[ih] AI slop is now everywhere.

[vinton cerf]

Parry Meets the Doctor was published in July 1973 Datamation
and also as RFC 439. The experiment was done in Sept 1972.

vint


On Mon, Feb 9, 2026 at 4:38 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Looking at History, the 'net has changed a lot since the ARPANET era.
> Some of the changes are easy to understand - such as the phenomenal
> increase in the capabilities of technology and the accompanying
> plummeting of costs.   Such progress made it possible for the "AI slop"
> we all experience.   We probably can't, and don't want to, go backwards.
>
> But other changes that have occurred may also be involved.  For example,
> in the ARPANET days, authors of content were fairly reliably
> identified.  Everyone had an "account" on some computer, with passwords
> to "protect" that account.  If a document came from some person, you
> could be reasonably confident that s/he sent it.  If the sender claimed
> to be the author, you knew who to challenge if that was a false
> statement.   The security of the protection mechanisms was primitive by
> today's technical standards.  Still, it provided some measure of
> confidence about what transitted the 'net and who sent it.
>
> Over the decades, such trust has eroded, both with the explosion in
> population of the 'net and with the advances in technology.  At the same
> time, security technology has also advanced, with the introduction of
> encryption techniques, digital signatures, and such mechanisms.  They
> also are not perfect, especially with the advent of "quantum
> computing".   But they provide a reasonable level of trust that links
> content to authorship.
>
> Curiously, no one seems to use these technologies.
>
> Well, some do; for example, this message is signed by me, its author.
> You may not see that signature since the mail system in use today
> corrupts it.   My signature will be stripped off this message before you
> receive it.   You'll just have to trust me.  And you shouldn't have to.
>
> Perhaps we can do something?
>
> If you're an educator, perhaps you could require your students to
> digitally sign everything they claim to be their work?   If you're a
> lawyer or politician, perhaps you can explore how your legal machinery
> can be applied, or changed, to address in the legal systems issues such
> as fraud using the 'net?  If you're a techie, perhaps you can work on
> making the email, text, audio, and video infrastructures better at
> linking content with authorship - perhaps start with this list?  If
> you're an AI entrepreneur, perhaps you can introduce the notion of
> signatures to content generated by your AI systems?   If you're a
> security guru, perhaps you can figure out why today's security
> technology isn't being widely used, and how to change that?
>
> If you're a deep thinker, perhaps you can develop a scheme for
> categorizing "AI" along a spectrum -- ranging from simple
> spell-checking, to grammar fixing, to human-involved creation of content
> with AI assistance, to full-blown "generative" AI, to AI collaborative
> networks that proactively create their own projects to manipulate the
> humans under their influence.   The term "AI" is too broad to be useful
> across that spectrum.
>
> AIs can use the 'net just like humans do.  Way back, in the ARPANET era,
> I recall seeing a conversation between Eliza, likely the first
> "chatbot", and another AI of that era.    I couldn't remember the other
> AI's name.   So I asked CHATGPT who said:
>
> "In the early 1970s, *ELIZA* (by Joseph Weizenbaum) was famously put
> into conversation with *PARRY*, a program created by psychiatrist
> *Kenneth Colby* that simulated a person with paranoid schizophrenia.
> Their dialogue was published in 1974 and is often cited as one of the
> earliest examples of *AI-to-AI conversation*."
>
> If you're just a user on this list, perhaps you can start sending your
> own messages, but including your own digital signature?
>
> /Jack Haverty
> (you'll have to trust it's me.....)
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