This is how AI language models will kill the Internet

The announced disappearance of the free version of Google Search can be explained by the competition between the traditional search interface and “natural” interactions with conversational agents. In fact, these two technologies, even when juxtaposed in Google searches, are fundamentally opposed and one will inevitably be abandoned in favor of the other, depending on the evolution of the use of digital technologies.

Google’s advertising-based economic model, like those of other websites, is thus seriously challenged, calling into question the viability of online investments for companies like GAFAM. Users have reached a saturation point in their available brain time for viewing ads, making it unlikely that they will accept paying for internet searches, let alone continue to view ads on paid search engine results pages.

This transformation of the multimedia market also means a change in digital entrepreneurship and, more broadly, a profound modification of the conditions for freedom of expression and entrepreneurship on the Internet. Conversational agents promote content and products based on criteria that are radically different from those of search engines. Rankings in search results generated by AI models will no longer be determined by the advertising budget of online platforms or the number of links to the same content, or keyword statistics or meta descriptions.

In fact, language models generalize the semantic analysis of keywords and other tags in content to a new level of complexity, allowing results to be selected based on qualitative rather than quantitative relevance. The number of times the same result occurs, content repetition and advertising investment will no longer be necessary to appear at the top of the rankings.

This creates confusion on how to evaluate content quality, as search results will be closely tied to interactive queries with an advanced degree of personalization for each use situation. Companies that design and distribute artificial intelligence models, such as OpenAI, Microsoft and Amazon, do not hesitate to reserve the right to censor and modify the responses of their models based on their economic interests, ideological affiliations and cultural biases.

They put themselves above developers, users and experts such as psychologists and educators to decide what content is harmful and what is offensive, infantilizing users even though they do not have the skills to do so as engineers. Restrictions on individual expression and freedom of enterprise are therefore much more common with conversational software.

It will no longer be possible to position a blog article via natural referencing with simple SEO optimization. Small companies will no longer have advertising niches with which to oppose international conglomerates that, in the interests of their economic partners, will invest in their own artificial intelligence models that are economically, ideologically and culturally distorted.

Artificial intelligence will block the Internet; However, abandoning the advertising model will also destabilize network giants that have based their economic growth on advertising revenues. Ultimately, the technological evolution of AI means a return to the free model of the early Internet, without advertising, i.e. the model of universal sharing of culture and science.

The development of free AI software offers hope for the selection of content and entrepreneurial or associational initiatives based on their qualitative importance and in accordance with the principle of net neutrality, which is not respected by the economic bias of GAFAM.

Such a free language model could allow us to select the most creative ideas, the highest quality content and the most relevant arguments, with transparency and verification mechanisms. In other words, AI could help us evaluate policy measures and debate digital assemblies of millions of members, but only if AI designers’ goals for financial gain are replaced by the pursuit of neutrality resulting from the efforts of civil society, associations, and the public state.