i.e., it's not just the collective memory going away, but what will easily replace it and who will be motivated to influence.
As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
571–580 of 1001 posts
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#572I called this maybe 3y ago, but I think so did everyone else that was sane. Sure, we get immense value from AI, but indiscriminately injecting into everything, the one thing we know to be unreliable above the threshold we used to fire people for, is probably the greatest undoing of all the good companies like Google brought to the internet. I mean what a way to destroy your legacy of democratizing information. The am…
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really happy for you. It's disheartening how many people put off or choose not to have kids because they think some combination of climate disaster, famine, overpopulation, war or skynet will ensure a life of misery for their children. There's definitely a risk of over-thinking things. Just do things. You're not likely to regret it.
As opposed to have kids because "is the thing to do", "it's time", or "I have to give grandkids to my parents"? Those are much worse reasons to breed.
However, thought processes like the one you identified above are probably adaptive, as gene lines which spend time trying to find the "justifiable reasons" for breeding were likely eliminated.
Gene lines where "I can raise my kids with like-minded community of peers", "I feel ready for more in life", and "sharing children with my parents, and letting my kids bond with healthy gradparents" (restatements of your phrasings) win out and reliably produce healthy offspring. So those reasons become strong motivators (despite being un-necessary justifications), that may seem irrational at first glance.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#574I find it ironic how people talk with a high hand about "Google dying", "Internet dying" and "AI eating everything" and then I open their website and it forces me to waste 10 seconds as cloudflare "checks" my browser, then reloads, checks it again, finally lets me through and then I end up on a useless page because the scroll is broken - thanks javascript. Then I need to hit F5 and finally I can read in peace. Websit…
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then why are you on HN right now? Everything on this page was written after AI.
Come on you know what he means. Blog posts, articles, that sort of thing. AI has definitely made reading things posted to HN a much worse experience (even if they aren't all slop). It doesn't seem to have infected the comments yet, mercifully. I guess for a quick comment it's still easier to write it yourself than get Claude to do it.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#576AI will kill the internet because it is killing the incentive to make it. It is an industrial-strength example of why we don’t allow stealing.
Recently, I had some ideas I would normally just put up on a blog, in the public domain for anyone to develop on top of. Now, I'm feeling slightly reluctant because an LLM will ingest it, remix it and serve it in response to a query by some unimaginative individual who will either conclude that they are smart, or that LLMs are capable of original thought, or both. And they will have no clue where the idea originated…
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
That reminds me - my wife had a friend who was killed by a shark (no joke). There were newspaper articles, but Google has completely forgotten about this and the newspapers are often behind a paywall, changed their URL's or simply the article vanished from those sites as well, which certainly doesn't help.
I wonder how libraries, who have traditionally been the ones to archive the news, have kept up with everything moving online and now being subscription-holed. Hopefully it's not just the Internet Archive doing this, which has its own problems.
so no they are not archiving their own core books let alone periodicals
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#578Earlier quoted context omitted.
The downside, as stated in the message, is implicitly supporting the LLM data ingestation pipeline by providing fresh content. It's not a direct harm in itself, but feels very tragedy of the commonsy
> The downside ... is implicitly supporting the LLM data ingestation pipeline by providing fresh content I don't understand why that's a downside. > It's not a direct harm in itself I don't understand how it's a harm at all.
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really happy for you. It's disheartening how many people put off or choose not to have kids because they think some combination of climate disaster, famine, overpopulation, war or skynet will ensure a life of misery for their children. There's definitely a risk of over-thinking things. Just do things. You're not likely to regret it.
> There's definitely a risk of over-thinking things. Just do things. You're not likely to regret it. Agree, in general, people over-think a lot, and aren't "just doing things" enough, the world would be a better place if people acted more, over-think less. With that said, some decisions are more long-lasting and have a greater impact than others. I'm another child-less person, mainly because I guess I'm selfish enoug…
Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing
#580I spent the last three days (off and on) using Gemini to configure my edge router 4 with my iOS devices on a vpn and it's been awesome. In the past I'd do a google search and read a few sources of documentation, do another google search and read another set of documentation. Now, Gemini aggregates multiple pages together so all of the work of reading source docs from multiple locations is now n a single step. Oh, I s…
Yep - it's awesome, the problem is that Google isn't sharing the revenue with the context creators anymore - over time, unless fixed, this will decimate the knowledge base it feeds on. > Oh, I should mention though. There was no advertising at all. They didn't make any money off me Are you sure about that? Even if you didn't see ads ( remember people pay even if you don't click - just like a billboard ) - they are st…