The "traffic" did not incentivize "publishers" (as they call themselves) to produce any valuable content.. instead, it incentivized them to produce SEO garbage that's not helpful and often deceptive.
I think it's worth being thoughtful about the whole range of folks doing a whole range of stuff out on the Internet. I like this piece about the various incentives that exist:
https://vbuckenham.com/blog/how-to-find-things-online/
I don't know how your comment addresses my comment and the article you mentioned is long. But since you replied, you know what you meant, so could you share your particular argument?
I think connecting this to what V expressed is the value I meant to add here, I think they expressed what they meant with the detail required to express it, and I'm not interested in engaging with the topic on a level that works from summaries alone. Suffice to say that you responded to a comment speaking of how "people are properly incentivized to produce content" by saying '"traffic" did not incentivize "publishers" (as they call themselves) to produce any valuable content' as though traffic didn't have to do with the people out there publishing valuable stuff on the internet today, or as though such people don't exist. V's thing considers the interaction among these people, their incentives, and LLMs.
> as though traffic didn't have to do with the people out there publishing valuable stuff on the internet today, or as though such people don't exist
Even if there are people, today, that do publish valuable stuff on the internet only because (or thanks to) the expected traffic (either own ads or selling ad space), I claim that without that traffic, there will be others who will be publishing valuable stuff, and the traffic incentivized garbage more than the valuable stuff.
Finally, if that's not the case, then in order for the LLM to be useful, it needs valuable training data. So this problem solves itself - competitive LLM company will need to pay for the data directly, and for me, that model incentivizes valuable stuff more than garbage.
If it’s easy enough to produce creative “content” thanks to AI, and people have enough money and free time, they’ll create without being paid (for themselves, social status, social influence, scientific advancement, etc.)
In the meantime, I think people should focus on attribution, and algorithms to find related work (which may suitably substitute for the former). This will allow us to fund creators and publishers for AI output, maybe by forcing the AI companies, or naturally through patronage (see AI output you like, find who owns the training data that contributed to it, donate to them). Moreover, it will help people discover more interesting things and creators.