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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

#961

Post by [deleted] »

customguy wrote: post #441
figassis wrote: post #336

I 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…

I called it 2001/2002 or whenever they appeared when I tried to explain why personalized search results are the beginning of the end of a shared reality and therefore the ability to reason and act in public, and with others. I bet some still consider it hyperbole. It's just taking in trends and seeing where the glacier moves to, how the cookie will crumble so to speak.

[deleted]

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

#962

Post by inigyou »

TsiCClawOfLight wrote: post #947
nixonpjoshua wrote: post #880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully now that AI provides quick answers, web search can go back to providing and respecting boolean and more advanced techniques. If web search is no longer the go to tool for most users, then search can do better what it can do uniquely?

Have you tried kagi? It's payed, but I definitely get my money's worth!

It's a breath of fresh air being the customer instead of the product.

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

#963

Post by inigyou »

davnicwil wrote: post #611
figassis wrote: post #336

I 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…

I find it so interesting how many comments about AI start with a disclaimer that of course it's very useful, before pointing out a negative of any sort. I do it too so it's not a criticism, but I find it kinda interesting culturally. It's a reflection I think of the environment that we've created for ourselves, or has been created for us (or some combo) where somehow you can't point out an unqualified negative of thi…

I find it interesting how many AI comments say it's useful, but they can never say what the use is.

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

#964

Post by inigyou »

avgDev wrote: post #774
Finbel wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years ago it would have been insane to say that you got help from ChatGPT to fix your outdoor plumbing, people here would have been frothing at the mouth for merely suggesting it. Four years ago it wasn't even on the radar of future possibilities. The quality it is today, is the worst it's ever going to be.

We are in the golden age of AI. Things are going to get worse at some point. It happened to google, it will happen to AI.

> the golden age of AI

a.k.a. the third? fourth? AI summer

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

#965

Post by inigyou »

Borg3 wrote: post #949
inigyou wrote: post #923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or you put a password on a website

Spoken like a true websurfer. You know, networking is not only about WWW.

You can also put passwords on things that aren't websites.

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

#966

Post by inigyou »

gosub100 wrote: post #510
Borg3 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is simple.. Go dark. VPN tech is known from like 30 years. Pretty much everyone can use it (VPN providers). But instead using it to browse net, build VPN overlay networks of interest for people. Gaming networks, R&D networks, Retro Networks. People will peer to PoP and use resources. Bad actor? BAN it from network. You have control. This could be done in Internet, but big corpos and big money won the…

I just used a VPN yesterday and the NY times blocked me because they think I look like a bot. It gave a couple possible reasons, one being "a bot was also using this IP address". VPNs are great for torrenting but any serious website like an online bank or web email provider will turn you away. They claim it's for bots but really it because they only want customers they can track.

You're conflating a VPN as in a virtual private network, with a VPN as in Nord/Atlas/ExpressVPN, which use the same underlying technology in a different way.

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

#967

Post by inigyou »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #602
nairboon wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not copyright that caused cheap access. The printing machine allowed for cheaper publications, that's what spawned the new age of knowledge. The raw materials and the duplication of knowledge was the bottleneck. With digital systems this cost is minuscule, but still there.

Disagree. The printing machine was killing the industry allowing copies where people earned nothing. Copyright was created to ensure quality works existed to be copied.

That's the stated purpose. What's the POSIWID?

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

#968

Post by inigyou »

kaoD wrote: post #371
sph wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I suggest you to look into mesh networks? I am a huge fan of Reticulum. Using it feels like being a pioneer, the scene is very welcoming. The pitch: it is network-agnostic. The same mesh network runs on the Internet or through LoRa radios or any other physical layer than allows the exchange of data packets. It scales from private networks to global meshes. It's the wild west. People are excited, and eager to grow…

I always find these mesh networks landing pages a bit lacking in information, and I wish they weren't. How is this different to, from example, Yggdrasil Network[0]? https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/

IIRC it's mainly just different protocol parameters allowing Reticulum to work on really slow links, but also wastes performance on really fast links.

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

#969

Post by inigyou »

sgt wrote: post #657
kaoD wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find these mesh networks landing pages a bit lacking in information, and I wish they weren't. How is this different to, from example, Yggdrasil Network[0]? https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/

Makes me think of good old Yggdrasil Linux.

Makes me think of SCP-2207

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

#970

Post by inigyou »

mike_hearn wrote: post #954
alightsoul wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media sites actually want search engines to index them. It's just much more computationally intensive and thus hard to cheaply to index a photo on Instagram or a video on TikTok or a podcast on Spotify than plain text. So search engines decide not to do it. Only google indexes YouTube transcriptions This shift to hard to cheaply index content is maybe why search engines died. People don't use hyperlinks anymor…

Yeah that's the core of it. I've seen people say their finely crafted essays get 1% of the engagement of a video. And in video there is no natural equivalent of the hyperlink, so ranking and discovery are now fully neural and centralized around Youtube.

Actually YouTube videos do hyperlink to each other.
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