Good work, bad work, and fakes are increasingly hard to tell apart. Signaling theory explains why, and why small fixes are not enough.

AI can cheaply fake almost every signal we traditionally used to judge quality. I now see this pattern everywhere, in open source, in education, in research, all breaking at the same time. I find signaling theory useful for diagnosing what is happening and why it is so disorienting, and signaling theory and adjacent literature can provide the vocabulary to discuss possible solutions.

  • Sina ( Sina@beehaw.org ) English
    1·
    28 minutes ago

    I’m fairly Ai positive myself, I just want to point out that Ai is better at detecting patterns than humans are.

    For example, detecting AI slop reliably and intuitively is a skill that more and more people learn.

    This is true, I also have this skill right now, but I have no confidence it will still be useful 2 years from now.

    Anything that can be “created” by anyone with a few prompts loses its value.

    What is value exactly, commercial value? Just because it took 3 prompts to create a great tool or the 11th season of Friends does not mean those don’t have personal value or can give you a huge productivity boost or entertainment.