Sometime in the future, AIS Can create works of art, music, and writing that rival man-made works. For now, the most impressive thing about most generic AI is their ability to complete a lot of average tasks very quickly. This capability is transforming many industries: In the world of higher education, where I work, we are finding that it is very difficult to tell AI-generated mediocrity from something that indicates a student is doing well. Is learning. But no industry has been more transformed by AI than the shadowy world of search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization is the secret art of making a business more prominent in searches for a particular keyword. Because search engines rely on links, a popular form of search engine optimization involves creating thousands of pages of realistic-looking text with links to the page the client wants to promote. This search engine spam is a widespread invasive species on the modern web, and generic AIs do a very good job of making it through quickly. In fact, search engine spam is so common that Google, Bing and other search engines now offer AI-based assistants that promise to answer questions in a human way instead of pointing frustrated users to misleading search engine spam. . And thus, as Internet scholars Judith Donath and Bruce Schneier DocumentWe are starting to see LLMOs (large language model optimization) in an effort to give new search engine AI specific data or recommendations to promote one site or product over another.
In other words, the Web is rapidly becoming a cesspool of self-generated content written by machines to be read by machines. As a result, authentic human voices are becoming a rare and desirable commodity. Over the years, knowledgeable people have added “site:”reddit.comTo search in hopes of getting real human opinions, but SEO has now come to Reddit AI-powered bot Which promises to mention your product in comment threads in a “human, authentic” way.
To find genuine human voices, in 2025 we will increasingly head to the oldest corners of the web, where human restraint keeps the machines at bay. Consider metafilterEstablished in 1999; This is where 12,000 paying members, with the help of a small team of moderators, showcase the best websites and stories they've discovered and answer each other's questions in AskMeFi. Or hey.noAn ad-free social network where users curate a collection of videoclips, images, and web links to document their interests and explore rabbit holes.
In 2025, we will also create our own human space using some of the latest social media tools available. Our research shows that there are influencers and micro-celebrities on your TikTok and YouTube feeds, as well as millions of video creators who No Want to go viral. Instead, they're creating short videos for family and friends, subverting recommendation algorithms, and using social media not for celebrity but to maintain social connections.
Whether or not AI dominates the future of our entertainment and knowledge, it's a safe bet that humans will still want to connect with each other. In 2025, as artificial voices increasingly eliminate human voices, tools that help us find authentic voices may be just as valuable as tools that can pretend to be humans.