ChatGPT lies then gaslights reporter with fake transcript

[MoonSong]

The problem with that is that once you have removed the actual websites from the interaction, you remove any incentive for the website to exist because it gets no traffic. Then, once all the actual human-created websites have been driven away, where does ChatGPT get its information from? It's not online, because there's no incentive for anybody to put it online.

I assume that at some point websites will be forced to develop the ability to stop ChatGPT scraping them through a combination of technology and legislation. And at that point, ChatGPT becomes less useful than using a reputable website directly. Things go full-circle and we're back to the early internet again.

I'm faced with more and more "checking you aren't a bot" messages when loading websites. Many sites are implementing these, I asume to prevent crawling. Specially ones that don't particularly handle critical information. Sadly keeping AI scraping bots awaay will also prevent bots from the internet archive from backing up the web.

 

[Morrus]

Sadly keeping AI scraping bots awaay will also prevent bots from the internet archive from backing up the web.

Well, practicalities aside, that’s technically a massive copyright minefield. I never understood how it didn’t get sued out of existence by the big web publishers!

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Non-profit doesn't mean it doesn't need revenue to run. They're constantly asking for donations. If nobody is visiting Wikipedia, nobody is seeing the donation requests. Wikipedia will go away. ChatGPT will not be able to scrape it because it's not there. The whole 'death of the internet' theory starts to become reality--it's just AI eating its own tail with no human content to feed upon.

Wikipedia just need three millions a year for hosting. I don't see it failing because of a lack of financing: a university would certainly just host them for the public service they provide. They'd lose their "we depend on no-one" strength, but I can see them surviving. I'd be more concerned about lower-profile websites who might have more problem finding subsidized hosting while being too costly for a single person to pay for.

Ads are down, but not dead yet. It's more that as more ad blockers are used, sites are forced to use more intrusive ad measures that they originally would not have considered but which make more money. It's a vicious circle.

I would have thought ad were taking a more severe hit. GDPR might have had a role, but most people just click I accept instead of wondering why 1,347 partners are interested in their browsing habits...

A lot of independent fan/creators (whether sites, youtubers, whatever) end up leveraging that traffic into selling something of their own--just look how many D&D YouTubers have Kickstarters. Again, that won't work if nobody is visiting their sites or watching their videos. So yeah, most of those will eventually fall by the wayside.

Interesting.

So as you say, you're left with the 'institutional' sites. You'll see official info, press releases, that sort of thing, but that's all. You won't get sites like this one, for example (although this one should be OK in the medium term simply because it is funded by a print publishing arm, which ChatGPT can't yet mimic--at least until the synthesis of print-on-demand and AI happens, which doesn't seem like a large technological leap to me).

We may see more sites like this one, funded by a company with interest in getting a large user base doing more than accessing content. I think that synthesis is one big economical leap away, not only technological: doing on demand physical product creation is not at all cost effective. This changing would be a large change to the current economy (not saying it can't happen of course).

 

[Older Beholder]

I can see two huge uses for AI in the future.

• AI companion programs that will prey on the lonely and further isolate people.
• Scamming old people.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm faced with more and more "checking you aren't a bot" messages when loading websites. Many sites are implementing these, I asume to prevent crawling. Specially ones that don't particularly handle critical information.

I wonder if their purpose is two-fold: to confirm your identity, but also to alert the AI algorithm to start scraping data. Since you've just confirmed the data packets are coming from a human and not from another bot.

 

[kermit4karate]

Apocalyptic. But, you go ahead and use it anyway. Do you see how that's a bit of a mixed message?

Wow, lot happened since I was away! Yeah, had to work. Unfortunately, AI can't do all of it yet. Baddum-tss!

No mixed messages whatsoever. I use AI because it helps me do my job and helps me live my life. It's more helpful to me now than Google. Period. That isn't marketing, and I haven't been brainwashed. It's an incontrovertible truth for me. Don't care who believes it or what they think of me either.

What other people choose to do with AI at some point in the future has no bearing on my use of it now. I'm not going to avoid the tool just because I'm also certain someone else will abuse it.

Two things can be true at the same time -- AI is a great tool I use every day. It also could lead to Armageddon. Both true.

 

[dragoner]

I know that author John Birmingham made a substack post about using AI: Prediction, Not Retrieval for his Story Bible and summed it up as : But you have to treat them as what they are: unreliable narrators, it's great for data management but not much else.

I know someone who works at Argonne and they are working with using it as a data aggregator though it seems like fusion power, perpetually a few years off before ready. Had the tech companies done the rollout in a different manner, waited until it was ready, things could have been different, except they didn't.

 

[Ryujin]

I can see two huge uses for AI in the future.

• AI companion programs that will prey on the lonely and further isolate people.
• Scamming old people.

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[Scribe]

And that's why you have such a cherry out look right?

Take a look at what IT has done to society.

 

[kermit4karate]

I'm faced with more and more "checking you aren't a bot" messages when loading websites. Many sites are implementing these, I asume to prevent crawling. Specially ones that don't particularly handle critical information. Sadly keeping AI scraping bots awaay will also prevent bots from the internet archive from backing up the web.

The extra load from those bots is crushing a lot of websites and causing a feedback loop of more and more wasted processor cycles and electricity spent hardening websites against them.

That said, because I know this is a big point of contention for folks, I'm not going to stop using AI tools just because someone else uses them maliciously. I'm not going to stop using the internet either, even though it's regularly used to do horrific things.