This nails it: > Who Gets To Decide What Is True? I would not agree to this however: > It was then up to the reader to decide which of those sites they wante

This nails it: > Who Gets To Decide What Is True? I would not agree to this however: > It was then up to the reader to decide which of those sites they wanted to visit, With current search engines, Google decides for you ("helped" by SEO experts failing over themselves to rank higher because their revenue directly depends on it). In theory, you could go an read a few dozen pages and decide for yourself. In reality, non-technical users will click on a first link that seems to be related to the question, and that's it. Even with AI-based search (or q/a instead of search) I think the same will happen. There is and will be a huge reward for gaming the results, be they page links or RAG snippets that rank for a query. I've already seen many SEO shops advertising their strategies to keep the customers' business relevant in the chatbot area. As this approach becomes more prevalent, you can be sure many smart people will do many experiments to figure out how best to please the new algorithm. In other words, AI-based search is an UX optimization, but doesn't address the core problem of how do you decide what content's the best, and do that in context of each user, and do that while maximizing the benefit for the user vs profit for the company doing this. So we have two huge hurdles: 1. who will decide what the user wants[0] to see, and how are incentives for that entity aligned with the user's 2. how is that entity supposed to find the information needle in the haystack of slop that's 90%+ of current web? [0] "wants" in a rational "give me the best possible information" meaning, not in "what keeps them addicted, their heart rate up, and what will drive engagement" meaning