As LLMs become the go-to for quick answers, fewer people are posting questions on forums or social media. This shift could make online searches less fruitful in the future, with fewer discussions and solutions available publicly. Imagine troubleshooting a tech issue and finding nothing online because everyone else asked an LLM instead. You do the same, but the LLM only knows the manual, offering no further help. Stuck, you contact tech support, wait weeks for a reply, and the cycle continues—no new training data for LLMs or new pages for search engines to index. Could this lead to a future where both search results and LLMs are less effective?

  • FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    12·
    4 months ago

    No, because I ignore whatever AI slop comes up when I search for something

    I have never found it to be anything other than useless. I will actively search for a qualified answer to my questions, rather than being lazy and relying on the first thing that pops up

    • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      4 months ago

      What I’m worried about are traditional indexers being intentionally nerfed, discontinued, or left unmaintained at best. I’ve often wondered what it would take to self host a personal indexer. I remember a time when search giant Alta Vista had a full text index of the then known internet on their DEC Alpha server(s).

      • SW42@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        The problem lies with the way the “modern” internet works by loading everything dynamically. Static pages to index are becoming more rare. Also a lot of information is being “lost” in proprietary systems like discord. Those also can’t be indexed (easily)

    • leave_it_blank@lemmy.world
      51·
      4 months ago

      To be fair, at the current state search engines work LLMs might not be the worst idea.

      I’m looking for the 7800x3d, not 3D shooters, not the 1234x3d, no not the pentium 4, not the 4700rtx. It takes more and more effort to search something, and the first pages show every piece of crap I’m not interested in.

      • FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        11·
        4 months ago

        I specifically ignore the google “AI summary”

        I also tend to go through the results until I get something from a qualified source.

        I’m sure I’m getting some of the aforementioned AI slop, but I would wager that I’m getting better results than the people I know who specifically look for an AI summary.

      • FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        Probably

        But I don’t see it as work

        “Work” is unfucking a situation that I created by being lazy in the first place rather than doing something properly

        I’m probably showing my age though…

      • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
        21·
        4 months ago

        Even “let me Google that for you” was popular only some years ago. Yes, people are lazy, unthinking hedonists most of the time. In the absence of some sort of strict moral basis, society degenerates because only the tiniest minority will even think about things to try to establish some personal rules.