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?
At this rate that day is not too distant, I’m affraid.
I was expecting either Huxley or Orwell to be right, not both.
Interestingly, there’s an Intelligence Squared episode that explores that very point. As usual, there’s a debate, voting and both sides had some pretty good arguments. I’m convinced that Orwell and Huxley were correct about certain things. Not the whole picture, but specific parts of it.
Agreed, if we look closely we can find some Bradbury and William Gibson elements in the lovely dystopia we’re currently enjoying.
Oh absolutely. Cyberpunk was meant to feel alien and revolting, but nowadays it is beginning to feel surprisingly familiar. Still revolting though, just like the real world.