The Arc browser recently added an auto-summarisation feature to its search. The result is a mash of misinformation and content theft, which Ben argues (and I fully agree) will ultimately create an even more sanitised, repetitive, and less useful web.
This is the polar opposite of the direction I want to head!
On the long-term harm that "AI" abstraction and summarisation can cause (or how do people now get paid?); emphasis mine:
Real people sometimes pay to access content, or donate to support a nonprofit publisher, or watch an ad. Those things can be annoying but pay for the content to be produced in the first place. If we strip them away, there’s no writing, information, or expression for the app to summarize. A world where everyone uses an app like this is a death spiral to an information desert.
On the loss of soul that occurs when everything is run through the same "AI" filter:
let’s not sanitize it through a banal filter that is designed to strip it of its humanity.
