Countless AI slop channels are relentlessly copying our work. So one day we decided: enough is enough. We went undercover to investigate who’s behind them and what this flood of AI slop means for the future of educational content on YouTube.
Remember Academic Earth and YouTube EDU before the change? I 'member
Pretty much every short is AI slop lol.
With a dozen comments from Boomers saying how inspiring/cute/infuriating/etc. the video is.
Tbh, they’re probably bots too
I’ve noticed and hate it. I keep getting things recommended to me that claim to be Prof Brian Cox explaining something interesting and if it’s not fake, it’s some interview I’ve already heard from someone else’s podcast that the channel owner stole and threw AI on top of. I cannot figure out how to stop this from happening; YouTube does not make it easy to block channels on its smart TV clients
tbh the last video I’ve watched from fern was basically an undisclosed 15min mc donalds advertisement… I don’t known how much educational the channel is after it got sold
For real. I had to unsubscribe. They’ve become quite the content mill and so has veritasium. Seems super disingenuous like oh woe my venture capital investment isn’t paying off, how could you do this to us?
The Death of Education
alis really the big picture that you’re witnessing. Having worked in education, this isn’t just AI. Even Auto-Correct and spelling correction really dumbed kids down. Reading levels are… So you switch to videos and now you get slop videos. So incorrect and potentially dangerous videos are the next bane. At this point students should have classes on how to identify AI slop.i would argue identifying AI slop is just an extension of teaching kids critical thinking and reasoning skills
That needs to happen more than generic rudimentary testing.
Some recs of my fave non-AI channels:
Tasting History
Not A Pound For Air To Ground
Epic History
Also BadEmpanada. That dude will probablt NEVER use AI since even AI cant come up with the arguments and examinations of situations that he puts in his videos. He Too Smaht.
And maybe NonCompete, BadHasbara, TheDeProgram, Srsly Wrong, Luna Oi, Some More News(I have no idea if these channels have changed their stancee towarss AI over the years cause I havent watched them recently but they did make somme fire content back in the day)
Tasting history is so good
Kids! Fuck this bullshit and go meet up at the library. You don’t need these ruthless tech corporations trying so hard to limit your options of what your future should be.
But kids’ dad works in the corporation. He just wants to earn a living for the kids.
I love fern and feel bad for them being so good it’s detrimental. I hope they find a solution
The moment I realize a video is AI written (it’s pretty easy to tell once you notice the way they tend to go) I blacklist the channel.
I wish it was possible to blacklist AI generated articles from sites like duckduckgo or google as well. Duckduckgo allows you to block a limited amount of websites and I´d rather not use Google at all.
Perhaps search for results prior to 2023 or something, before AI took a massive steaming spraying shit on the internet.
Maybe kagi’s SlopStop is what you want. Otherwise they also allow you to block an unlimited number of websites. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html
Yeah can also recommend Kagi. You can customize the results with ranking too if there are sites you dislike but still want some results from.
youtube without a channel blocker is just a pile of poop.
There are still good education and scientific channels in YT, but they are currently a minority between a ton of BS, conspiranoic influences and AI crap. Even the AI algorrithm blocked music channels from own authors and artists, due “copyright issues”. YT is dying with this and more and more people go to Odysee to monetize their vids, without these crap and problems.
Honestly, YouTube should flush out the AI slop because it’s a waste of server space and bandwidth. Seize the quality, before it’s too late.
theyre just gonna do the ‘slow reddit suicide’©®™ all for a little profit.
You think too highly of thrm iif you think this will end any other way lol.
What it means for me is I find a Youtuber I like and cling to them for dear life. It also means if I really do want to learn something, I’ll find a better source than youtube–like a podcast specializing in that subject area, or even, dare I say, a book.
if I really do want to learn something, I’ll find a better source than youtube–like a podcast specializing in that subject area, or even, dare I say, a book.
… GASP … ! Thehy siaid it! The dreaded… B-Slur! …Well the mods wll b bannning you soon enouff causze youre not allowd to said the dreded B-Slur amongst us , us who cannut reed!
Me, be it Youtube, movies or music, I only consume pre-AI content. That way I’m sure it’s man-made.
At my age, I tend to be a bit stuck in the past anyway. So it’s not like I’m missing out on new stuff that interests me, because new stuff rarely interests me.
Just a reminder that there do exist anti-AI extensions on Firefox, as well as anti-AI blocklists for uBlock and other ads and trackers blockers.
You can’t be sure. There’s plenty of deep fake stuff out there of people that died before AI was even around. Alan Watts, for instance.
If you’re on YouTube, probably a good idea to learn to recognize slop, or at least avoid likely slop even if you can’t determine if it is slop definitively.
Oh I know slop when I see it. I just don’t want to play guess-the-content.
The stuff I watch or listen to is either very well known, or it’s so obscure that nobody is going to make deep fake of it.
Haha, you’re over 30 too, huh? I know that feeling
wait over 30 is old now?
I aint old! I AINT OLD! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNqwlHqaR4&pp=ygUKaSBhaW50IG9sZA%3D%3D
Also dont some athletes hit their prime at that time?
Losing Varitasium has sucked. It was gradual and I wanted to give the new videos a fair shake but that shit has gotten so artless.
He was always a douche
That “self-driving” stan? 😂
same reason i dumped cgpgrey years and years ago. the guy just started shilling for tesla for several videos in a row.
I didn’t mean what when I wrote the comment but yeah, that was pretty indefensible. They’ve clearly gone to bat for some businesses
I’m a big fan of Veritasium. I don’t think I’ve seen an AI video by them yet though. Are the AI ones still with Derek and Casper and the people?
Perhaps I just haven’t gotten to the AI ones yet. Last one I watched was about the billion heart beats in mammals and metabolic rates.
Personally, I found that they used to be a “follow the passion” channel. They were interested in a topic and shared what they found out. You could tell they cared.
Slowly, even before the private equity thing, you could tell that they were making videos for business reasons. Either cause they thought it was going to be a popular topic, or because it was going to make them money from a partnership.
Both types of content results in educational videos. The problem is that when you start with a conclusion and work backwards to the content, instead of working from curiosity, it really shows.
There continues to be content out there that starts with passion and works towards an organic conclusion. I’ll continue spending my time watching those instead of channels run by the financial end of the business.
That’s a good explanation. Mind sharing some of your other channels/creators that you enjoy more? I’d be keen to see.
Steve Mould is a great example of someone who sees a topic and digs deep because he’s curious, but doesn’t have a specific theme.
Cody’s Lab is another of the original generalized YouTube channels, but it’s a lot rougher. He doesn’t spend ton of time making clean videos.
Most of the other channels I watch are dedicated to a specific topic, like Practical Engineering, Technology Connections, or Nile Red.
This problem is especially prevalent in the Making community. You can see someone who just enjoys sharing building techniques slowly expand their workshop to one that none of their viewers can afford, and they become a “watch me make something that you can buy from me” channel.
A few that have avoided this are Woodworking for Mere Mortals, and Blondihacks.
There’s also people that make crazy projects that would likely kill you if you tried to repeat them, like Hyperspace Pirate.
Just don’t be afraid to ditch a channel after they lose their way, sometimes it’s best to move on to a different channel that still has a passion.
Unfortunately, it feels like the best ones are the channels that use it as a side hobby, not as a full time gig.
You’re right. I think maybe I’m just having bad days where I get hypercritical of things and then I see a video that’s just less focused and I make assumptions.
I had assumed earlier on that they were using ai assets for visual aids but had no evidence for that. I didn’t examine any further because that just wouldn’t bother me. But the most recent video on filming solar eclipse has cuts and interactions that were probably just clumsily edited but for some reason I hyper fixated on. The previous one I felt off about was the one about EMV chips. Things like cutting to team members having conversations that recap the thing that was just shown or explained. It’s not proof at all but I thought, hey that’s how generative ai writes.
Op’s video addresses this issue where we’re getting so hypervigilant about ai that I thought I saw it in places where I had no evidence to think it was happening. so I guess that phenomenon is real
I guess we won’t know fully. I saw in a recent video right at the beginning it said “all the animations in this video were made by humans”. But that’s just one video. I still like the channel but yes if it gets Sloppy I would be very sad.
In the start of the video they confirm they also use AI… So… Yeah…
For the benefit of anyone who doesn’t want to waste 2 minutes getting to that part:
AI is undoubtedly useful in many aspects of life and it’s here to stay. We use AI tools selectively in our own organization. For example, to organize and skim through our research. In rare cases, we use generated imagery as a basis for compositions in Photoshop if no comparable stock images are available.
Damn, just unsubscribed. They’re had some good videos.
For context it is minimal. They give detail in the video
Not minimal enough.
Context for those who don’t watch: they described using AI images as precursors for photoshop jobs when they can’t find others that work. Implying no “raw” AI gen, but potentially some artists replaced upstream.
(This is a summary from memory, ran into this after watching the vid. Correct me as appropriate.)
that is why I don’t click on youtube links on social media, they are just about guaranteed to be trash.
Except when it’s TechnologyConnections. He is my spirit-geek.
random looking youtube, maybe interesting
The “It’s a british kettle” thumbnail, suggests he is probably from the ‘country’ between Mexico and Canada though.
Yeah and he’s not happy about it, routinely using his specific soapbox to inform people of the precise ways the American government is ruining things. (His 90 minute video on renewable energy from a few months back veers hard into a political plea, unusually direct for the channel but it’s very clear how much he cares and wants people to push for radical change) If you can get over your bigotry it’s easily the best “How It’s Made” style deep dives into mundane technology and how it’s integrated in our lives.
My point was the daft “british kettle”, as if the uk is the only place where people know that electricity can heat water…
Knowing that the usa is the worst thing to happen to earth in the last fucking large amount of years, is not bigotry, it’s just common sense.
Should he refer to a kettle from Britain as a foreign kettle? Genuinely, what way of referencing it would have been unobjectionable to you here?
The electric nature of the kettle isn’t what makes it abnormal for Americans (it might not be owned by every household, but people aren’t generally surprised or confused by them), it’s because Britain has 240V and the US has 120V electricity in most outlets, so American electric kettles take longer to boil water.
*US people, you don’t own the continent(s)
The absurdly low voltage is yet again a mcmurican thing. 240V is not just a british thing numbnuts.
The specific kettle is from Britain, it’s not the concept of kettles that is unknown to us.
I told them to watch the video so they would clue into the fact that the video wasn’t about kettles but specifically about how British kettles boil 6x faster than ours. Dude yet again missed the point and clicked on a random video and called it dull.
Just watch the video, you moron.
I started watching one of his videos and it was dull as dishwater
In the usa I guess you would say ‘dull as toilet bowl water’
I haven’t logged in or watched any recommendations for almost two years now. The only time I see a video is when I actively search for it. Man, have I been out of the loop.
Been using PipePipe for so long that I forgot that YouTube just recommends things to you…
Weren’t Fern and Veritasium bought by private equity?
I don’t know about Fern but I just this week saw an interview with Derek: The Real Reason Veritasium Sold His Channel. It’s really interesting review of the history of Veritasium, from the beginning. He still has some ownership, but less than 50%. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall him saying who the investors were.
Sorry to be lazy but can you give us a succinct summary of why?
I think the essence of it was that to continue to improve the quality of the content he needed help. He hired help, including full time, part time and freelance / contract people. But then he was spending time managing the team. As the team grew, his sense of responsibility to the team grew. He was spending less time on the content but more time in total. He learned that he wasn’t a very good business manager and he didn’t enjoy it like he enjoyed producing the content. He didn’t need capital. The cash flow was good. But he was exhausted, he needed help to run the business well and he wanted to spend more time with his family and that is what the investors offered: to manage and grow the business, allowing him to spend less time and focus on what he most enjoyed.
Fern over here throwing rocks from within a glass house
They seem fishy enough.
