LLM Slop Harms Real Literature, Real Web Sites, Real Journalism
Yesterday in Daily Links we included an article about "sloptimism" (slop optimism). LLM slop is not something that will pay off any time in the future; LLM slop is a parasite and it'll run out of legitimate inputs/outputs, set aside the cost of operating LLMs; LLM slop is not financially viable.
The Serial Slopper (SS) Fagioli, for example, slowed down a lot. Hopefully he's realising that creating his own slopfarm rather than turning BetaNews into one won't work. Fagioli was a parasite in BetaNews, so they got rid of him. BetaNews nearly died. It was practically dead for nearly a month. They later rehired the writers, seeing LLM slop didn't work.
An associate has meanwhile noticed that "AnandTech seems to have eliminated its feed" (which had no updates anyway).
AnandTech is a dead site and LLM slop probably contributed to that outcome. Seeing that even recent links to AnandTech are already broken, it seems fair to say that their Web site is already dead, not just defunct. It sends requests to the Forums, not the articles requested. What will this mean for Wikipedia links? Internet Archive (Wayland Machine) links instead? What happens when the Internet Archive also dies?
By using search interface we soon see dead links everywhere that links to AnandTech, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. This represents loss of human knowledge, including research-like stuff such as benchmarks. An associate has found a direct link; "it is dead too," he says. Indeed, a lot of stuff got lost forever [1, 2, 3]. When they said they shut down (last year) they didn't say old articles would simply vanish. As the associate puts it, "shutting down is one thing, leaving the domain up without the articles is another, and leaving the domain up with replacement filler is the worse..."
I looked around and checked the old links. It's really bad. The site is now a skeleton of its former self. So the site is basically being dismantled now; don't expect that LLM slop will make up for it. Heck, maybe the LLM bots contributed towards this outcome. The bottom of the page says: "AnandTech is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site. © Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885."
Look what has happened there lately:
Anand probably still works for GAFAM. His famous site isn't in his hands anymore. █