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
ReplyDelete