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AI might be killing search. But there is more to the web than search. The aspect of thee web where you could look up the answer to any question or find some pie

AI might be killing search. But there is more to the web than search. The aspect of thee web where you could look up the answer to any question or find some piece of a long tail seemed miraculous. And those parts are taking a big hit. But the part where I can see if my child is missing any assignments is still great. And the aspect where I can order a part for my bicycle from the one supplier I trust half a continent away? That still works. The web is still capable of being a better Sears catalog than the Sears catalog. Even without using Amazon or some other unreliable vendor. And it is still a great way to check your bank statement. AI is going to kill a lot of things about the web, but many of those things should probably be killed anyway. There is a lot of good stuff that is going to survive just fine. It remains to be seen if killing off some bad stuff will outweigh killing off some of the good stuff.

asdff 1y ago
All of the stuff you listed that are great about the web are commercial things fwiw. If the community side of the web dies out, all thats left is a tool for business or government interests. Sure you get some benefits but consider what is really being lost. A powerful way to learn independently, to communicate with other people, to organize, to share ideas and opinions. What happens to our society when these sort of things are silenced? Who benefits from that happening? I think we know it isn't you and me.
- freeopinion 1y ago
  "Independent study" is an interesting phrase. You can still browse MIT courses despite AI. You can still read the translated works of Friedman. This is a commonly used meaning of independent study. But it isn't quite the same as Curie's independent study. If Stackoverflow is experiencing a steep dropoff it suggests that people are more satisfied with AI. Presumably they are still learning independently with the help of web-based AI. You should see the damage AI is doing to classroom instruction. People who are trying to learn can benefit from AI just like they could from the massive human effort of Wikipedia. People who are trying to dodge can hurt themselves with AI in the same way people hurt themselves with Wikipedia. None of that means the web is dying.
  - asdff 1y ago
    I see it as a tragedy of the commons sort of situation coupled with a sleep walk over a cliff. There are plenty of cases where certain things have culled their featureset or offer less than what a previous offering did. Unfortunately most people don't evaluate options based on technical merits, but more subconcious emotional response. If their friends all left myspace with its ability to customize your page to your liking for facebook with its prescribed profile pages, that is what people do even though it is objectively a lesser offering. The idea that more people are using AI therefore does not say to me that AI is truly a better option than what was around before. To me it just suggests it became meme status through marketing and got the sleepwalkers hooked. And case in point, you have most people on this corner of the internet where people are more inclined to evaluate technical merits having low opinions of the state of AI. The way marketing works is you will always see technology develop towards commercializable technology vs just genuinely good ideas. There is no great lobby out there pushing for technical blogs for example, despite their high signal to noise ratio and utility. That is done solely from the goodness of the authors heart for the most part, a cost to them in website maintenance not a profit center. You do see AI companies lobbying every government on earth right now, on the other hand, because they are working hard to entrench their tooling into the mindshare of as many people they can. It is pretty dystopian how the incentives are so aligned towards a few people who are cracking the deals. Even on the microscale they align like this: you see people on HN complain their employer bought them a copilot license they don't use because of the problems with it, but no doubt whoever secured that contract for the business probably looks great in front of the shareholders who are more concerned with keeping up with the Joneses than if the tool actually works as it is pitched. Seems we are far more concerned with the next quarter than the next ten years.
- bigthymer 1y ago
  I suppose people will have to connect in-person again. If this were to transpire, I think it would provide numerous benefits. Human health would improve. It would be more difficult to surveil peoples' offline communications. One thing that will change though is that we will probably be less connected to distant people.
  - asdff 1y ago
    That is fine, but the web is still useful outside that. Think of technical blogs were people carry out some project, hit some setback, and write about the process getting it resolved. Or their experience hiking some trails and reporting on the sort of country they find there. The amount of information and content you can share in a blog would be like making your friends sit through a 60 minute powerpoint presentation. No one does it. At most you get the 5 minute version of what happened then the conversation flows elsewhere. Even if you are in some hiking group, unless you happen to have the ear of someone highly interested in your experience on that trail who would sit through a pretty one sided conversation for so long. And on top of that the blog is not ephemeral like a conversation. Write it up as it was fresh in your head, and someone across the world might find it interesting 2 years after the fact. They might even return to it multiple times. It is almost like google scholar in that regard, a store of findings that might be useful for future doers, covering life's challenges and pursuits. The fact that we are losing this capability of basic experience and information sharing vs. expanding it to more people is quite sad for us I think.
- fleebee 1y ago
  Considering the polarization, bubbles, misinformation and social isolation that social media has given us, I don't think we'd be any worse off moving back towards more intimate local communities.
  - asdff 1y ago
    I don't equate the mass market social media with the community side of the web. To me that is a commercial product. Community web is an old forum or webring.

asdff 1y ago

All of the stuff you listed that are great about the web are commercial things fwiw. If the community side of the web dies out, all thats left is a tool for business or government interests. Sure you get some benefits but consider what is really being lost. A powerful way to learn independently, to communicate with other people, to organize, to share ideas and opinions. What happens to our society when these sort of things are silenced? Who benefits from that happening? I think we know it isn't you and me.

freeopinion 1y ago
"Independent study" is an interesting phrase. You can still browse MIT courses despite AI. You can still read the translated works of Friedman. This is a commonly used meaning of independent study. But it isn't quite the same as Curie's independent study. If Stackoverflow is experiencing a steep dropoff it suggests that people are more satisfied with AI. Presumably they are still learning independently with the help of web-based AI. You should see the damage AI is doing to classroom instruction. People who are trying to learn can benefit from AI just like they could from the massive human effort of Wikipedia. People who are trying to dodge can hurt themselves with AI in the same way people hurt themselves with Wikipedia. None of that means the web is dying.
- asdff 1y ago
  I see it as a tragedy of the commons sort of situation coupled with a sleep walk over a cliff. There are plenty of cases where certain things have culled their featureset or offer less than what a previous offering did. Unfortunately most people don't evaluate options based on technical merits, but more subconcious emotional response. If their friends all left myspace with its ability to customize your page to your liking for facebook with its prescribed profile pages, that is what people do even though it is objectively a lesser offering. The idea that more people are using AI therefore does not say to me that AI is truly a better option than what was around before. To me it just suggests it became meme status through marketing and got the sleepwalkers hooked. And case in point, you have most people on this corner of the internet where people are more inclined to evaluate technical merits having low opinions of the state of AI. The way marketing works is you will always see technology develop towards commercializable technology vs just genuinely good ideas. There is no great lobby out there pushing for technical blogs for example, despite their high signal to noise ratio and utility. That is done solely from the goodness of the authors heart for the most part, a cost to them in website maintenance not a profit center. You do see AI companies lobbying every government on earth right now, on the other hand, because they are working hard to entrench their tooling into the mindshare of as many people they can. It is pretty dystopian how the incentives are so aligned towards a few people who are cracking the deals. Even on the microscale they align like this: you see people on HN complain their employer bought them a copilot license they don't use because of the problems with it, but no doubt whoever secured that contract for the business probably looks great in front of the shareholders who are more concerned with keeping up with the Joneses than if the tool actually works as it is pitched. Seems we are far more concerned with the next quarter than the next ten years.
bigthymer 1y ago
I suppose people will have to connect in-person again. If this were to transpire, I think it would provide numerous benefits. Human health would improve. It would be more difficult to surveil peoples' offline communications. One thing that will change though is that we will probably be less connected to distant people.
- asdff 1y ago
  That is fine, but the web is still useful outside that. Think of technical blogs were people carry out some project, hit some setback, and write about the process getting it resolved. Or their experience hiking some trails and reporting on the sort of country they find there. The amount of information and content you can share in a blog would be like making your friends sit through a 60 minute powerpoint presentation. No one does it. At most you get the 5 minute version of what happened then the conversation flows elsewhere. Even if you are in some hiking group, unless you happen to have the ear of someone highly interested in your experience on that trail who would sit through a pretty one sided conversation for so long. And on top of that the blog is not ephemeral like a conversation. Write it up as it was fresh in your head, and someone across the world might find it interesting 2 years after the fact. They might even return to it multiple times. It is almost like google scholar in that regard, a store of findings that might be useful for future doers, covering life's challenges and pursuits. The fact that we are losing this capability of basic experience and information sharing vs. expanding it to more people is quite sad for us I think.
fleebee 1y ago
Considering the polarization, bubbles, misinformation and social isolation that social media has given us, I don't think we'd be any worse off moving back towards more intimate local communities.
- asdff 1y ago
  I don't equate the mass market social media with the community side of the web. To me that is a commercial product. Community web is an old forum or webring.