Live data from Hacker News

Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

telegraph.co.uk

71–80 of 390 posts

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#71
It's going to get worse. Here's a great primer on the problem we're facing, written by a Google -> OpenAI engineer.

"I think that being able to automatically produce arbitrary content that is indistinguishable from human-generated content at scale is the death knell of the web as we know it."

https://nonint.com/2023/03/09/gpt-might-be-an-information-vi...

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#72
post #31

Recipe blogs are the most horrible example. The amount of BS you have to scroll through to get to the actual recipe.

Personally I rate as the worst all these SEO generated sites that pop in search results when you're trying to look up for solution for problem xyz - tips, tricks and tutorials - the triple T.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#73
post #62
post #29

The web thrived for a decent number of years with ads before it began to really spiral down. For me the biggest cause of that spiral was the shift from most users using desktops to most users using mobile to interact with google. In the desktop search world, google used to respond with large comprehensive articles on subjects that not just answered peoples questions but also educated them on the subject around their…

These days most non technical people just have their phone and live inside the FB/IG/TT/X/Gmail/Google apps on their phones and don't even go on the web. And app developers are doing everything to keep them inside the app with a crappy in-app browser which also benefits the Apple/Google app store ecosystem. Apples intention with Safari was inside the name. "Safari - you're in the African jungle, theres lions and tige…

I've recently deleted Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc from my phone and it's like night and day. I basically only go to hacker news now or look at my own websites. Suddenly all of the noise of the internet was silent.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#74
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're heading into a future where text is generated by language models, then other language models are used to generate summaries for human consumption. We will drown in AI bullshit and then use more AI to try and extract the meaningful kernel.

Yeah. If we can “solve” AI and make systems that develop genuine knowledge, then we will be okay. But that may never happen and we may find ourselves stuck at the current “bullshit generator” phase and if that happens the internet is absolutely fucked.

Search engines are fucked in that scenario. Maybe we'll just need better-curated ones, or a better ranking (usefulness ratings by verified users?). And anyone can still create a website, so you can escape the AI flood.

But if Google failed to defend against SEO before LLMs, maybe the scale of the current search engines is just too big for effective moderation and we need to scale down to smaller communities.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#75
post #29

The web thrived for a decent number of years with ads before it began to really spiral down. For me the biggest cause of that spiral was the shift from most users using desktops to most users using mobile to interact with google. In the desktop search world, google used to respond with large comprehensive articles on subjects that not just answered peoples questions but also educated them on the subject around their…

It is interesting to think about where this will be headed in the future with LLMs. Will people just ask the AI in their phone for their immediate answer and the click baity articles lose a bunch of traffic as a result? I think that is kinda inevitable. What will that mean for bona fide quality sites? I don't know but part of me hopes that those detailed sites will flourish to offer more details than can be offered i…

Yes, I think the clickbait sites are done long term, people will just ask the AI on their phone.

The people who were capable of writing those large detailed posts on subjects have most likely already moved to youtube or moved on.

The data that's actually useful to the LLM's will exist in places like Discord, reddit, twitter. It's pretty obvious that twitter and reddit are going to sell their data to the LLM companies for a lot of money.

Which leaves Discord, I would be very suspicious of anyone trying to buy Discord...

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#77
post #29

The web thrived for a decent number of years with ads before it began to really spiral down. For me the biggest cause of that spiral was the shift from most users using desktops to most users using mobile to interact with google. In the desktop search world, google used to respond with large comprehensive articles on subjects that not just answered peoples questions but also educated them on the subject around their…

It is interesting to think about where this will be headed in the future with LLMs. Will people just ask the AI in their phone for their immediate answer and the click baity articles lose a bunch of traffic as a result? I think that is kinda inevitable. What will that mean for bona fide quality sites? I don't know but part of me hopes that those detailed sites will flourish to offer more details than can be offered i…

> What will that mean for bona fide quality sites?

I probably know what you mean by quality, because we’re in the same demography: sites that offer free, unobstructed reading material and software on any subject, technical or prose. Sites maintained mainly by individuals, universities, interest groups, source forges.

There will always be a market for those sites, but they’re a little harder to find via Google lately. There was a time before Google was great, and it was an exciting time, too.

What Google will continue to do great is provide a platform for quickly finding things you can pay money for.

The only time I search Google is when I prefix the query with “buy”. I can be sure that the companies most interested in selling me this have put in ads, and price comparison and review sites have gamed the SEO.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#78
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days most non technical people just have their phone and live inside the FB/IG/TT/X/Gmail/Google apps on their phones and don't even go on the web. And app developers are doing everything to keep them inside the app with a crappy in-app browser which also benefits the Apple/Google app store ecosystem. Apples intention with Safari was inside the name. "Safari - you're in the African jungle, theres lions and tige…

I've recently deleted Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc from my phone and it's like night and day. I basically only go to hacker news now or look at my own websites. Suddenly all of the noise of the internet was silent.

That's great but there's a step 2. The sub-culture of people who like things better that way need to sustain each other and itself. Ideally, to grow in happiness and other measures of strength such that the surrounding dominant culture cannot destroy it, and in fact can influence the dominant culture to become more like it. It's that step 2 that I think we haven't figured out yet. Without step 2 we are merely opinionated nerds that are easily isolated and alienated and ignored.

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#79
>The criticism of his former employer came as Mr Suleyman told the Telegraph about plans for a new international body to monitor AI threats.

I hope they first threat they choose to monitor is the monopolisation of the AI services, all while the huge monopolies preach about "the dangers of ai" to increase the barriers to entry for the small guy (we all know disappearance of open source models and a ban on sale of hardware capable of running them to individuals is their most desirable wet dream).

Re: Google has sent internet into 'spiral of decline', claims DeepMind co-founder

#80
post #3

This is why I use ChatGPT and Kagi over Google search now.

Same, but perplexity.ai for me. Search enabled LLMs that can slog through the search results for me is where it's at.

If they appear to work now, it's because the SEO leeches haven't found them yet. If they ever become popular, they'll get inundated with garbage too.
Post reply on HN