There is an awful lot of content published on the internet that is highly predictable, which is to say, ripe to be generated by large language models. But that stuff is already so low bandwidth in new or useful information that I wonder "who cares" if it's now not only predictable, but literally predicted? It was already there just to generate page one search results, and it does, and it will continue to do so.
Which raises the interesting question of how self-referential and useless search results go, if they are primarily great big generative, predictive models feeding huge indexing models for the purpose of predictively generating the right additional content intended to snag an actual human neuron (that is, to select advertisements)? Once the whole thing is computers talking to computers hoping some gullible living person is watching, it becomes indistinguishable from bitcoin mining - a kind of viral, self-referential internet onanism.
In a way its ad-money mining via SEO/engineered content to get high page views/CPM. The issue with this comparison to crypto mining is that the surface area of low-quality content prevailing means their ad campaigns are likely going to be less effective because humans reading the low-quality content just aren't going to stay long enough and/or will avoid the content. I can imagine the ad companies shifting to other types of content like video, then the AI generated content doesn't bring ad-revenue.
I agree, the comparison is inexact, and I expect that advertisers will have to change strategies. My use of the word "indistinguishable" overstates the comparison. I should have said "not entirely unlike."
Oh I wasn't being pedantic about wordings. You are right on target that this is a computer automated revenue stream. Crypto miners have had to change strategies too I assume, buying bigger iron or whatever.
Which raises the interesting question of how self-referential and useless search results go, if they are primarily great big generative, predictive models feeding huge indexing models for the purpose of predictively generating the right additional content intended to snag an actual human neuron (that is, to select advertisements)? Once the whole thing is computers talking to computers hoping some gullible living person is watching, it becomes indistinguishable from bitcoin mining - a kind of viral, self-referential internet onanism.