Live data from Hacker News

If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?

cacm.acm.org

51–60 of 63 posts

Re: If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?

#51
reductio ad absurdum.

there were a few months when a neighbor couldn't get the oil he needed to heat his home ...

another one fried a circuit and his solar cells were ... well ... powerless ... I mean they weren't, except they were, but you know what I mean.

I had a bicycle stolen once and a car got smashed on the rail tracks to my university ... it was horribly bloody and messy.

A friend broke his good arm once. His other arm was useless.

And we shouldn't touch the Gen part of your AI.

Re: If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?

#52

GenAI will make shit up. You need to be able to verify the information it gives you. Or not, do what you want. I don’t give a shit.

The underlying articles can and often do make stuff up, usually in the form of silly opinions while trying to pass it as the objective truth.

Re: If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contracts that the founders of the US constitution based the constitution on. You may want to start with Leviathan, then move on to John Locke, Hobbes and Descartes. No post I make will ever substitute for a reading of those authors.

this website is insufferable. instead of explaining yourself, you offer a pretentious reading list? those authors wrote a LOT and had many different topics. you couldn't even point to any specific writing? give me a fucking break. you just want to sound smart. this website is filled with the most arrogant people anywhere on the Internet. if you want to comment about an idea, and then you intend to recommend several s…

I know, there are these people that pipe in and are just so distorted in their own ignorance and lack of discipline, blaming everyone but the people responsible (themselves) and think everything should be handed to them on a golden spoon in a way that will somehow empower them without any effort, and when that doesn't happen throwing tantrums like an infantile child gaslighting about arrogance and other things that they hallucinate, falsely believing the world owes them something.

I am not required to explain, the material is out there for anyone to review on their own time. I point out a deficit, and material you can easily look up, those that want to elevate themselves and they can and do the research transforming themselves for the better but not without effort.

I had the very best reason to post this comment, a far better reason than you. I want the future to be livable for everyone, and by your sentiment and actions you seem to want destruction or death for all, at least by the outcomes you claim I should do. You see a car barreling towards a bystander, a good person would yell out in warning so the bystander gets clear and survives. You would instead have it so that they just shut the fuck up, no thought to the consequences.

People who have properly educated and taken their education upon themselves are superior to those that do not, they are capable of far more than they start with, and that only increases with time.

Anyone has the chance to elevate themselves, it only requires effort once given the right direction which is not much, and in the process you learn a great many things if you are open to the journey.

Those that aren't are more content to destroy, envious of those that can, seeking to silence and punish them. --- Giving something of value up for nothing in exchange is charity, and this is always on the terms of the giver, never the receiver. Those that receive and then seek to compel or strongarm the giver are no different than any other thug, thief, looters, but are often worse because they pretend otherwise despite their vile character.

No person owes you a thing. The basic foundations are less than an 8 hour read; not 3 semesters.

Re: If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your wrong. Here's how it might go down. Web advertising goes away because communications platforms reach the Shannon limit driven by AI generated slop, and deceit. People can no longer communicate with each other, this spawns chaotic hallucinations and delusions that grow into a dragon-king event. Businesses make decisions based on the hallucinatory perceptions that are not sound resulting in losses. Money-printing…

I think that story is absolutely nuts, both the premise and the outcome. If society were as brittle as you describe we’d have collapsed under the first gust of wind.

The premise starts with Claude Shannon's well established work, and the demonstrated ability of GenAI to costlessly saturate communications channels.

What about Shannon's work do you find absolutely nuts? Keeping in mind, to overturn established science you need extraordinary proof for refutation, do you have any?

The inducement of delusion and hallucination of the mind, as well as the limits of human perception, are equally well documented and established under psychology like behavioral modification therapy, behavioral engineering, NCI, torture, hypnosis, and the like.

The economics are also well established that absent a market distribution of labor, corruption occurs regardless leading to positive feedback loops, and runaway money-printing is known to drive and distorts price floors with clear profit cutoffs that determine behavior (closing shop when its no longer possible to make a profit).

Under such adverse circumstances, its not unheard of that the imposed stress causes people to degrade in thought to an almost automaton level, incapable of reacting to their environment correctly, which naturally occurs and is aligned with many of the same things we see under fascism, and the nature of numerous underlying positive feedback systems is they easily run away out of control until conditions are met for catastrophic collapse.

Cascading failures, where everything slips through your hands because the incentives drive the outcome chaotically is expected in such environments.

Your statement amounts to survivorship bias, it hasn't happened yet so it can't ever happen; which is fallacy and easily refuted.

At a bare minimum there are many historical examples of societies that suddenly vanished in the historic record (i.e. suddenly died out). While we can't know the exact circumstances after-the-fact we can know it is a regular possibility.

Given that refutation, because it has happened. Approaching failures that result in no control, it would be appropriate to perform due-dilligence at a point of control where you can affect change, which is necessary to change course, and failure to do that favors extinction.

If you just take a wait and see approach, and you have all your eggs in one single basket, who survives when you are wrong and that hubris spirals consequences out of your control?

The vast majority of people have forgotten the inherent cruelty of natural law, and what it initially took to break past the Malthusian trap. It was the work of a larger part of our population sharing and communicating knowledge.

Distributed communication of useful information is largely what made this possible, and it elevated everyone with access to it. A coordinated effort of solving many problems in unity; and this isn't, or more appropriately can't happen anymore.

Communication won't be available when communication is jammed, and nothing can pass the noise floor due to channel capacity exhaustion. That necessarily means everyone falls to their base cognitive levels, which previously have been augmented through an intelligent minority that has been shrinking.

What chances would you give cavemen in averting a planet killer Impactor? How about without our communications systems, and the built-up expertise (on the shoulder's of giants), what chance would you give modern man to do the same? Equal odds?

Hubris not tempered by reality is a very dangerous thing.

Society didn't used to be so brittle. There were redundancies to pick up slack, but these are gone now. Its been made that way in recent history through complicit insiders seeking profit, power, and control above all else.

Re: If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?

#57
post #43

Browsing "the web" has been painful for years thanks to SEO and ads. Most people already spend their time in walled gardens, selectively jumping out to specific linked sites. Does AI fundamentally change this, or is it just a better front-end for the search engine?

What makes you think ads and the equivalent to SEO aren't coming for the LLM products? These companies are going to have to turn a profit eventually...

It is just a question of time when we would need AdBlock for LLM…

Re: If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?

#60
post #5
post #3

It already has, and it will destroy quite a lot more before all is said and done. Fundamentally, it breaks the social and generational contracts needed for societal organization to operate. While these structures won't vanish overnight, the consequences are cascading failures that will produce dire outcomes the longer they are allowed to fester.

What contracts are those?

AI gave me this: 1. The Work–Reward Contract

Expectation: If you work hard and build skills, society will reward you with wages, stability, and opportunities for advancement.

AI Tension: If AI automates large swaths of work, the link between effort and reward can collapse. For example, truck drivers, radiologists, or call center workers may find that their decades of skill-building are instantly devalued.

2. The Generational Contract

Expectation: Each generation contributes (through taxes, labor, innovation) to support the current elderly, while expecting the next generation to do the same for them.

AI Tension: If AI concentrates wealth among a small group of owners, younger generations may not have the income base to sustain pensions, healthcare systems, or the tax base that supports aging populations.

3. The Education Contract

Expectation: If you spend years in school, investing time and money, you’ll get access to meaningful employment.

AI Tension: If AI can do much of the work fresh graduates are trained for (law, programming, design, etc.), then the implicit “return on education” may vanish, undermining trust in the education system itself.

4. The Knowledge–Authority Contract

Expectation: Experts and institutions (teachers, journalists, researchers) hold authority because of their training, discipline, and credibility.

AI Tension: If AI can generate convincing text, images, or even research papers, people may not know who or what to trust. This erodes the social contract where institutions act as reliable custodians of knowledge.

5. The Effort–Dignity Contract

Expectation: Work, even if menial, provides dignity and identity.

AI Tension: If AI replaces not only high-skilled jobs but also low-skilled ones, people may lose both economic security and the sense of contributing meaningfully to society.

6. The Civic Contract

Expectation: Citizens deliberate and vote based on human judgment and human-driven discourse.

AI Tension: AI-generated propaganda, deepfakes, or bot-driven political campaigns could undermine democratic trust and participation.

7. The Interpersonal/Creative Contract

Expectation: Human creativity and relationships are uniquely valuable.

AI Tension: If AI-generated art, music, or companionship substitutes for human creation or connection, people may feel dispossessed of their role in culture and community.

Post reply on HN