Posted by cdrnsf 3 hours ago
That would allow people to still let Google to access their site, but restrict its usage. Similar for open source projects on GitHub, etc.
Unwillingness. The government (at least in the US) appears to be happy with the status quo because competitive AI is viewed as a strategic necessity.
So the solution to that would be “change the law”.
The thing everyone needs to ask before advocating for something "government enforced" is "what would happen if this was in the hands of a hostile government?"
And then remember that (a) just because it's not hostile to you today, doesn't mean it won't be tomorrow, and (b) one man's "hostile" is another man's "utopia."
And then remember that just because Google is not hostile to you today, doesn't mean it won't be tomorrow.
So how do you think a meta noai tag would be used by a hostile government?
It would be something the website owner set.
Step 2: Abruptly switch to iron-fist enforcement where suddenly people get jail time for violations, but only for entities that have been critical of the government.
This is by no means the only or most likely way, just what I could come up with in 30 seconds. There may be much better "evil government" strategies.
Facebook had a huge opportunity in the post-AI world: real humans.
Instead of focusing on connections, they've been optimizing their properties for doomscrolling.
Google, similarly, has lost the plot on what made them trustworthy in the first place: navigating to citable content.
Both companies started on this trend well before AI, but this might be the final nail in their respective coffins[0].
[0]Yes they'll likely still be profitable for a long time, but the Bell Labs-esque downfall has begun (imo).
Facebook may well fail when people don't enjoy it. But all Google ever promised was information, of variously dubious quality, and that's still their draw.
This is a problem Google has been battling forever, with all the SEO click spam.
In either case, Google was the tool that many people used to find "trustworthy" information (citable or not), compared to the other tools online.
They mentioned AOL. Remember back when AOL bought Time Warner in a "merger of equals", but it really wasn't. Then this fear AOL will become your telephone company because AOL Instant Messenger was so popular? Then, MSFT won the browser wars and disbanded the IE team and came up with a whole .Net strategy to takeover the Web. Then came Firefox, Google, Web 2.0, etc. I remember Dave Winer writing how Google was making real stuff while Netscape was doing mostly hacks.
David is now Goliath. So I am all for Google taking over the Web. They will go bankrupt doing it. They couldn't even make Google+ a thing. What was that anyway? I lack a Ph.d to understand that thing.
A few startups there, a bunch of open e-commerce standards here, and bunch of market value gone after the AI bubble... Google (and many others) are going against Artists who can Code. Who knows what delights will come.
Someone will search for "Kylie Jenner" and they will get some kind of shopping opportunity (with Google getting a commission) and links to her profile on YouTube. And maybe some publisher content on the subject. In all cases they'll probably want to angle to get more of an "aGeNtIc" experience, where Google just reads you the story or buys the lipstick for you, without you leaving google.com.
Communities have moved from public forums to private discords. Most of the major social media’s are unviewable without an account.
On the flip side, and I'm all for it, we can go to everything paywalled. The downside of course will be a whole class of people who cannot afford to participate on the internet. But these service providers will be working for you, the customer.
Pick your poison.
Think of AI distillation as some kind of improved Reader Mode feature.
People never wanted to visit your website; they just wanted the information that your website held. Now they can get to the meat without having to deal with the bones.
Well, no. It is a boomer talk, but in the 90s the web was so fragmented and unpolished that websites usually looked very different from each other. People were writing their own HTML (and CSS came later). "Home pages" were some form of an art. Not the highest one to be frank, but the ecosystem was quite interesting. People did visit those websites not only to get the information, but to enjoy those quirky forms.