Here's what happened in a nutshell: During the spring of this year Google rolled out an automatic AI search feature. So now, when you have a question, Google's AI looks at websites across the web and writes up a nice, specific answer to your question. Good for you, but disastrous for those who built blogs and websites on the assumption that Google searches would be sending a lot of people to our sites. Why go to the sites if the nice AI has already given you the answer? Many of us have seen precipitous drops in the numbers of visitors. I have noticed an especially large drop in the number of comments on my blog posts. And I have noticed that many of the other blogs listed on my blog site are no longer posting regularly.
This is not imaginary.
Here is a BBC article on what has happened: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250611-ai-mode-is-google-about-to-change-the-internet-forever
Here is TWiT TV talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDdLw1ubLaY&t=86s
Andreas Speiss (White gloves, Swiss accent, motorcycle hat) talks about the YouTube trends that are causing him to stop regular video production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTerwIniB24
Leo Sampson talks about the pressure to get high hit numbers on YouTube (scroll forward to the 3 minute 20 second mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4tSOQO3kxY
Fraser Cain of Universe Today talks about the Google ""AI apocalypse" (scroll ahead to the 18 minute mark): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/
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I'm afraid even DuckDuckGo offers AI (they apparently use Microsoft Bing to do their searches) but you have to click to generate an AI answer.
ReplyDeleteBest Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
I didn’t expect to become a Luddite at 35 but here we are.
ReplyDeleteAnd I mean Luddite in the sense of the organization of English textile workers in the 1800s.
Welcome to my world! BTW, to be TRULY Luddite, you have to use the ORIGINAL spelling. One D only. Ludite. Let your freak flag fly OM! https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2016/03/be-afraid-be-very-afraid-digital-audio.html
DeleteThe worst part is that those AIs that are stealing your content don't always summarize it correctly or completely. I turn them off wherever possible.
ReplyDeleteI recall reading an expose of Google about 10 years ago which described them as the worst disaster to hit mankind in the internet age. I thought it a bit harsh at the time but it was convincing enough never to use a Google search again. I use Duckduckgo now as apparently every search anyone makes, use of Google maps etc, and gmail is saved forever, packaged and sold so you can be targeted.
ReplyDeleteI deliberately don't save to the cloud, save phone numbers or other info, yet three weeks after purchasing a new tablet I turn it on one day to find somehow it has been automatically configured to mirror my previous setup on another tablet including browsing history, address details and lists favourite web sites I had viewed on another machine.
This is just another example.
My view is that the internet is a nasty, largely unregulated place. Also, when I was a kid I reckoned that a large majority of people were honest and well-meaning whereas I now believe that number is a small minority.
ReplyDeleteYouTube essentially has a monopoly and they can and do reduce their payout policies whenever they want. Twelve years ago I created a single hour-long scripted and edited YouTube video (Flying Star Catapult Glider) that took me 40 hours of work. I submitted it as "no advertising" only to discover later that since I did not copyright it someone was able to start putting advertisements on it and collect money.
To reduce my exposure I do not own a smart phone and have never been a member of Facebook, etc.
I expect that inhumanity on the internet will only increase in the future, and thanks to AI, probably exponentially. --Walter KA4KXX
If a ham-radio (or any of kind of) enthusiast is content with the top-of-the-search-page AI pastiche, that's entirely his or her failing, not Google's, ChatGPG's, or anyone else's. For almost three decades now, search-engine users have relied almost entirely on the first page of "hits" anyway. If SolderSmoke or any other blog didn't make the first-page cut, they were already mostly lost.
ReplyDeleteThat's what "SEO"--search-engine optimization (a big thing now for more than twenty years) is for. It consists mostly of tricks and hacks to game the system to get that prized first-page position in search results. Search-engine AI might be game-able, too, but so far it's only a superior form of first-page result. It relies--fundamentally--on the *sloth* of the "feather-duster" user who only cares about the surface of things.
Of course sloth isn't new either. Paradoxically, it's one of the main forces of history (in the form of slavery, labor exploitation, imperial competition), a twin of greed. It may seem odd that even a technically-oriented pursuit like amateur radio should be so infested with mental and intellectual sloth that 99.9% of its practitioners only care about contests, awards, and thin-as-air ragchewing. Aside from being limited to the 11-meter band, they might as well be CBers. Those who are truly interested in technical and homebrewing content will continue to read SolderSmoke and listen to the podcast, AI or no AI.
I hear you Todd, but the AI thing is a real problem. The proof is that we ourselves are using the AI! It really is quite convenient to have the AI answer your question. Like many people I rarely have to resort to the actual sites that the AI is being "trained on." That said, I think some of us are concluding that the current "AI" is not really intelligent. It is sort of a souped-up version of Google. Still, it saves time. Yesterday, for example, I asked it about the mod to the ALC circuit in the HW-101. This mod was announced in 1977. In seconds the AI gave me all the info I needed -- step by step -- to do the mod. Sure, there were a lot of web pages below the AI that I'm sure have the information, but I never went there. 73 Bill
ReplyDeleteYes, my point was that AI is "a souped-up version of Google" and therefore not a *new* "problem." I use Google AI blurbs exactly as you describe, and for the same purpose. For many or most uses, it's not a problem at all--at least for SolderSmoke. Someone else doing your HW-101 search may have turned up an SS post or two, but those posts would have been several steps away from the primary source from 1977 and therefore not necessarily as useful. With the AI blurb, other's looking for the HW-101 ALC mod wouldn't have to slog through posts (yours or someone else's) of possibly-lesser quality than the original.
DeleteFor years, Google's method in sorting out possible hits for a search was to rate them in a pseudo-democratic way based on frequency of visits to a web page and on how many other pages across the web linked to it. Even if there is only a shred of intelligence in Google's AI search results, it might be better than what has always amounted to little more than a popularity contest.
There may or may not be real "intelligence" in AI, but I know there's very little in more than half the people I encounter every day.
It's interesting to see some "AI" respond to questions that lead them to changing their answers; the user is "leading" the "AI". Another item worth testing is to see if illegible text is picked up by AI ? The content providers ( such as us ) could put out pure illegible gibberish that the AI picks up, and thinks is valid. Tiny fonts, and text that blends with backgrounds might fool AI. Perfectly readable text could still be provided to for human readers. Certainly if that deters AI, then software could generate that gibberish automatically.for a website or blog.
ReplyDeleteIt's either that or waiting for regulations to be written to modify copyright law. But good luck with that when it comes to the internet ;-)
Even though, (maybe because), I use AIs all the time for coding, I still wind up clicking through to the links the search AIs provide to make sure I understand the context and content of the original information.
ReplyDeleteIt's really easy to see how often and how subtly wrong AI large language models, (LLMs), can be when they generate code. The code either works or it doesn't. On top of that, I can usually feed the error message to the AI and it generates code that fixes the current problem. It becomes very clear, very quickly that the LLM is not perfect and everything should be double checked.
There's apparently an algorithm change going on the internet that I've seen on YouTube Shorts. The algorithm there is based far less on followewers, and far more on what's topical and what people have expressed an individual preference for. This has led, (I assume), to some of my shorts getting more than 1000 views
https://youtube.com/shorts/uP-WIWDj4ow?si=cxPJrSfcMHA3ruGc
while my normal format videos plod along eventually accumulating dozens of views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6nFptHwJlI
It might be something to think about to see if you all can leverage this?
KO6BTY and I have had a lot of musings what's going to become of internet content. LLMs use material already on the internet. If this keeps up, we wonder:
1. are people generating writing from AIs and publishing going to push the AIs into a kind of decomposing writing loop?
2. what happens if people quit writing on the internet to protect their IP?
It's all kinda weird and a little exciting right now. It's interesting to watch.
I'm now using Feedly for my RSS feeds. Started out with iGoogle, which apparently Google got bored with, so it was decommissioned, then I moved to Netvibes which was the closest I could find to iGoogle's look and feel, but recently it was purchased by DeSault systems, of CATIA fame, and then Netvibes was flushed down the toilet. Sigh. So, now I'm using Feedly, and there is no telling how long that will last.
ReplyDeleteI'm concerned that RSS feeds will go the way of the dinosaur, eventually.
I've you engage with AI you are helping to train them.... Always remember that.
ReplyDeleteAnd even if you DON'T engage with them, your blog or web site will be used as an info source for the AI, right?
DeleteFor several-thousand years, humanity has progressed when everyone has been an "info source" for everyone else. Only in the past few hundred years has anyone thought information and knowledge could (and should) be proprietary. If someone--including an artificial one--took some little thing I published and made money from it, it is a matter of complete indifference to me. I didn't publish it to make money myself, and anyway there could be nothing original in it. If there *is* anything to "always remember" it's that *nothing* is original, and every merely-seeming innovation is only a composite drawn from the work of others. Isn't that all that Google's AI produces?
ReplyDeleteOK Todd, but if the AI reduces significantly the number of people coming to a site, even people who are NOT motivated by money notice that, and decide NOT to produce the site anymore. The site dies. No more updates. No more blog. That is the impact of the AI apocalypse.
ReplyDeleteCan't people, wierd people, shun AI, use a browser stripped of AI, and escape the evil overlords/thought police?? I am one who loves Sci Fi and hates AI, Fahrenheit 451, some will escape by reading Soldersmoke on Internet Archive
ReplyDeleteSure, wierd people can shun AI. But most people won't, and the result will be far fewer people visiting blogs like SolderSmoke. We will, however, continue, albeit with a smaller audience. We are recommending the use of Feedly and our .rss feeds to kinda-sorta replace the now AI-dominated search engines. But let's face it -- AI's snappy answers will cause some people not to visit the SolderSmoke sites. 73 Bill
DeleteI think I’ve said this before, but I’ll say this again, Bill. I love Soldersmoke, but you have to continue to write articles, record podcasts etc because YOU want to do it; not because others want you to.
DeleteWe’ve had this with special event station stations in our club. The people who run them get grumpy because members don't turn up. My response is to say “In that case, don’t do them”; to which they respond “But we enjoy doing them”; to which I respond “In that case, that is sufficient reward”.
Do something because you want to do it. Don’t do it to prompt praise or reward.
I didn’t mean to be anonymous. It’s Gareth, M5KVK
DeleteCreating a Mirror of a Website #
ReplyDeleteTo create a mirror of a website with wget, use the -m option. This will create a complete local copy of the website by following and downloading all internal links as well as the website resources (JavaScript, CSS, Images).
wget -m https://example.com
Copy
If you want to use the downloaded website for local browsing, you will need to pass a few extra arguments to the command above.
wget -m -k -p https://example.com
Copy
The -k option will cause wget to convert the links in the downloaded documents to make them suitable for local viewing. The -p option will tell wget to download all necessary files for displaying the HTML page.
Make your own copy of Soldersmoke today before it is gone
Uh, thanks, but what is wget? For me, your message (while obviously well-meaning) may as well have been written in heioglyphics. But thanks! 73 Bill
Deletewget is fairly standard on Unix/BSD/Linux systems, but you can get versions compiled for windows, too. It is a command line tool for retrieving web pages without a browser, and it's a swiss army knife of additional features on top, like spidering or generating specific export formats.
DeleteWow, Bill! Thanks for the heads up. Didn't see that result of the new AI on the search engines. I'll keep visiting the site to keep up the stats!!!
ReplyDeleteBill, I don't how wget applies to AI, but it's a command that can easily download an entire website or parts of it. But, again, no clue on how it relates.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, maybe with 23 comments so far, including mine, you are stirring up that traffic you need. Hope so!
FWIW, YouTube still supports RSS feeds. It doesn't provide them, because it really doesn't want you to be able to use them, but they still answer to them. /feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC20TcdWSSFliMhg3k2A1a5w for example, is the URL to SolderSmoke's videos.
ReplyDeleteThanks. That YouTube rss is useful. 73 Bill
DeleteI must admit I am somewhat fascinated by the LLMs, Gemini and Claude mostly. I use them to find suggested components, discuss component selection trade-offs, and design RF and audio filters. Gemini was very helpful in understanding the ATTiny MCU family recently. Mostly the responses are spot on. I would never build a circuit directly from an LLM ( I haven't found one that can work directly in schematics yet). But with a bit of checking, I would trust them.
ReplyDeleteMy blog has been inactive for a few years now after life intervened in my homebrew activities. So it isn't a good indicator of blog traffic patterns. Traffic seemed to hold up quite well for several years so I will monitor it.
Keep Soldersmoke going Bill, it is an institution, in a good way 👍
73 Paul VK3HN
Thanks Paul. I too make good use of the LLMs. So I am not hostile to them. But at the same time, I think we can see the impact on blogs. Blogs were already in decline -- people don't want to read when videos are available. We will try to continue, but sometimes I do get the impression that I am blogging into the abyss. And that is no fun.
Delete73 Bill