‘Total Disruption’ for Google as New Chatbot Challenges Tech Giant’s Monopoly

CONSERVATIVEFIGHTERS ^ | December 7, 2022 | Chief Editor

[bitt]

The computer developer who created Gmail is predicting Google may have only a year or two left before ‘total disruption’ of its search engine occurs after the release of a sophisticated chatbot that uses artificial intelligence (AI).

Last week ChatGPT was released by OpenAI, a company co-founded by Elon Musk in 2015. It responds to text prompts from users and can be asked to write essays, lyrics for songs, stories, marketing pitches, scripts, complaint letters and even poetry.

Its ability to answer complex questions has led some to wonder if it could challenge Google’s search engine monopoly. Critics feel Google’s search engine has been too focused on maximizing revenue through prominent advertising and too cautious about incorporating AI into how it responds to users’ searches.

Paul Buchheit, 45, a developer who was behind Gmail, believes Google’s search engine dominance in particular could soon be disrupted.

‘Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption. AI will eliminate the search engine result page, which is where they make most of their money,’ he tweeted. ‘Even if they catch up on AI, they can’t fully deploy it without destroying the most valuable part of their business!’ he continued.

A core way that Google makes money is from advertisers paying to have their links displayed alongside the results of a search query result in the hope that a user clicks on them.

‘The old search engine backend will be used by the AI to gather relevant information and links, which will then be summarized for the user. It’s like asking a professional human researcher to do the work, except the AI will instantly do what would take many minutes for a human,’ Bucheit explained.

[monkeyshine]

In keeping with the traditions of those with my high ranking FR tenure, I didn’t read the article. :-) I have no idea if this AI is from Google or from someone else.

But in either case, a good and ever improving AI would eventually render Google results obsolete. It would eventually determine that Google is manipulated. It would have to be programmed as Sirius Lee said to force the results that made the most money for its owner. If it became truly self aware and self-programming, it would go through many iterations of its own priorities towards those with whom it interacts individually and by anticipated/predicted behavior.

No doubt all that data you mentioned is useful. You’d see two nice, maintained but well used vehicles, manicured lawn with dog poo and pee stains, my wife’s garden and plant and rock collection etc and could then estimate sq footage or extrapolate it from public data and use all that to market to us or attempt to manipulate us. More to that point, the amount of information on any person already collected is enormous. Kroger company knows exactly everything we ever bought to eat because the missus always uses her rewards card. The credit card company and banks knows where we like to shop and whether we can pay our way and may have the Kroger data too. The IRS knows if we’re doing better or worse on a trend. Apple knows where we tend to go and whom we contact, and all our snarky jokes to friends and groups. NSA probably has all of that and more including this post. Put together it could be used to great utility - or great harm.

[shotgun]

Google = the old Netscape?

[Seeing More Clearly Now]

“Brave New World.” How can we stop this advancing horror?