There are, always were, and always will be reputable sources. Online or in print. Writteb or not.
What AI will do is increase the amount of slop disproportionately. What it won’t do is suddenly make the real, actual, reputable sources magically disappear. Finding may become harder, but people will find a way - as they always do. New search engines, curated indexes of sites. Maybe even something wholly novel.
.gov domains will be as reputable as the administration makes them - with or without AI.
Wikipedia, so widely hated in academia, is proven to be at least as factual as Encyclopedia Britannica. It may be harder for it to deal with spam than it was before, but it mostly won’t be phased.
Your local TV station will spout the same disinformation (or not) - with or without AI.
Using AI (or not) is a management-level decision. What use of AI is or isn’t allowed is as well.
AI, while undenkably a gamechanger, isn’t as big a gamechanger as it’s often sold as, and the parallels between the AI and the dot-com bubble are staggering, so bear with me for a bit:
Was dot-com (the advent of the corporate worldwide Internet) a gamechanger? Yes.
Did it hurt the publishing industry? Yes.
But is the publishing industry dead? No.
Swap “AI” for dot-com and “credible content” for the publishing industry and you have your boring, but realistic answer.
Books still exist. They may not be as popular, but they’re still a thing. CDs and vinyl as well. Not ubiquitous, but definitely chugging along just fine. Why should “credible content” die, when the disruption AI causes to the intellectual supply chain is so much smaller than suddenly needing a single computer and an Internet line instead of an entire large-scale printing setup?
That’s a bit too blanket of a statement.
There are, always were, and always will be reputable sources. Online or in print. Writteb or not.
What AI will do is increase the amount of slop disproportionately. What it won’t do is suddenly make the real, actual, reputable sources magically disappear. Finding may become harder, but people will find a way - as they always do. New search engines, curated indexes of sites. Maybe even something wholly novel.
.govdomains will be as reputable as the administration makes them - with or without AI.Wikipedia, so widely hated in academia, is proven to be at least as factual as Encyclopedia Britannica. It may be harder for it to deal with spam than it was before, but it mostly won’t be phased.
Your local TV station will spout the same disinformation (or not) - with or without AI.
Using AI (or not) is a management-level decision. What use of AI is or isn’t allowed is as well.
AI, while undenkably a gamechanger, isn’t as big a gamechanger as it’s often sold as, and the parallels between the AI and the dot-com bubble are staggering, so bear with me for a bit:
Was dot-com (the advent of the corporate worldwide Internet) a gamechanger? Yes.
Did it hurt the publishing industry? Yes.
But is the publishing industry dead? No.
Swap “AI” for dot-com and “credible content” for the publishing industry and you have your boring, but realistic answer.
Books still exist. They may not be as popular, but they’re still a thing. CDs and vinyl as well. Not ubiquitous, but definitely chugging along just fine. Why should “credible content” die, when the disruption AI causes to the intellectual supply chain is so much smaller than suddenly needing a single computer and an Internet line instead of an entire large-scale printing setup?
Great response, very well written!