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?
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.