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> a summary of the minutes from your local city council, a respin of government economic statistics that answers a topical question, or a news investigation int

> a summary of the minutes from your local city council, a respin of government economic statistics that answers a topical question, or a news investigation into a topic. The city council minutes would likely be published by the city. Nobody is entitled to revenue from that, it's paid for with tax dollars. Government economics statistics are also published openly. I happened to have asked a bunch of questions about life expectancy and GDP recently and Google answered those questions with info boxes and links to the data sources. If I ask a question which can be answered in a few words, I'm perfectly content not to have to view ads to read an article from an economics wonk to manually find the tiny nugget I'm after. And as for a news investigation, there's almost no question you could ask in isolation that would be better answered by reading a full article, I think. The person asking "Who is facing legal action in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre?" wants to get back "Alex Jones." They almost certainly didn't want to read a full article, and if they did, they'd click on it. Which is to say, Google is doing nontrivial work to accomplish a specific outcome that the "third class" sources don't solve (and usually don't even try to solve). Besides, how do you know the content Google is pulling from... 1. Came from a single source and was not corroborated with multiple sources? 2. Wasn't just scraped from somewhere else or compiled with AI? 3. Isn't wrong? Should sources get paid for incorrect information? A passthrough system creates perverse financial incentives to answer questions that someone might someday have, without caring about whether the answers to those questions are genuine and ethically produced. And frankly, that's far worse than what we have now.

ethbr1 3y ago
> The city council minutes would likely be published by the city. Have you tried to look for yours, in a smaller city? > Government economics statistics are also published openly Certain statistics are published openly. However, the most useful derived statistics are a result of combining these with other data sets. > And as for a news investigation, there's almost no question you could ask in isolation that would be better answered by reading a full article, I think I'm not arguing excerpt vs full article. I'm arguing as to whether or not the full article exists in the first place. There is a huge amount of critical, socially-useful information that requires effort, money, or skill to generate. Previously, journalists created it. Now, nobody does. > Which is to say, Google is doing nontrivial work to accomplish a specific outcome... What would Google be able to provide without content provided by underlying sources? Nothing. Google doesn't have reporters or posters. They provide platforms, then take a cut (or all) of the revenue generated by content on those platforms. That's worth something, but it certainly doesn't deserve the 100% they're getting now. > Besides, how do you know the content Google is pulling from... Google knows. And if it doesn't, then it's unattributable content, which should open them up to legal liability. ML/LLMs shouldn't be GPU-powered copyright washing machines: feed copyrighted content in, get uncopyrighted results out. > A passthrough system creates perverse financial incentives to answer questions that someone might someday have, without caring about whether the answers to those questions are genuine and ethically produced. And frankly, that's far worse than what we have now. You've literally described Google's current business model, and what they've turned the web into.

ethbr1 3y ago

> The city council minutes would likely be published by the city. Have you tried to look for yours, in a smaller city? > Government economics statistics are also published openly Certain statistics are published openly. However, the most useful derived statistics are a result of combining these with other data sets. > And as for a news investigation, there's almost no question you could ask in isolation that would be better answered by reading a full article, I think I'm not arguing excerpt vs full article. I'm arguing as to whether or not the full article exists in the first place. There is a huge amount of critical, socially-useful information that requires effort, money, or skill to generate. Previously, journalists created it. Now, nobody does. > Which is to say, Google is doing nontrivial work to accomplish a specific outcome... What would Google be able to provide without content provided by underlying sources? Nothing. Google doesn't have reporters or posters. They provide platforms, then take a cut (or all) of the revenue generated by content on those platforms. That's worth something, but it certainly doesn't deserve the 100% they're getting now. > Besides, how do you know the content Google is pulling from... Google knows. And if it doesn't, then it's unattributable content, which should open them up to legal liability. ML/LLMs shouldn't be GPU-powered copyright washing machines: feed copyrighted content in, get uncopyrighted results out. > A passthrough system creates perverse financial incentives to answer questions that someone might someday have, without caring about whether the answers to those questions are genuine and ethically produced. And frankly, that's far worse than what we have now. You've literally described Google's current business model, and what they've turned the web into.