What is AI slop? And should we be worried about Rogue AI?


Weekly Newsletter

Practical AI Strategies

Practical AI for Curriculum and Wellbeing Leaders: Waitlists Close Soon

Hi everyone,

The early bird waitlists for Practical AI for Curriculum Leaders and Wellbeing Leaders will close soon.

Both courses offer a 6 week intensive, with one hour live per week, recordings and resources available async. The courses are open to Australian and international educators in all sectors: K-12, Higher Education, and Vocational Education. Early bird access is $1440 AUD ex GST until September 20th.

Click here to join the Curriculum Leaders cohort.

Click here to join the Wellbeing Leaders cohort.

Curriculum Leaders is almost full! These courses are capped at 25 participants to facilitate the rich, cross sectoral discussions we have in the live sessions. Courses start October.

What is AI slop?

By now, you know it when you see it. Either it's glaringly obvious (like pictures of shrimp Jesus...), or there's just a strange, uncanny quality to the writing that makes you think it was written by something rather than someone.

AI slop is everywhere - in writing, images, and video on social media and across the internet. But I was never happy with the dictionary definition, so I set off to write my own.

I ran several polls and conversations online over a few weeks, and crowd sourced a new definition of AI slop. Along the way I learned some interesting things about how people perceive slop, why it's so offensive, and what people plan to do about it.

Should we be worried about rogue AI?

It seems like AI slop is the least of our worries. For the past couple of months, we've seen a number of high profile reports of AI "going rogue", "escaping sandboxes", and "hacking" organisations. But what's really going on?

Well, as models become more capable, they're increasingly able to exploit vulnerabilities in our digital environment. Most of the security features of the modern internet were cobbled together by hand over years or even decades. AI models are fast, persistent, and capable. But they're not "rogue", and they don't have agency: they're just software acting on the instructions of humans.

The headlines are designed to distract us from the real people and companies behind the technology. We should be worried, but we should also remember where the real problems lie.

Read more about Rogue AI in Thursday's article.

Cheers,

Leon

PS: Practical AI Strategies 2 is out on September 9th, and preorders are already hitting the shelves. On October 17th I'll be in Melbourne for the IRL launch at the Amba Press Community day - check out the Amba Press website for more info!


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Leon Furze

I'm a educator, writer, and podcaster who loves to talk about artificial intelligence, education, and writing & storytelling. Subscribe and join over 9,000+ educators every week!

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