The AI guru behind Vibe Coding says only RSS can save us from filth on the Internet
AI shortages are everywhere now, and even the people building the future of AI are feeling overwhelmed by it. For AI guru Andrej Karpathy, known for his work at OpenAI and Tesla, who famously coined the term “vibe coding,” the solution to bucking the slope is not less AI but better consumption. He says RSS feeds are one way to do this.
The AI slope is rising. For those unaware, this term refers to content that is created or generated by AI. This can be text, audio or video. Its abundance everywhere is so great that platforms like YouTube are now cracking down on channels using AI – and only AI – to stop the internet from being flooded with so-called “AI slop”. The development has been so rapid that even veterans have started paying attention, accepting and speaking about the issue. The latest to join the bandwagon is Andrzej Karpathy, who has played key roles at OpenAI and Tesla – and who famously coined the term vibe coding last year. The AI guru has made the case for the return of RSS feeds, saying that he looks to them when he wants to read high-quality long-form content, and not to the sloppiness of AI with a tendency to “instigate”.
Taking on He shared that he himself is returning to RSS and Atom feeds to escape the rising tide of online “slop”, saying that they offer high-quality long-form writing and too little content designed solely to provoke engagement.
He posted, “I find myself going back to the RSS/Atom feed lately. There is so much high quality longform out there and so little sloppiness to provoke. Any product that looks a little different today but has fundamentally the same incentive structures will eventually converge into the same black hole at the center of gravity.”
His comments come at a time when there are concerns over AI-generated content – AI sloppiness is everywhere. With AI models getting smarter and allowing users to create videos with text, images at almost zero cost, social media platforms are filling up with this kind of content optimized for clicks rather than insights. This is raising concerns over the fact that AI slippage is making it harder for users to find thoughtful and original work amid the noise.
Karpathy points out that the issue is not AI itself, but the incentive structures behind modern platforms. In his view, any product that relies on the same engagement-driven mechanics, likes, shares, outrage, and endless scrolling, will ultimately collapse into the same low-quality center of gravity. He suggested that even platforms that appear different on the surface are bound to lead to the same outcome if their incentives remain unchanged.
As an alternative, Karpathy strongly supported RSS and described it as “open, widespread, and hackable”. Unlike algorithmic social feeds, RSS puts users in control, allowing them to choose which sources they want to follow rather than having content pushed by opaque recommendation systems designed to maximize time spent on a platform.
Of course, Carpathy isn’t against AI per se. He is the person who popularized the term “vibe coding”, a process where developers rely heavily on AI tools and intuition rather than manually writing each line of code. In an earlier post on X, he encouraged vibe coding and also shared how he is using AI to write code based on his mood. “There’s a new kind of coding I call vibe coding, where you completely succumb to the vibes, embrace the exponentials and forget that code even exists. It’s possible because LLMs are getting so cool.”
Therefore, his criticism of AI slope does not come from rejecting AI, but from concern over how it is shaping the quality of content on the Internet, and impacting fundamentally worthy human conversations.