I read a thing about an AI-powered "search engine" that just fabricates everything. Like, it generates what it thinks you want based entirely on its training data, even when you're searching internally for a document you already have. What is even the utility of that? Who wants this besides shareholders? Doesn't this go against, like, everything the web is built on and for?
It's a feeling I've had about things like the internet for a while now, ever since Facebook got too big for its britches. It felt like this wild frontier where people could make it what they wanted for themselves, right or wrong. But then the money came in and now it's all as corporate as TV used to be. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; what are frontiers for but to despoil and pilage until all good and useful things are past?
I should also clarify I'm not trying to paint the older internet as some kind of wonderland. I know nostalgia's a trap and most of the time it's a misremembered past that never was. But we do replace bad systems with worse systems, and what we've got sure feels like shit a lot of the time. I can't shake a feeling that something good has been lost.