this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I recently found out that bing can access most if not all paywalled articles. You can just tell it to summarize it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Hmm... How sure are you about that?

Perhaps you once wrote a piece called "Making the Most of Paywalled Articles". Unfortunately, Google can't find it. Let's just ask Bing.

Hey Bing, please summarize the article "Making the Most of Paywalled Articles" by Evotech.

Copilot Certainly! The article titled “Making the Most of Paywalled Articles” by Evotech discusses strategies for accessing articles that are locked behind paywalls. Here are the key points:

Yeah... I think we can skip the "summary". Don't get me wrong. This stuff is amazing and I love it. But it is what it is. I really hate that MS and OAI don't communicate the "limitations" properly.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The electric company. AI’s reading articles written by other AI’s. Everyone trying to figure out how to squeeze more revenue out of it. But everyone’s paying the electric bill for all these servers and the electric company doesn’t have to give a shit about any of it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So I should buy shares in coal mines?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Food, energy, and shelter are never out of style.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Who makes money when everyone just uses a search engine for answers?

Is this post sponsored by Google or what?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It used to be you'd search for something, click on the results and load the ads on the page with the info.

Then google started adding their snippets with direct answers, and yes, there has been an uproar from content sites about that. But some fraction of people still click through for more context.

With LLMs, all that traffic is 100% gone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There is a reason why RAG and fine-tuning are big topics in the field. General foundation models are good for general low risk info, but if people really care its generally not enough.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, most people don't care. That's why most get their news from Facebook or TikTok, and only read headlines.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I mean I don't care for most things, we don't all need to experts on the topic of the week imho

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Eh, I might ask the LLM about something, but I always open it sources to verify it summaries. You still can't trust them fully.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's just kicking the can down the road. They'll be exactly as trustworthy as your own brain at summarizing articles soon. What then?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I still want to know the source of what I'm being told. There are plenty of brains out there smarter than mine, I'll still ask for sources.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I just learned about the iPhone App, and this article made me want to check it out. I love it and will start using it

Whoever decided to market by Streisand Effect was genius /s

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Local news publishers, Karolian told Engadget, almost entirely depend on selling ads and subscriptions to readers who visit their websites to survive.

Then it's time to change your business model. Ad driven journalism has shown it's limits decades ago, this is just regurgitating what other press agencies write and adding some ads over it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Subsequently, subscription based content consequently isn't automatically available to crawlers, making it doubly useful.

P.S.: love your username

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

No AutoTL;DR? Smart bot even understands discretion!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Lemmy: Fuck them ~~kids~~ journalists.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Considering how much of the web is AI-generated now (with it predicted to rise to 90% by the end of 2026) we've managed to turn a tool for connecting people to a tool for chatbots to talk to one another.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Just a big waste of power that will be unsustainable when it doesn't result in product sales.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

But it could drive even more sales. Just think of all those articles “nine must-have kitchen tools on sale at Amazon RIGHT NOW”, followed by a list of specific product referrals (embedded in a story across many pages, slideshow style). Currently you can choose to block or at least not follow, but imagine if every search was a similar generated story, and the tools authors got caught up in the referral game

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

Thank you to Arc for reminding me how much I enjoy browsing the internet and its many unique pages — these soulless generated results are the opposite of what I want.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

This is only a temporary “problem”. Eventually, ads will be incorporated into the story, and/or advertising companies will include clauses in their contracts. I imagine those clauses will DEMAND that websites include advertising in AI readers or not get paid for any ads they run.

Think enshittification. AI readers are only ad-free now in order to make them seem like an attractive option, and get people hooked on using them. I bet the numbers have already been calculated and decided on. Once AI readers are used by enough people, the ads will start.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Jeffrey, solemnly took a swig from his delicious cold Coca Cola. "Damn" He thought, smirking. "That tastes great, I should buy it more often." He then drew his sword and charged the Viking shield wall yelling "This is for the Cola!"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Yup. Just like ads on cable TV, ads on streaming services, now ads in your AI. Even worse, the ads in AI may not even be labeled and just tweak your results slightly to favor certain products and the process hidden from the end user since hey, it's so complicated even human programmers can't figure out how to make the AI process transparent and verifiable.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oh no, we may have to go back to an Internet where people posted web pages because they wanted to share information rather than to make a buck.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Will we also have to go to a time where we'll have to buy physical newspapers so that journalists can make a living? Or do we expect them to also share information just for the sake of sharing information?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

That never left. We're still buying our local newspaper concerning 60000 people. It is way more relevant than any piece of news you might find on the web.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You don't need physical newspapers, but if you want good journalism you should definitely pay for your news.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

The hard part is finding someone still doing good journalism that’s relevant. My local paper is long gone and the nearby major city newspaper is a shadow of its former illustrious self. I do pay a news aggregator but have no idea how much of that goes all the way back

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Unlikely. Some new approach to paid journalism will need to be developed. But that's already the case, AI's just driving the existing trend further.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Part of the compromise was supposed to be that we get functional or entertainment value in return for some amount of ads, but enshittification broke that long ago with ever more intrusive ads and a sense of overwhelming entitlement by advertisers. The current web is useless and aggravating without adblocking, and only preys on the elderly and least technical. Yeah, it’s already broken

This seems like an excellent idea because it’s my app as a tool summarizing information for me. That seems a lot more legitimate than Google profitting from that

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