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by timewizard
369 days ago
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I'm naturally conspiratorial; but, this is possibly why search results were intentionally degraded over the past 5 years. Which has had an impact on overall site traffic that has not gone unnoticed. Google's been trying their luck with "creator summits" over the past few years but the creators are starting to smell a rat. So you have Google which famously does not want people to actually leave their property. Infoboxes, calculator, extraction of semantic data for direct display in search results. Would a company like that intentionally downgrade search results making quality content harder for users to find, then train their LLMs on this highly valuable content, ultimately creating an unnatural shift away from the previous model to the "weak AI chatbot" model? I know HN hates conspiracies but there's trillions of dollars at stake here. We know companies will poison entire communities and create flammable rivers just to shave a few million off the expenses. Who knows what Google will do to keep it's market position? |
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Real web search is disappearing locked behind large datasets unavailable for normal users. The AI screen ensures you’re fed exactly what they intended while siloing off the web more and more to block competition. All the while signing exclusivity deals which should realistically be illegal (try finding current Reddit results anywhere but Google).
AI based interaction makes it much easier to manipulate users into buying your items as they add a layer of human-like trust on top of the machine. It won’t be long before prices are hidden behind LLMs generating prices based on who you are. I’m already noticing ChatGPT becoming more and more enthusiastic about any product it thinks I have the potential of buying. Try asking it if something is a good deal, 9 times out of 10 it will say, “Yes, go for it.”
We don’t want to live in a proprietary world where LLMs exist. This technology needs to be open. The search data needs to be open and not walled off to only monopolies. This is an inflection point.