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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2619 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 29, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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AI writing's also surely contributing to this. Somebody can toss in like 5 dotpoints and get a 30 minute script, whilst previously if they were writing their own there'd be more a trend towards brevity.

A method I've seen is for someone to copy the transcript of an existing video, feed it into an AI and ask it to make arbitrary changes, feed the outputted script into an AI voice generator, then use AI + third worlders on Fiverr to stitch together visuals to go with it, and voila, a complete video with minimal effort.

There's also a trend of using AI actors or clones. Essentially, since so many videos are just people talking into cameras with minimal movement, an AI generated actor is totally serviceable. It's AI script + AI voice, exposited by an AI person.

Now the question is, is AI mimicking people or were people already mimicking AI?

Ding ding ding.

Its easier to put out volume if you happily compromise on quality, and I have to assume the Youtube Algo doesn't care about quality over minutes watched.

So there's some 'optimal' amount of information/minute that pads out the video without losing the viewer.

Just so happens my preference is on information density is higher than the average youtube viewers. Which is unsurprising.

but we also have powerful defensive tools.

First thing to do with any long video is to copy/paste the transcript into your LLM of choice and get a summary to see if it's worth your time, or just to get the info without the padding

I think a better strategy is to just limit your consumption to trusted channels. I'm reluctant to watch anything that isn't by someone I've seen before. I may not be able to tell when it's 100% AI content, but a low effort video is a low effort video. It's pretty easy to tell when someone doesn't know what they're talking about and are simply summarizing a Wikipedia article, or LLM output for that matter.

Yep.

Hence why if the video isn't leveraging its advantages as a visual medium to be more engaging/entertaining, I'm backing out almost instantly.

As you get older your time and mental bandwidth becomes less and less and you have to become more selective about where you invest your time. I typically only leave my area of the pond to explore new ground when very trusted people close to me recommend something they know is up my alleyway. And they’re usually right. Leveraging your connections and reputation can help.

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