AI Isn't What You Think It Is

Back in the early days of the internet, search engines were created to help people find information they wanted on the internet. People marveled at the ability to search the whole internet nearly instantly. At the time the amount of data this required seemed huge, and it was considering the computer at the time people had at home. It was mind boggling how this was achieved. Fast forward several decades and we are seeing something similar occur today with AI. AI today is like a search engine was 30 years ago, it seems amazing considering what we had before, however like a search engine it is a great tool, a tool that many people use every day to find the content they need. The main difference today vs 30 years ago is the amount of information on the internet is so vast that a search engine is often not enough to find what you are looking for. A Search Engine's job is to return internet pages that match keywords you type in, and even though there have been many improvements to this process over the years, its really not that different to what it was 30 years ago.

AI attempts to tackle this vast amount of information by trying to answer queries and aggregate information that it knows about, presenting that information back to you based on what you ask it. The technology AI uses is not new, but its scale is. Now we have massive amounts of information and need new ways to find it. A search engine really has no context of what it is you are trying to find other than keywords, however language is expressed though quite differently then that and how words are put together gives a different meaning. This is where Large Language Models or LLMs come in. these can take your words and make a educated guess as to what you are trying to find based on the question that you ask the AI chatbot.

So that begs the question. What exactly is AI? AI is a money making machine. AI is a way to monetise the information on the internet for large multi-national companies that run AI chatbots. Imagine a world where there is essentially no internet content other than AI. This may sound fanciful, but actually its already starting to happen. A lot of the content we are starting now to see is AI generated. Its easy to see why this might be, why spend hours writing or creating something when an AI chatbot can write it for you in seconds. The difference is that the AI chatbot is stringing together words and other content without really understanding what they are in the same way a human does. A human has context, memories, emotions and experiences, and sure we are all flawed creators but we are far more complex than an AI chatbot.

Once you control the content then people become dependent on using an AI system and then the need for individual websites essentially disappears. AI becomes the only content available and therefore those companies can control the market and content. Big tech have been trying this for a while with failed attempts to lure people into a world they control. It happened with content like TV shows and movies with streaming services, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but now every company wants to individually charge for their shows now, so you are locked out of watching most things., without having a vast array of subscriptions that are more expensive today then in the past. Content has become more expensive and not less over time. AI has the power to become both useful and has the power to monetize other peoples content by providing answers without you, the user actually visiting that site. Now you may say that sounds great, i get a summarised version of the content straight away, and while in some situations that is helpful, Its also inherently dangerous as the AI is summarizing a piece of content to present a point of view without the context of the whole content.

So what happens when that happens to the whole internet? AI started out as a convenience to people but when almost all content is consumed this way, when the only way to get content is though the AI system? Fundamentally the great thing about the internet is that content is decentralized, but that is changing. We are seeing every year content start to be centralized onto a smaller number of platforms. What this will do is make that content less and less open over time, which gives these platforms greater power over information, how the content is consumed, etc. This will mean that the 'open' internet that we have known will start to become no more.

Another inherent problem with AI is point of view. Imagine you are going to get some important pieces of information. You might check a number of different sources to get alternate points of view and even talk to a number of people that you trust to get information. Now not all of that information will be accurate but at least you can make up your own mind based on the different information you have and your own experiences. Information from AI needs to be treated as unreliable, and if taken as fact can be very dangerous as it is only one point of view. People though assume that this thing called AI must be smarted than all of us, but the truth is it is not.

AI has its uses, but it should not replace quality content created by humans. The internet provides a way for people now to consume different content generated by the people. Prior to the internet most content was controlled by corporate media and government. You could read books and these are good, but books have a very high barrier to entry given you needed to find a publisher. Today anyone can sit down and write content, share ideas, etc. Years ago it was often said that because anyone can share ideas and the quality of the content was often low for a good period of time. Platforms were often used to share cute videos of cats etc. now have become a way for people to express opinions and share ideas. You can literally lean anything if you really want to by reading and watching content on the internet.

AI is not all doom and gloom though, if used correctly can be used a great productivity tool for doing tasks that humans weren't designed to do, like detecting small anomaly's in information especially in the medical field. But this is tempered with the fact that people are starting to believe everything that AI is telling them, even though AI systems often make things up (this is often referred to as hallucinations). Independent information should always continue to be available and we should not allow AI to take over our lives, but simply use it as a tool when it becomes useful to do so.

So what does mean for the future of content and AI. I think we will see peak AI then a gradual fade away of AI. AI will still be used to summarise content or in productivity scenarios where there is no need to spend hours on a single presentation or on creating lower value things, but anything of value will still be written by humans. Unfortunately its likely this will take some time, and as with many things the pendulum is likely to swing to far towards AI content before it comes back again.

So the advice to everyone is, go create content, and keep the internet a free and open place free of AI overlords.