It certainly feels like it. That web searching has grown a lot more frustrating since AI has taken over. For some of us, Al has no idea how our minds work or what we’re looking for. Apart from hallucinating, it tries to average out the human experience. Some people aren’t like everyone else. I like to think that I’m reasonably intelligent and that I pick search words with some aforethought. Yet the web searches I do bring up things (mostly products for sale) that have nothing to do with the information I’m hoping to land. We’ve swapped quality for convenience, yet again. The experience of being human is being effaced by those who are growing rich off the world’s love affair with “artificial intelligence.” Emphasis on the artificial part.
The real issue is with finding information. Some of us don’t trust the web much, and prefer to find our information in print, which is less easily manipulable. More stable. These days Google appeals to our natural vanity and, more importantly, likes to try to sell us stuff by personalizing search results. It’s all about the money. Some of us really just want information. The alternative is to try to find what you’re looking for in a library, which is fine and good if you have the time and resources to do so. And the issue there is finding what you need. Since many university libraries have gone electronic, you need to be a card-carrying member to read information on a screen. What have we become? Vividly I remember searching through the underground stacks at Edinburgh University. If something wasn’t in the card catalogue, ordering it on inter-library loan. I never did land any grant funding to travel to read books that just don’t move.
I was trying to read a public domain text online the other day. My eyes quickly grew weary and restless. The internet encourages that, and although social media isn’t my personal demon, often the weather websites are. And those little things that have crept into your brain while at work to look up later. Which brings us back to searching. AI works by averaging things out. Some of us want the raw material, not what other people want. After all, look who “average people” elected to fill the White House a couple years back. I admit to being nostalgic, to missing the days when a book in the hand couldn’t just be dashed off by anyone with a computer and internet connection. Averaging everything together, is by definition, making it all mediocre.