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As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

thewalrus.ca

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Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#91

Post by JKCalhoun »

comrade1234 wrote: post #7

I 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…

Yes. When my kids wonder why I don't hate AI the way they do I tell them it's because I hate Google even more.

To be more precise, I hate the SEO shithole the internet has become, that Google serves up, that Google facilitated, indirectly created.

(I really don't have any tears to shed if there is a death of the Corporate Internet™.)

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#92

Post by JKCalhoun »

neuralkoi wrote: post #87
paxys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the information Gemini surfaced was created with human effort and published on the internet with the expectation that humans would visit the website and the creator would get some reward - advertising dollars, bragging rights, popularity, subscribers or whatever else. If the only visitors to websites are now LLM training bots then what incentive is there to publish anything new? For how long can we continue to re…

I've seen websites put up some draconian measures to try and get a grip on the scraping. So much for the sub-second loading experience when you have Cloudflare, Google, Anubis, and all these other captcha services trying to see if you're a human. It's made the web browsing experience so much worse. Some of the proposals to address this include charging bots for access to web resources, but they will also have repercu…

Me, I'm just scraping the parts of the internet I like, toying with local LLMs… ready really to just shove off.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#93

Post by JKCalhoun »

exmadscientist wrote: post #88
jefftk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the only visitors to websites are now LLM training bots then what incentive is there to publish anything new? I write because I have ideas I want to share, and whether that happens with LLMs as an intermediary isn't important to me.

The danger that's concerning people (rightly or wrongly) isn't that LLMs are going to be an intermediary to your website. It's that they'll be the only thing reading it. No one will ever read your post or know what you wrote. The only consumers will be LLMs, they'll train on a version that strips out you as the author (probably more due to expedience than any sort of malice; it's not like you're famous , are you?), a…

Not the OP, but I suspect no one goes to my website anyway. (I write nonetheless.)

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#94

Post by JKCalhoun »

queenkjuul wrote: post #66
theplumber wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took you 4 days because you used Gemini. Gemini is the worst AI model I ever used. It is way behind even open models. It looks like Google just reached its AOL moment.

Come now, copilot is worse in every way

Guessing this is the relevant part: "worst AI model I ever used"

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#95

Post by laughing_man »

jefftk wrote: post #67
paxys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the information Gemini surfaced was created with human effort and published on the internet with the expectation that humans would visit the website and the creator would get some reward - advertising dollars, bragging rights, popularity, subscribers or whatever else. If the only visitors to websites are now LLM training bots then what incentive is there to publish anything new? For how long can we continue to re…

> If the only visitors to websites are now LLM training bots then what incentive is there to publish anything new? I write because I have ideas I want to share, and whether that happens with LLMs as an intermediary isn't important to me.

There are different types of writing. If we depend on people writing because it's enjoyable at some level, we're going to lose writing that's important but also a bit tedious.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#96

Post by laughing_man »

comrade1234 wrote: post #7

I 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…

I've run into major problems with LLMs as I maintain my home Linux systems. If I just copied commands they list, I would have a near 100% failure rate, as most of the information they have has been gleaned from forum posts that are years out of date.

They're a good jumping off point, but I need to delve into the original sources just like I did when I used Google.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#97

Post by _DeadFred_ »

satvikpendem wrote: post #80
paxys wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the information Gemini surfaced was created with human effort and published on the internet with the expectation that humans would visit the website and the creator would get some reward - advertising dollars, bragging rights, popularity, subscribers or whatever else. If the only visitors to websites are now LLM training bots then what incentive is there to publish anything new? For how long can we continue to re…

People write and create regardless of profit motive, it has been that way for thousands of years.

Actually no. The original copyright laws were created in part because of the realities of needed profit motive to have high value writing done, time consuming compilation work done. It was even titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning". The thousands of years writing you are talking about was often funded by patrons, who kept the output in their private libraries to show off (and maybe lend out) for prestige. It was a horrible limitation of knowledge and ideas. Much worse than the profit motive, copyright based system that came after that spawned a new age of knowledge in which everyone had cheap access, and those that didn't had access to the (no longer just private) libraries.

I'm sure the billionaire class would love a return to patronage based libraries, NDAs on authors of books, and the elitism they would feel with a return to private libraries locking away all kinds of knowledge that would happen if patronage become the only way authors could make money (such as with AI just regurgitating their works, or if the stupid 'do away with copyright' people got their way).

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#98

Post by watson_engineer »

flinux wrote: post #32

I see only one simple solution (though we should discuss the more complex ones): if Google directly answers a search query, then it must be held accountable for it, for better or for worse, and therefore assume all the benefits and (legal) liabilities that this entails

[flagged]

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#99

Post by dualvariable »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #91
comrade1234 wrote: post #7

I 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…

Yes. When my kids wonder why I don't hate AI the way they do I tell them it's because I hate Google even more. To be more precise, I hate the SEO shithole the internet has become, that Google serves up, that Google facilitated, indirectly created. (I really don't have any tears to shed if there is a death of the Corporate Internet™.)

They're probably going to figure out how to aggressively monetize and enshittify LLMs at some point.

We're likely at the "golden age" of LLM-assisted web searching and summarization.

Hopefully open models keep it cracked open, but expecting enshittification is always the safe bet these days.

Re: As AI eats the web, the internet’s collective memory is disappearing

#100

Post by jefftk »

exmadscientist wrote: post #88
jefftk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the only visitors to websites are now LLM training bots then what incentive is there to publish anything new? I write because I have ideas I want to share, and whether that happens with LLMs as an intermediary isn't important to me.

The danger that's concerning people (rightly or wrongly) isn't that LLMs are going to be an intermediary to your website. It's that they'll be the only thing reading it. No one will ever read your post or know what you wrote. The only consumers will be LLMs, they'll train on a version that strips out you as the author (probably more due to expedience than any sort of malice; it's not like you're famous , are you?), a…

Yes, that would be fine. I write primarily communicate ideas, not for credit or fame.

Empirically, however, LLMs don't strip out the author: the big models know a lot about what I've written even with search disabled. Ex: https://claude.ai/share/8cbcdf88-a360-421a-8c06-ae7b7992e866

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