I don’t know if you’ve ever had to deal with one of the giants of the webespecially when you have a problem. The following things could happen:
- You want to subscribe your site to the news channel and receive a “no” as an answer. When asked for explanations, the reply will be “if you want to know why, read the rules”, which are obviously many and often incomprehensible. So let it go.
- One of your videos is deleted from a platform due to an external report that deems it offensive, and perhaps instead it is a video that is not offensive. When you object to your surprise, the system replies that you have the opportunity to appeal. Response times? Not specified.
- The manager of all the activities on the web decides overnight to change the algorithm and you find the traffic on your portal more than halved, because it no longer complies with the SEO rules (the ones that were fine until the day before). What can you do? Nothing.
These are just three examples of current digital life, in which the soft dictatorship of those who manage the world of the internet allows you to interact with a bot, or an automatic responder based on artificial intelligence. Well, that’s exactly it.
Because the news these days is that Chat-GPTor the invention of Sam Altman to simplify our lives (as he often says) it has now evolved into the Search version, which means fierce competition with Google (and Edge, Safari, Firefox etc etc). And, for us, being imprisoned in a gilded cage, given that Open Ai’s intentions are to only use sources with which it has entered into collaboration agreements, such as Associated Press, Axel Springer, Condé Nast, Le Monde, Reuters and Vox Average. Not that we want to doubt the correctness of these media, but certainly the objective that the founding fathers of technology had set themselves, that of opening the free world to everyone, has now definitively failed. Altman, who has already made it known that he wants to transform his “non-profit” into a for-profit company, has at least thrown away his mask, and his artificial intelligence (increasingly paid) will no longer give us the possibility of discerning between the true and the false: the only certainty will be given by what appears in our research. Could we not believe what we read? True, but now the internet has anesthetized us to that too. And then: where are we going to check?
Of course, Open Search GPT also offers advantages: you will be able to have quick and accurate answers in a very short time, with information contextualised with respect to what you are asking. In addition, there will be some free functions that can even be used without connecting to the Internet.
All good, but the underlying problem remains: does digital free will still exist? Doing the math (88 billion dollars in revenue for Google last year, 11 and a half dollars expected for OpenAI next year, with an increase of 100%), evidently not. So whatever dictatorship it is, given (their) earnings, that’s what we want, let’s hope that in the end it will be an enlightened dictatorship. And if we have any doubts, moreover, we can ask Search.