Introduction to LowBackgroundSteel.ai
A time capsule of human expression has been created by Graham-Cumming, a British software engineer and writer. He is known for his work on POPFile, an open source email spam filtering program, and for petitioning the UK government to apologize for its persecution of codebreaker Alan Turing. Graham-Cumming’s latest project, lowbackgroundsteel.ai, is a website that preserves online resources that haven’t been contaminated with AI-generated content.
The Creation of LowBackgroundSteel.ai
Graham-Cumming created the website in March 2023 as a clearinghouse for online resources that existed before the widespread use of AI-generated content. The website points to several major archives of pre-AI content, including a Wikipedia dump from August 2022, Project Gutenberg’s collection of public domain books, the Library of Congress photo archive, and GitHub’s Arctic Code Vault. The wordfreq project is also included, which was flash-frozen from a time before AI contamination made its methodology untenable.
The Purpose of LowBackgroundSteel.ai
The site accepts submissions of other pre-AI content sources through its Tumblr page. Graham-Cumming emphasizes that the project aims to document human creativity from before the AI era, not to make a statement against AI itself. The goal is to preserve sources of human creativity, including archival ones, because these repositories may become useful in ways that few appreciate at the moment.
The Importance of Preserving Pre-AI Content
Preserving pre-AI content is important because it may become useful in the future. For example, in 2020, it was proposed to create a "cryptographic ark" – a timestamped archive of pre-AI media that future historians could verify as authentic. AI-generated content can pollute the historical record, making it difficult to distinguish between human and machine output. Lowbackgroundsteel.ai stands as a modest catalog of human expression from what may someday be seen as the last pre-AI era.
Conclusion
Lowbackgroundsteel.ai is a digital archaeology project that marks the boundary between human-generated and hybrid human-AI cultures. In an age where distinguishing between human and machine output grows increasingly difficult, these archives may prove valuable for understanding how human communication evolved before AI entered the chat. By preserving pre-AI content, we can ensure that future generations have access to authentic human expression and can learn from the past.
FAQs
- What is lowbackgroundsteel.ai?: Lowbackgroundsteel.ai is a website that preserves online resources that haven’t been contaminated with AI-generated content.
- Why was lowbackgroundsteel.ai created?: Lowbackgroundsteel.ai was created to document human creativity from before the AI era and to preserve sources of human creativity.
- What kind of content is preserved on lowbackgroundsteel.ai?: The website points to several major archives of pre-AI content, including a Wikipedia dump from August 2022, Project Gutenberg’s collection of public domain books, and the Library of Congress photo archive.
- Can I submit my own pre-AI content to lowbackgroundsteel.ai?: Yes, you can submit your own pre-AI content through the website’s Tumblr page.
- Is lowbackgroundsteel.ai against AI?: No, lowbackgroundsteel.ai is not against AI. Its goal is to preserve human creativity from before the AI era, not to make a statement against AI itself.
