive, as he survived the Metaverse.
At the risk of seeming like a Luddite myself,
“I used ChatGPT to help me fact check my own work debunking false claims made by a different AI”
Sounds a little like you’re using the Magic Word Box instead of doing research, so you’re not exactly dodging being part of the problem.
Am I the only one really disturbed by this sentence:
I mean, LLMs are so far away from being people, describing them that way is just scary. We’re already living in a world where corporations have a lot of the same rights as people. What happens when LLMs get those rights? Given who controls them, I don’t think it’s a good thing.
Re:
I’ve been suggesting people stop calling it “A.I.”, for exactly this reason: it misleads people into thinking humans have actually created intelligent machines. And here we go: the bullshit-industry believing its own bullshit.
Kind of like those homeopathic hucksters who actually added poison to their products, and ended up killing people. Till then, most reasonable people thought they were just scammers selling tapwater to idiots. (Evidently, they actually believed in the dilution theory, and got the math wrong.)
Re:
ChatGPT gets licensing fees for the song I got it to help me write. Currently, I’m the sole copyright holder.
Re: Re: tool maker
Right now, the Gentoo folks do not get licensing fees for the columns I use it to help me to write. I am the sole copyright holder, though the newspaper is obviously a licensee.
They attacked the machines that were the property of the capitalists. Those machines were the means by which skilled, reasonably-paid labor was replaced with low-wage factory labor.
Does it only count as anti-capitalist if they had attacked the capitalists themselves?
tidal wave incoming
Dude, honey bo bo and all the other “reality” TV crap producers already showed that people will congregate around the cheap slop. It is going to get a lot worse before it might get better.
Speedrunning toward the Dead Internet? neat. cool. awesome.
They’re going to do to podcasts what they did to self published books, just completely overwhelm everything with slop making it nearly impossible to find anything worthwhile, or to get your works seen by human eyes at all.
They’ve stripmined the internet, now they’re filling the hole they created with garbage.
Re:
Starving content creators for 25 years then stealing their output has consequences.
Being pro-piracy lead to this.
Re:
Chat GPT Prompt:
Write an upbeat song about they paved the internet paradise, put up a walled garden with a Starbucks and parking lot.
Re:
There’s still only one Chuck Tingle.
The Luddites get a bad rap.
They weren’t against new technology, especially in the workplace.
They just had issue with who this was going to negatively affect.
The textile looms they rallied against was less about technology and progress bad, they aren’t Amish;
and more about the fact that orphans(many under 10) were losing fingers working 16+ hour days working the loom shuttles in the privately run workhouses/orphanages.
Re:
There was a whole comment thread about that, which seems to have disappeared for some reason.
Re: Re:
It’s still there, just collapsed.
I think I,ll listen to the podcast Iisten to buy humans talking to other humans I can’t imagine a podcast created by AI that will have the humour or expertise of humans since ai don’t really care about anything I can’t imagine beimg entertained by a bot
Blame the audience for not rewarding quality
i am utterly shocked that they can get a nickel per listener. Sounds a bit optimistic. Especially in the environment they are creating.
You will nee more articles and Titles to get this around the net.
“undercooked automation is having hugely problematic impacts across privacy, energy, climate, propaganda, mental health, public safety, and labor.”
AI will not be unleashed as an All knowing All searching thing. It might be allowed to ENLARGE abit, but it will be focused on ONLY WHAT ‘THEY’ want it to do.
Its no better then what we already have. The Fallacy Of Sales. Go look for something on the Net, even just to see Something Special you cant Afford. AND the Net and your computer TELL Sale Programs WHAT you are looking at. And you get 100 Spam in the mail about WHAT you already looked at.
The BIG thing about this, is Taking all that has been Learned in Adverts, Sales, Human Psych, and Placing it in 1 Program. AND the 1,000,000 Jobs LOST in sales and adverts, to 1 company that Does Nothing but LET the computer Run.
Lets look at Energy, and HOW a Computer with a FULL AI, would Adjust the USA infrastructure.
#1 FIX IT, its a MESS. Which means Money out the door.
#2 If Allowed Improve the Ability to Cross connect, so that No system will go down.
#3 Harden the System to Meet #2. Would be Great to Bury it underground, as was Proposed back in the 1980’s. Esp in Hurricane and Storm areas.
#4 UPGRADE it to the Current abilities Possible. IF ALLOWED to do so.
There are a few more steps to make all this work. But What corp wants to or WILL Clean up the Whole system?
Energy? No one wants to Fix this, until the Gov. Pays for it So the Corps can Run it and Charge for it.
Propaganda? LMAO. Cant Touch this. There is Enough BS at this time, its like Looking back to the 60’s And wondering IF’ the Protestors and Hipi’s (NO OFFENCE MEANT) were RIGHT.
WHAT agency will DECIDE, what is or Isnt?(talk to Wiki, about Changes made)
How to do anything with Labor? The Fewer persons needed to do something, the More a Company will charge to do it. ITS NOT the Labor, Its the OWNERS BOSS’s.
I need not go on. AND AI cant SOLVE THINGS. IT CAN SUGGEST FIXES. But we already KNOW what and HOW to FIX THINGS..
Corps wotn do it until the State or Gov. PAYS for it. Generally 2-10x what is needed.
Well that's one way to kill podcasting...
Forget a needle in a haystack, with an avalanche of AI garbage just thrown out there finding anything actually worth your time will become the equivalent of finding a needle in a city dump-sized pile of literal crap.
Re:
I miss the good old days when search engines worked.
Re: Re: YES..
I didnt have an AI trying to Guess what I was trying to look at/for.
1/2 the time its Wrong.. Before recently it was Very close. Just use a Key word to point it in the Right direction, Like Music, Facts, Video, and it would go and Find it.
Re: Re:
I mean that will probably still work if you already know what you’re looking for via a recommendation from a friend/family member/podcast you already listen to, but good luck finding something good if you don’t have that lead already available if the market has been flooded with AI garbage.
The Mechnical Turk 2.0
It’s pattern-matching built on the backs of cheap labour as always is the case. The bubble will pop and it will be about 10x worse than the dot com crash.
Can't do much for a buck
$1 per episode would imply they aren’t even having someone listen to the episode before it’s published. What could go wrong?
The Luddite’s historical platform was that the factory loom would enrich the already fairly rich and impoverish those who were not at present impoverished.
Also that it would change the social norms.
They… they weren’t wrong.