Nathan Labenz: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, I might, and I might define it differently than other people. So to me, I think about slop as being a form of content arbitrage. So there's like a, it's when you can identify a temporary, almost like inefficiency in the market or opportunity in the market to create content that is likely to give you a return on your investment. And in this case, it's like that you can pump the system with a lot of content that is extremely cheap for you to make, that might not get a ton of engagement or might not get like a ton of subscribers, but gets you enough revenue or engagement from that content, that it ends up being net positive for you. And so there are people that can identify these kinds of slop arbitrage moments and really take advantage of it. But the two key elements to me of slop are the incentive is money in some way, ultimately, and it is happening at scale. I think there's a lot of bad art out there. And I would say like, generally, I'm pro bad art. Like, I think bad art is a really important stage that one must go through to get to good art or good content. I don't know if you can remember the first few things you put on the internet, Nathan, but my guess is that you're like, You would cringe if you looked at them now, knowing how sophisticated you've become in your creations. And so I guess like to me, there's a difference between slop, which is like, I'm trying to pump, I'm trying to juice the algorithm. I'm trying to pump YouTube full of a bunch of avatar meditation videos in this moment when it hasn't caught on so that I can get some ad revenue real quick. And like, maybe I should be like a meditation guru on YouTube. I'm gonna create this avatar. And you know, like that's a different thing. And then the result may be the same, but I don't think that's slop. That's just someone's bad. That's just someone's bad idea. Yeah, interesting. So if you're feeding the algorithmic hogs, you are producing slop. I do wonder though, and by the way, if the comment section is to be believed, I'm still in the bad art phase of my own personal development. We'll see if that ever comes in. That art is important. one thing I will say about AI is it is allowing me to create stuff that I don't think is terrible, at least, and that I enjoy the process of creating in ways that I just never would have had any opportunity to do before. And so for now, I'm ignoring the haters in the comments who are almost uniformly opposed to my new AI-generated YouTube preview art, but I just figure, I'm having fun doing it and I kind of like the look of it. So for now, we'll keep going. Maybe it'll evolve and I'll finally click. That's exactly what I mean though. That's like exactly what I mean. Like, okay, if you were learning how to paint for the first time and you sat in front of a canvas and you painted me a picture, It would probably be really bad. Like you haven't figured out what your voice is, what your aesthetic is, like what feels good to you. haven't taken any classes, you haven't played with the paint, right? That's your very first thing. This is a new medium. A lot of the, like we're having fun with a new medium is how you get to good stuff, right? Like I'm sure that you're finding that as you play with this stuff more and more, you are starting to have your own opinions. Like, oh, I don't like this. Or, oh, this is working, this prompt is working better. I'm liking what I'm getting more. You're going out into the world, you're seeing other people who are doing stuff and you're like, I like that person's style. Like, How can I show up in that same way that person does? And that is the same way that if you were learning how to paint, you would be developing your painting style, right? So I also am not a hater who thinks anything created with Gen. AI is slop. I think that because this is a new technology, most of us are in our create a lot of bad stuff kind of phase, and also because the technology is still nascent. But I am very bullish that it will be possible and already is to create really awesome stuff with Gen. AI, like stuff that is not slop at all. And I think the only way you're going to ever get there is by, yeah, creating a lot of bad stuff first, because that's how you get good at everything. That's how you get good at art.…

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