The something that happened was ChatGPT. Enough commenters didn't like the idea that everything they write publicly online is fed in as training data for AI that there's been a shift in this site's community. That, and everyone got laid off, either for section 174 or AI reasons, but Twitter employees are no longer collecting that fast paycheck and posting here. I'm sure a data scientist could make a good analysis of if what I'm saying is backed by actual data, but that's my feel based on spending more time on here than is healthy.
> Enough commenters didn't like the idea that everything they write publicly online is fed in as training data for AI that there's been a shift in this site's community.
Pardon; your theory is that this attitude was prevalent among people who like discussing pg's writing, and that they have left in favour of a new crowd that doesn't care about pg but is also pro- the AI companies?
... Because that doesn't seem to line up with the general tenor of discussion in threads about AI companies doing things.
Looking at the stats, there's been a huge influx of accounts. The theory that fits that isn't internal inconsistent is then there are multiple people using the sites that can be grouped into a set of people that don't care for pg, and a set of people that are pro-AI. How much of an intersection there is between those two groups, you get to imagine for yourself. The individuals in the group that see a PG essay, and go "Ooh, lemme dump my unfiltered opinion of him and not read the essay" and the individuals that won't bother with that link, and the individuals that comment on AI stories is a small set. The sata science query to prove me wrong wrong is left as an exercise for the reader.
