Jonah Peretti , the founder and CEO of Buzzfeed , pissed off a pot of people a couple of year ago when he decide to gut the website ’s sizable ( and , at one time , award - winning ) newsroom and swivel the platform towards a business model that favoredAI - generate content . Now , Peretti says he ’s apprehensive about the rise of AI and its potentially noxious impact on our life . He also says he has a solution to that problem : launching a fresh AI platform .
Yes , according toa weird , long blog postthat Peretti publish to his site Tuesday , the media executive is n’t feeling so peachy about the mature glut of AI - generated dogshit that is now churn through the internet . Peretti starts the blog with an empathetic monologue about the troubling technological times we ’re living through :
“ Most anxieties about the future are really about the present , ” Peretti writes . “ We worry about a future where AI acquire away our human agency , devalues our labor , and creates societal discord . But that world is already here and our substance , purpose , and agency has already been undermined by Artificial Intelligence technologies . ”
© Bennett Raglin (Getty Images)
Peretti goes on to complain about something that he calls SNARF , an acronym for “ stake , novelty , anger , retention , fear , ” which are the primary emotion that depicted object Lord go after when they ’re endeavor to make compelling 14 - irregular picture that can hijack your attention . Again , it is very ironic that Peretti is worried about SNARF , impart the fact that Buzzfeed was a pioneer in SNARF - like cosmos . According to Peretti , AI is making it easy and easy for SNARF to take over our biography :
“ abstruse learning three-toed sloth are designed to maximise the clip we all spend on these apps . While you are reading this memo , you are probably jonesing to switch over over to Instagram or TikTok . It turns out when an app society does n’t care about depicted object and asks an AI to maximize usage the result is a overhaul that incentivizes subject matter that maximizes addictiveness . ”
Peretti has a way to fight SNARF , and it is … a new societal medium platform that will “ allow users to use AI to make and partake in content around their interests,”according to Axios . At first coup d’oeil , it might seem like a profoundly asinine move for Peretti to write a long online screed against a certain phenomenon , only to then foretell that he ’s in the process of endeavor to make money off of that very same phenomenon . But , having thought about it for a minute , I think I ’m commence to see his logic : the only way you could fight the SNARF is to … become the SNARF . Truly genius , Jonah . Seriously . Really chic material .
Oh , and we save the best part for last : the name of Peretti ’s new SNARF - scrap / creating platform is BF Island . Yes , BF Island . How cool is that ? BF Island .
Maybe Peretti is seriously perturbed by the AI dogshit that he sees all around him . possibly he ’s realized that AI - generated content is n’t really a Brobdingnagian revenue earner and he ’s wait to broaden his business . peradventure he ’s just really good at taking the national temperature and throw up what people desire to hear . Maybe it ’s all of the above . Any which fashion you slice up it , though , we love one matter for certain : if there ’s one bozo who get laid something about SNARF — the apparent epitomization of mindless , emotionally manipulative online content — it ’s baffle ta be Peretti .
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