The most immediate impact of AI since the public release of ChatGPT in 2023, has been the “dumbing down” of the Internet. I am not surprised. I saw this coming a year ago.
This month, Google began displaying AI generated responses to searches instead of linking to websites. This is great if you want a generic “top 10” buzz-feed type list of potentially correct information. But if you are searching to obtain accurate information with depth and analysis, I recommend bypassing the AI answers.
There have been innumerable reports of AI proving inaccurate information, at times even making up answers that are bizarre (aka hallucinations). I expect the hallucinations will diminish over time. However, I can’t say the same for the generic results.
I expect those to become the norm for AI generated content. After all, these AI LLMs are trained by scanning all content on the Internet – sources include quasi-reliable content (mass media) as well as sketchy content (Twitter, Reddit).
Media companies, journalists and publishers are freaking out because Google’s AI summaries will result in exponentially fewer visitors being directed to their websites via google searches. They are right to be freaking out. This is going to crush their revenue stream much like Craiglist destroyed print newspapers whose revenues relied on advertising.
If I was a media company, journalist or publisher, I’d be looking for a new career. Fortunately, I’m not. I’m just an Internet and Google user. I’ll play around with AI, but my expectations are low. Interestingly, the effect AI has had on me personally is that it has been driving me to be online less and to read books more.
That said, I can imagine that I’ll be relying on other AI solutions in the future. 25 years ago, I remember printing driving directions from Yahoo Maps to get places. Most of the time, these directions were accurate, but sometimes they were disasterously wrong. Today, I use Apple Maps for 99% of my driving directions and it is 99.9% accurate.
I’m not sure what AI solution will become as ubiquitous as driving directions, but I expect there will be some.
