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Comment by CreepGin

1 year ago

Agreed. Maybe we're moving toward a world where LLMs do all the searching, and "websites" just turn into data-only endpoints made for AI to consume. That'll have other big implications... Interesting times ahead.

11 comments

CreepGin

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ben_w  1 year ago

Interesting times, for sure.

> and "websites" just turn into data-only endpoints made for AI to consume.

As is already the case with humans, that only serves users to the extent that the websites' veracity is within the intelligence's ability to verify — all the problems we've had with blogspam etc. have been due to the subset of SEO where people abuse* the mechanisms to promote what they happen to be selling at the expense of genuine content.

AI generated content is very good at seeming human, at seeming helpful. A "review website" which is all that, but with fake reviews that promote one brand over the others… a chain of such websites that link to each other to boost PageRank scores… which are then cross-linked with a huge number of social media bots…

Will lead to a lot of people who think they're making an informed choice, but who were lied to about everything from their cornflakes to their president.

* Tautologically, when it's not "abuse", SEO is only helping the search engine find the real content. I've seen places fail to perform any SEO including the legitimate kind.

  • genewitch  1 year ago

    a sincere question; how is

    >A "review website" which is all that, but with fake reviews that promote one brand over the others… a chain of such websites that link to each other to boost PageRank scores… which are then cross-linked with a huge number of social media bots…"

    functionally different than a majority of news outlets in the US parroting the exact same story, verbatim?

    This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo

    * please note, i am glibly linking that youtube video as a completely transparent example of what i am talking about. There are many (many) more examples. don't read into the content of the video so much, and just think about the implications.

    • ben_w  1 year ago

      I think the only difference is one of scale and cost.

      AI is automation, and the existence of fully automated propaganda doesn't deny the existence of manual propaganda before it.

      > This is extremely dangerous to our democracy

      Indeed, the existing manual kind of propaganda is already dangerous. Always was.

      Even so, manual propaganda can at least be fought by grass-roots movements, by humans being human. This is why freedom of speech is valuable.

      Hard for real humans to counter an AI that can be even moderately conversational at a cost of just USD 0.99/day to fully saturate someone's experience of the world.

svara  1 year ago

Interesting idea. AI can't look at ads, so in the long run ads on informational material might die any you're going back to paying outright. I like it.

  • mhuffman  1 year ago

    >AI can't look at ads

    But ads can be put in AI.

    • dingnuts  1 year ago

      Ads? Too obvious. Just always suggest sponsors' products when it's in context, and censor your competitors so they're never mentioned in responses.

      And since AI is so great and you don't want to bother going to the website and clicking through a cookie banner, as another commenter mentioned, you just won't ever know the competitor exists

      I guess that's technically an ad but it's so much more subversive that "ad" doesn't really do it justice. It'll be like product placement but worse somehow

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  • adav  1 year ago

    The ads will just become either bulk misinformation or carefully worded data points that nudge the AI towards a more favourable view of the product being sold.