Maybe start with media literacy :)
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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me_irl
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My first thought too!!!
While there are many things Boomers need help with, as they have been through far more societal changes than anyone younger has and may be losing the ability to adapt to those changes, they are not the only generation desparately needing help. The mental health epidemic, anything googleable health epidemic, unable to form relationships because individually they are all too niche epidemic, the list goes on, are all much younger than Boomer problems. Given that Boomers are 62-85 years old and are now in the dying off phase, I'd be much more worried about those who live their lives by TikTok fad or whatever since they have another 50 years to wreak havoc on everything and everyone around them.
If we're talking about boomers on mainstream social media sites, if it's not AI slop then it will just be human-run scams or thinly veiled advertising. It should all be treated as garbage starting out.
Then it's not that big of a step to realize that they are better off not spending their days plugged into the firehose of bullshit and brain manipulation.
Let's also throw in some civics and ethics and how to spot misinformation.
My mom shows me AI generated material from Facebook all the time, a class or course would be great
Isn't everyone practicing that every day?
Eh, not all AI slop can be recognized. Sometimes people who "recognize AI slop" are just "I don't like this post and it has an em dash in it so I'm calling it AI". What's more important is staying aware that everything can be AI and not trusting things blindly. Many people still have the idea of " video evidence" ingrained in their brain
✅️ That is completely correct. In online discourse, individuals will often identify content as AI-generated based on the presence of patterns which can be found in the outputs of large language models. Unfortunately, this process is not perfect and may sometimes lead to an incorrect identification when certain characters—such as the em dash—appear in content that was created without the help of AI.
Other patterns associated with AI-generated text are:
- 😁 A noticably friendly and helpful demeanor.
- 🙏 Emojis being used to add emphasis.
- 🌟 Markdown formatting.
Would you like to know more about identifying AI-generated content?
Thank you for your thorough explanation, kind human.
What actually blows my mind is boomers absolutely had it right at the dawn of the internet.
Trust NOBODY. Trust NOTHING. Surrender NO SHRED of your identity over the wire.
Wtf happened? I didn't see it unfold myself. When I moved out on my own, the boomers still didn't trust anything on a computer screen.
Then one day everyone's parents were on Facebook and they're falling for the most obscene lies.
Anyways, thank you Anakin for training some of us to be Jedis before you succumbed to the dark side. I promise not to forget the wisdom you imparted before you went insane.
Did not even had to be over the wire. I was not allowed to recreate my family in the Sims :(
AI slop is getting better, a class on it from a year ago would focus heavily on counting fingers and things like that, but that's becoming rarer and rarer.
If people took a class on it now, a lot of what they learned might not matter in a year or two.
I don't really agree. A lot of more complex patterns that were present in old content still persists in new AI generated material. I think the knowledge won't be completely outdated as time goes on. Besides, there are plenty of PSA's about scams despite those also always evolving. It's still worth teaching people about to deal with things now.
Considering plausibility and the reliability of the source, as one does when using critical thinking, will always be useful.
Which requires a baseline of knowledge.
Which requires education. Which is being gutted or diluted and has been at least since NCLB.
I've tried building a curriculum around this idea. The typical level of undereducated is stunning.
Considering plausibility
People are most susceptible to false claims when they back up or collaborate something they already believe. So most of the time people who fall for fake news/AI slop/etc will consider it plausible by default, they're only giving it attention because it seems plausible based on their current beliefs.
A lot of stuff like this spreads in echo chambers as well, so there will often be a community of like minded people, who all agree with it, talking about how true it is. In those circumstances it's pretty easy to assume that if it matches you and your community's beliefs/knowledge, and no one else has identified it as false, that it's probably true or mostly true.
I wonder where identifying and focusing on improving it comes from? /s
They already get tricked by fake news without AI. This message is pointless
Brb, gonna prompt me an AI slop recognition course.
While we're at it can we teach critical thinking too?
Millennial and I suck at it. I'm trying hard to learn though.
Knowing how to determine if something is real or false doesn’t make people care about whether or not something is real or false though
What makes people care is content that portrays them as the chad and their opponent as the soyjack
Required by who, and how do you stop the people in charge of the training from indoctrinating them to be even more vulnerable to slop instead?
That's always the danger with these sorts of suggestions: the goal might sound good in principle, but the method is always unacceptably authoritarian in practice.
What happens when they inevitably fail? Solitary?
The class will be entirely invalidated after a year or so.
This is the dumbest post on Lemmy today.
Until the AI takes the class and learns to get better
Some of them know what they are posting is bollocks but dont care cause the message suits them.
Whoever runs the social media for my town posted an AI generated image of a dog pissing on some flowers with the caption "Don't piss on the begonias.". When I called it AI slop, they responded by asking me if I expect them to train a dog to piss on flowers just for a picture.
Like, the concept of not posting a picture of a dog pissing on flowers didn't even occur to them.
What is so bad about your town's social media posting an AI image?
Sounds like you are being a baby about it. There's the concept of letting shit go as well, not everyone believes AI is the devil. People can post shit, they shouldn't have to hold back because you got properly trained by the media.
Kind of insufferable behavior. The "AI slop" comments are trite enough on Lemmy, can't imagine seeing it on facebook in small town communities. I think you actually suck in this instance.
Media Literacy 201 on Tuesdays, Personal Financial Health 301 on Thursdays
One of the main roles of the news is supposed to be adult reeducation.
Or just make Ai slop or Ai completely illegal.
There's gonna be workshops on my company about healthy AI use that complies with EU regulations
LLMs are fine with me but Gen AI should be completely illegal.
There is no difference between ai slop and photoshopped fakery except the time spent to create it.
I'm old enough to remember when Photoshopping was the big evil that destroyed truth.
Except there is literally 1000000 times more AI slop exactly because it is faster to create. There is more AI slop on the internet than human generated stuff now, and this factor will only increase.
There is no comparison to photoshopping here. It is an entirely different situation.
Time and skill (and quality of the output) are huge differences.
We are already socially controlled through psychological manipulation and marketing through classic analog methods. Humanity has been owned for a long time and is beyond saving.
If you're looking to change the world or save the world... I think maybe the only option would be to quit participating in the institutional games. But then they will push you to homelessness or suicide.
Either way... We were stupid to support these monsters that raped humanity and now humanity is basically a mangled zombie with no soul. It already happened, so is going to get us there... Ai is the maturation of something that has already existed for a long time.
...to the point fighting ai is basically just another distraction from actually fighting the true foundation of the issue.