A reflection of a reflection

A reflection of a reflection 

Photo by Ozgu Ozden on Unsplash

This is a reflection of a reflection I made a couple of days ago, in this article I wrote “A reflection to the fact that search engines could be controlled by artificial intelligence in the future”.

It was a bit dark with a sad prediction of the future of search engines and what way AI can affect us and our free will.

After some thought, I think I have to change my mind and my dark mode. 

There is a reaction to things we see, use, or how it is around us. 

I remember I thought my parents were stupid and boring watching TV every evening, never reading any books, never exposing them to new experiences, and thinking their lives were enough.

But for them, that was a relief as to how hard their parents once were working, and a reaction to that life.

My reaction to my parents was not watching TV, doing stuff instead, reading books, and wanting to learn new things.

I can say, now I am living the same life as them, watching TV in the evening tired after work.

But I still have the curiosity of learning new stuff. I always have a couple of hours every night, to read something, learn something, or do something. I will never think it is enough.

Okay, that day I die. I have no choice.

Every action has a reaction!

When digital cameras came, I thought it was the ultimate development from the slow photography there was before.

I could take a photo and have it in my hand at once. It was cheap; at least I didn't have to pay for the film and its development. And I didn't have to wait to see the result until it was developed and in my hands.

Earlier, It could take a week before I could see the result.

And now, I could take many photos of a situation, and at least one was good.

So, I put my analog cameras in a box and into a cabinet and forgot them.

A few years later, my daughter asked me if I still had my cameras.

I searched and found them. She took them and is using them now. She also bought a polaroid camera she is using.

I can sometimes miss the excitement of waiting for the photos to be developed and having them in my hand as real paper photos. Now they are in a cloud somewhere, and it is hard to find a photo from a special occasion. 

Still, it is fun to find an old album with paper photos, sometimes with comments, reading, looking around at the photos, and remembering.

It isn't the same looking at a desktop, tablet, or on phone.

I read somewhere that in the USA and UK, LP records are selling more than CD records, with artists like Taylor Swift, Adele, and Olivia Rodrigo. Even if records are not selling much at all compared to what they did before, this could be a kind of indicator of interest in analog technology.

Some people say that is a kind of elitism. 

I don't think so, I believe it is a longing for the genuine, something that stays, something physical, something real.

Many blogs are now produced with AI tools, and if all the connections we would have been made by AI tools, even search engines, if it would be so, there is going to be a reaction to that, I am sure. 

Humans need human interaction. 

I know that AI is here to stay, at least for the information we need, and there is probably going to be a rise in the use of that technology, but at some point, we will be tired of the technology in those areas where we use our creativity, at least some of us.

Productivity is interesting, and earning money is interesting, but if that is only what we are doing without any creative output from ourselves, it would be boring in the end.

And the direction of our thoughts would change.

We need a slope to climb, to strengthen us, for the meaning of our lives.

Is that slope too easy to climb, we easily get bored.

What should we fill our lives with?

Alcohol, drugs?

Not for me!

Been there, done that, and lost a couple of years.

So I now feel confident that, in the future, every action has a reaction.

And that is the interesting part of being a human. 

A Look into the Future: How Bing's AI Integration is Changing Search

It seems that Microsoft's Bing search engine and openAI in the form of chatGPT would be one in the future, how it will work seems that no one knows yet but some form of incorporation in the search engine will be.

The question is how that will affect our way of using the internet in the future.

Now there is communication in blogs, newsletters, and so on. Interaction between humans. 

But how will this change when we don't have to do so when the answers will be AI controlled and probably correct but not from a human?

What would we become?

I have also been seduced by chatGPT too, and the possibilities it gives me.

But also can I go to a search engine and search around for other views on a subject. 

I know, sometimes even those are made with an AI tool but not always.

Anyway, do I have a possibility to get another point of view, sometimes made by a human.

I still have, with some restrictions, free will.

If the search engine is an artificial tool, what possibilities do I have for another point of view?

Okay, I know search engines are already in a way controlled by algorithms, and the results on the first pages are controlled by those. But there are mostly people behind the results.

If all the answers are artificial, where does the communication go?

When I was a child before search engines, I remembered how long the discussions could become. There were sometimes wrong and hard arguing, with friends becoming enemies, but sometimes the opposite with a happy ending.

Occasionally you had to go to a library, a newspaper, or another source, a friend perhaps, to find facts for further discussion the next time there was a meeting.

That died with Google, you got almost an immediate answer, you just had to Google it, perhaps you had to find a computer first. The answer was there, easy to find.

Then when everyone got a smartphone, finding a computer wasn't a problem any longer, you could find the answer at once.

The discussion died.

Who could argue with Google?

Still, there were sources with sometimes discussable answers but the discussion often ended after Googling, but we could even choose the discussable sources if we wanted to.

How will it be now, when the answers would be collected from several sources and we don't have to make our own choice, AI does that for us.

Isn't that a strange future?

We don't know how the search engine will be when openAI is involved, so perhaps, or rather hopefully, they let us still have the opportunity to choose how we should use the search engine. With or without AI.

Most people have, from what I understand, used Google for their search until now.

How will the future be for Google, will they lose their audience?

I don't know so much about how search engines work, but I guess they use each other to find search results in one way or the other.

After some research, and googling, I found that search results from Google, Bing, and other search engines are not shared. 

The algorithms and indexing technologies used by each search engine are unique. They might employ some similar methods, but they also have their techniques for compiling and examining data regarding the web pages they index.

So Bing would perhaps steal all the audience from Google in the future, those who live will see.

This is hopefully only a dark vision of how the future could be, but some will be losers, that's for sure.

Those who make their living on making webpages?

Bloggers with special skills?

Companies with certain knowledge?

Only the future will tell us.