We are already headed to this point but just imagine: In the future you get some answer from AI and you want to see if it’s true. Where would you check? Ask another AI or the same AI if it’s right? I can just see a potential future where AI could pretty much tell us anything and we would have way to know if it’s right or not.
AI-assisted search, sans summaries.
- Ask question
- AI searches web
- AI screenshots likely relevant passages
- AI presents screenshots to you in format Page Title | Screenshot | Full URL
Don’t need it to try its best to be up to (but not always including) 100% correct—can just use its capabilities to ease the manual process.
Then can work on “what about when it pulls accurately-verbatim citations from absolutely-awful sources” :)
Please contribute to archive.org - They are also under attack and lost whatever little funding they had. They’ve been trying to collect the websites that Trump has ordered taken down.
We already have libraries, for those who seek factual information and are willing to do some reading and thinking for themselves.
at least in the USA based on my discussions with librarians ( yes I am that kind of nerd ) libraries are under attack by the federal government, they are losing their funding or having their funding severely limited where they won’t be able to operate as effectively. What I think people don’t realize is we are in a phase where knowledge is being centralized and put into control of a few powerful companies and the commons is under attack and being eroded.
Also true. Fortunately, piracy helps quite a bit in this circumstance when you need textbooks or academic papers and have no other options
we could always crosscheck with wikipedia
right but I am thinking of a future a few years down the road where people are doing less and less of that and wikipedia gets eroded or is also filled with generated articles. Wikipedia is already under attack by people like Elon Musk so if we are not careful resources like wikipedia won’t exist.
English Wikipedia can be downloaded locally with kiwix if you have about 50GB of hard drive space and don’t mind not having pictures. Its a good idea if the internet gets cut off, like it often does during unrest in authoritarian regimes (e.g., Iran)
