🚨 Send every tourist to jail

Model collapse is when generative AI models train on AI-generated content (as opposed to content created by humans) and deteriorate as they forget the human-generated data they learned from and begin copying patterns they’ve already seen.

In an email to Cosmos, machine learning researcher Ilia Shumailov, who co-authored a paper on the topic, uses the following analogy:

• A model receives a data set containing 90 yellow objects and 10 blue ones.
• Because there are more yellow objects, it begins to turn the blue objects greenish.
• Over time, it forgets the blue objects exist.

With each generation of synthetic data, outliers disappear and outputs less accurately reflect reality until what’s left is nonsense.

A solution might sound simple at first

Don’t train AI on AI-generated content, sure. Except it’s already proliferating across the internet.

“Just as we’ve strewn the oceans with plastic trash and filled the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, so we’re about to fill the Internet with blah,” Ross Anderson, a security expert and co-author of Shumailov’s paper, wrote.

So will AI inevitably go haywire?

Any model that started spitting out utter nonsense would probably be shut down by whatever tech company put it out there in the first place.

However, Aditi Raghunathan, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, told The Atlantic that the real danger would be less obvious flaws. For example, biases that creep in as AI caters to the majority.

So, you know, just one more thing to worry about when not worrying about singularity.

Did you ever get in trouble at school for carving your crush’s initials into a desk?

We won’t tell, but there’s a new vandal in town making that look like child’s play: tourists.

Around the world, officials are reporting an uptick in misdemeanors, and it’s getting ugly:

• A man was caught on video etching his girlfriend’s name into the wall of the Colosseum. He could now face up to five years in prison and a $16.4k fine.
• In China, tourists damaged geological landforms by standing in prohibited areas (to take photos, of course).
• An American smashed two sculptures in the Vatican after being told he couldn’t see the pope.
• Rome’s Spanish Steps got pummeled by a Maserati just weeks before a tourist caused $27k in damages by throwing a scooter at it.

The worst part? Those aren’t even a fraction of the incidents. Venice alone had 46 acts of tourists defacing monuments from January to October 2022.

WTF is going on?

The simplest explanation: more tourists mean more chances for things to go awry, and international travel has outpaced last summer.

Italy alone saw international arrivals increase 86% YoY in the first quarter of 2023 (which explains why so many of these horror stories are taking place there).

But there’s more at play:

• Easing covid restrictions have travelers eager to get away, and two years of pent up energy can be destructive.
• Social media and striving to “go viral” can push tourists into making risky choices.
• Movies and TV turn monuments into popular tourist attractions, which can harm locals and disrupt cities (looking at you, “Game of Thrones”).

But tourist destinations are fighting back: Bali has deported 136 tourists this year, Italy passed a bill that ups the penalties for vandalism, and Amsterdam launched a “stay away” campaign to discourage rowdy visitors.

We think Croatia should be next up, yelling “shame” at tourists who misbehave.