Artificial Intelligence on Steemit, LilMiquela and the "un-wisdom" of the crowd
I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this post but I'm going to write it anyway.
Grumpy old man
Over the past few days, I've been severely sleep deprived. One crying baby, one equally sleep deprived wife, two other demanding kids, work, extended family, friends, Steemit... the list goes on. My life is 100 miles a minute at the moment. That's cool, however I do get times when my "BS tolerance level" is reset to zero. This is one of those times. So if I come across uncharacteristically harsh in this post, so be it.
I am after all only human.
AI and Steemit
I was recently alerted to the fact that some successful posts on this site may be generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). I have to say that this prospect had completely escaped me. Surely, people would recognise content that wasn't created by a human author and not upvote it?
After all at the heart of quality content is authenticity, an original voice and connection with the audience, isn't it? This cannot be faked, can it?
Well it seems Bots can fake content and pocket their creators a shed load of Author Rewards in the process.
Worse still, in the multi-tasking madness that have become my life, it appears I can no longer separate the real from the fake. The Steem blockchain will show that I've thrown a couple of upvotes the way of @msgivings, an account that appears to have been doing really well by pumping out a whole heap of AI-generated content.
I hold my hands up. Among my daily tasks, I’ve tried to manage a good bot to do some curating for me. However, in the pursuit of profit and my naive belief in the wisdom of the crowd, I've cocked up. Like only a human can.
Un-wisdom of the crowd
Last week I wrote a post about my bot, T-Bot. T-Bot votes on good content for me, whilst I'm off doing other things (like changing nappies). T-Bot is quite primitive. I tell T-Bot which authors to watch out for and when the author posts, T-Bot votes for them.
Most of the authors, I've vetted. I can vouch for them. They are 100. However a lot the really good authors are out of vogue it seems. They no longer attract the big payouts and tend to pull me in relatively small rewards. I also have a group of up-and-coming authors that I rate, they earn next to nothing. The bulk of my profits for curating is from 'catching the zeitgeist' and voting on popular authors, at the right time. I try not to be too judgmental. I spend a bit of time analysing data on popular post. I spot the authors whose posts that offer a "window of profitability." I then add that author to my list and take advantage of that profitability. These are usually the posts that bank me the most Curation Rewards.
In hindsight what I should have done is spent a bit more time reading the quality of the posts! Some of the content topping the trending page recently is complete garbage and if it wasn't written by AI, it may as well have been!
I had foolishly worked on the assumption, that whales and mega whales would be upvoting good content. It was, after all, in their interest to do so. I know no-one is infallible. Whales are only human (well at least in Steemit vernacular they are). They would slip up some of the time. However because of the visibility of these posts, I reasoned that bullshit posts, voted on by whales, would be called out pretty sharply. The wisdom of the crowd would see these posts filtered out quickly.
How wrong was I?!
I'm not sure whether it's lazy curating (of which I'm also guilty), collusion or whether I'm simply out of touch... however the cream of the content is no longer rising to the top IMO. I know this, because when I read through the top ten trending posts, at least two of them make me wince and say 'what the fuck did I just read?"
Maybe I'm learning one of the pitfalls of Bot curating. You cannot rely on the Wisdom of the Crowd to identify quality content and police the bullshit.
When I look at the comments on one of the offending posts, I only see one, maybe two descending voices. I don’t see any downvoting, This is probably because anyone downvoting would be pissing in the wind, with the mountain of whale votes stacked against them. Also the author is innocent until proven guilty. It is not a crime to write a post that reads like AI and is upvoted by whales. Downvoting probably is inappropriate.
We need other methods of expressing how people feel about a post aside from just upvoting, downvoting or a commenting. I'd like the ability to add an emoticon. For a lot of the posts I'd imagine for each upvote they'd probably be two confused emoticons from people that actually read it!
It appears that no-one wants to rock the boat on Steemit because no-one wants to be made a pariah. People appear to be showing too much deference to the whales. It appears that group think is sucking the character out of the platform.
I don't want to call out any particular author. There may be an innocent explanation for the AI sounding content. It might be as simple as badly worded content. In the fog of tireness, I know I've been guilty of that, to a lesser degree. Another reason I don’t want to call out content is because curators are entitled to have a different palate to mine. After all, most of the whales (who let's face it, really dictate rewards), do not have a creative background. They are crypto- miners, who have struck gold with Steemit. They might actually get excited by trite generic postings that have zero character and soul. I might be the one out of touch! It might be the new cool.
Lil Miquela
Speaking of the new cool, it seems it is not only Steemit that is being infiltrated by Artificial Intelligence. Some corners of Instagram also appear to be suffering from this lack of human connectivity.
As I was rushing for work earlier, during the chaos that has become my morning routine; I was struck by a news segment on TV. It was about a computer-generated "Instagram model" Lil Miquela. She (or it) has attracted thousands of follows yet people do not know whether she is based on a real person or 100% computer generated. I'd argue that we do not know if the majority of her followers are real or computer generated, but that's another debate.
This for me is saddening. The world of "make believe" has always existed. However, bar Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, fantasy and reality have been largely divorced. Maybe I'm getting old. I have three daughters. It would be a nightmare if in 15 years from now, I were to go onto one of their social media page, and see a CGI version of them looking (and maybe talking) back at me. What message do these CGI representations send to our children? To me it says, on a subliminal level, who they really are, is not good enough. Young women in particular, already suffer from these messages that being pumped out in the media constantly. Alicia Keys goes out with no make-up (and shows who she really is) and the world throws a hissy fit.
Are we trying to create a generation of lifeless, expressionless, airbrushed, fake-it-til-you-make-it humanoid drones?
Kids... step away from your computer or mobile device and go and chat, face-to-face with another human being. Notice the imperfections in each other and learn to love them. That’s what makes us who we are.
We are in danger of becoming a world full of fantasist. I have no problem with people indulging in escapism. In some ways social media is escapism personified. People are often not themselves and put on a persona. Some go as far as using photoshop to enhance a picture or two. But please... I do not want my kids aspiring to be (or to date) computer generated blow up dolls. Call me old fashioned but I want my kids to be human. To recognise a fellow human being. To love, cry and enjoy our human strength and frailty.
Keeping it 100
So coming back to Steemit content; spare me the generic expressionless self-help nonsense! If it’s your niche fine, however whales please let’s not try to convince the world that lifeless posts are worthy of maximum rewards. It's dated and it means nothing unless it's told in a real voice and framed in real experiences or real emotion, preferably written by a human! People want to be moved, excited, inspired… they want to FEEL after reading a post.
The worse thing that can happen to this platform is for people to join thinking that writing like you’ve just swallowed a 19th Century hardback book is the only template for success. REAL readers want to see, feel, hear a part of YOU on that page. Not what you read in a text book.
I dread the day when we have real people writing like robots in search of upvotes and rewards. If that happens… “contributing to Steemit” will become one less thing on my to do list.
Rant over. I'm going to get some rest... in a nice relaxing bath… filled with Salt (or something else to purify my spirit).
Peace
The thing is, busy people will resort to bots, and once the bots have been voting for a particular account, it's possible that the owner of that account starts to see dollar signs and employs a bot to write content.
The moral is that you will need to check your list once a week.
Thanks I will take that advice!
Yeah. I reckon that the wisdom of crowds thing does work to start with.
But any account that is automatically being upvoted will try to increase their output - only its hard to churn out four good posts a day, day in day out. So you either get crappy content that has been forced out, or they've paid someone $2 on iwriter to churn something out, which by definition will be weak and generic, or they employ a bot to spin content.
Maybe you could make your bot more sophisticated so that instead of voting for everything an author puts out, you only vote for that author once a week. That way you arn't incentivising quantity over quality.
Yes, the curation rewards offer a big incentive to vote on what you assume is going to be popular, and not on what is good quality. The first part is usually established-name authors, so bots and automation can often dictate what is going to be popular without anyone reading it.
I have just written about it with a proposal of what I think could be changed to improve it.
Nanzo-scoop, exactly my feelings. I cannot find the good old post-ers.
I left where I was and went to rethink Steem, read uplifting literature and came back to find original authors, and saw your name. And you said my thoughts.
Thanks. The old posters are around. There are some really good new posters too. I get a little annoyed when both sets of authors get overlooked for stuff that I can barely comprehend. In the long run it isn't good for the platform.
I didn't always vote for you in the old days, but I noticed you around with lots of good comments
Muy lindo lo que publicas
Wow, very well wrtten post. However, may I kindy suggest you take a moment to stop and breathe. Bots are not going to alleviated the Steemit community from
Dont over think the whales/payouts/$$$ aspects of Steemit. Good content, which you obviously bring to the table, will always have people grabbing for seconds. Keep dishing up your tasty, keeping-it-100%-real morsels and you'll always get my vote. The bots can do the dishes.
Thanks!... I'll breathe (eventually... after I get some sleep). I really think about the payouts in terms of visibility of posts to newcomers. If they see dull, boring content topping the trending page day after day , the place will soon become a graveyard. To me it's ironic that this a platform for social engagement yet most of the honest interaction I have takes place on steemit.chat. That needs to change long term.
Insightful post. Maybe everybody is rushing so to met the upvote time table that creates some of the problem of trying to receive rewards. However, over time good content will push the better writers and subject matter to the top, I think.
Good point. There is something about the flood of votes at the beginning that dictates the success of a post.
The rationale behind rewarding early voter doesn't appear to hold water any more. It was meant to be to reward people that find gems early. However there isn't really the time for good content to naturally circulate. There isn't even the methods (on Steemit) for people to easily circulate good content. All that happens is the content that whales vote on are visible, everything else gets lost if it's not picked up in the first hour.
The better writers cannot be taken for granted. I wrote awhile back that if Steemit doesn't fill the void of rewarding good content providers, another platform will.
While I enjoyed your article, some statments raised a question mark.
You stated:
and
I seriously doubt the veracity of these statments because AI is not advanced enough to write articles that will fly on Steemit. However, it is true that AI can write weather reports, stock market roundups and such, but articles on Steemit? I would like to see some proof of this claim, please.
If you read the conversations around @msgivings, you'll see the speculation there. I believe there may be some posts on it.
I do not know enough about the subject to know if the accusations are true or not, hence the use of the words "may be generated.." and "appears to have been".
It doesn't help that the @msgivings account , has stayed silent on the claims. Some of the posts read very bizarrely and certainly don't have that human quality, that I enjoy in a good article. Which is really my point. When posts that are can be barely comprehended (and sound like they're written by a robot) start topping the trending page, it's bad news for Steemit (whether they are AI or semi-AI or badly constructed by a human). All of which I've eluded to in the OP.