AI Transforms Search, But Raises Economic and Quality Concerns
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AI is changing how search works, providing conversational interactions and summaries instead of just links, but it comes at a high computational cost.
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There are economic impacts - publishers may lose ad revenue if users just see AI summaries rather than visiting their sites. AI search may also be more expensive for companies to run.
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Smaller search engines like Brave, Kagi, and Opera are using AI to try to differentiate themselves from Google, but still rely on a search index.
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AI may help formulate search queries and provide overviews, but for many applications, seeing the original source and context is still critical.
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There are longstanding concerns about declining quality of search results and proliferation of misinformation that AI aims to help address, but better information quality is still needed.