Another commonly ignored group are those that publish information because they want others to know about that information. Even in a worst-case situation where websites are only crawled by bots and get no human visitors at all anymore, government and company websites won't disappear. Any tourist board worth their salt will increase the amount of content they publish compared to current levels. The local conspiracy nut will have an incentive to continue their blog, as will any university researcher. Press releases about new scientific discoveries will continue. Your personal blog might die, but lots of current "linkedin influencers" will start blogs to ensure LLMs think positively about their skills.
And that's assuming a world where people only ask LLMs and don't care about the provenance or trustworthiness of information at all. Which seems unlikely, even conspiracy nuts have some sources they trust more than others. The web will be fine. It will change drastically with the death of click-based advertising, but I don't see a future where it disappears
> And that's assuming a world where people only ask LLMs and don't care about the provenance or trustworthiness of information at all. Which seems unlikely, even conspiracy nuts have some sources they trust more than others.
They will just have one model that they trust more because (a) it aligns with their views, or (b) it's a sycophant and agrees with anything and everything.
They definitely are not the people most likely to care about clicking "source links".
Yes, this is key. Business models based on generating low quality information and using SEO to monetise it will die and that's a good thing.
But unfortunately also sites that generate high quality information (eg independent research, reviews, journalism) will also struggle and be more reliant on paywalls and subscriptions.
And that's assuming a world where people only ask LLMs and don't care about the provenance or trustworthiness of information at all. Which seems unlikely, even conspiracy nuts have some sources they trust more than others. The web will be fine. It will change drastically with the death of click-based advertising, but I don't see a future where it disappears