If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?
50 comments
·August 22, 2025snypher
svachalek
Mom needs something very like a grocery store to get food from. LLM training does not need HTTP, HTTPS, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, hyperlinks, banner ads, cookies, and so on. Yes the web was a convenient source to find a lot of text but it's not the only source.
jibal
It's obviously not even close to the same logic. One obvious difference is that "mom" (who gets their dinner from "mom"? Not me) pays the grocery store for the food. If I get all my meals via DoorDash, the farmers still get paid. If I get all my news via LLMs rather than a subscription to the NYT, the NYT and its investigative reporters get no revenue from me.
pornel
For as long as mom was feeding me, I never needed to shop at a grocery store.
But here the mom is a robot taking produce for free. Not a good business for grocery stores.
sesm
When I'm asking about a niche topic, LLM with web search enabled is infinitely better than without.
jibal
The OP is claiming that no one is interested in his article, just the "information" that can be harvested in it. He has committed the rather obvious fallacy of equating the web with web search. There are real risks to information providers, but that's not all the web is.
gordonhart
Browsing "the web" has been painful for years thanks to SEO and ads. Most people already spend their time in walled gardens, selectively jumping out to specific linked sites. Does AI fundamentally change this, or is it just a better front-end for the search engine?
0_____0
What makes you think ads and the equivalent to SEO aren't coming for the LLM products? These companies are going to have to turn a profit eventually...
stillthat
reductio ad absurdum.
there were a few months when a neighbor couldn't get the oil he needed to heat his home ...
another one fried a circuit and his solar cells were ... well ... powerless ... I mean they weren't, except they were, but you know what I mean.
I had a bicycle stolen once and a car got smashed on the rail tracks to my university ... it was horribly bloody and messy.
A friend broke his good arm once. His other arm was useless.
And we shouldn't touch the Gen part of your AI.
recursive
I guess people that need to verify the correctness of their information still need the web.
drjasonharrison
We still have books, and libraries. And some libraries have books.
Sadly, most of the stuff most people want to verify is "breaking news" and "gossip".
Did the pope really wear a puffy white coat? Does it really matter?
recursive
That's your answer? We don't need the internet anymore because we have books?
My local library is great. But they don't have all books, like reference information about a particular manufacturer's product. And they're not open at 2am. And you have to go there.
Behold, this is the future. We've improved computers so much going to the library is the answer for getting information. Correction: getting correct information.
cwmoore
Is wrong right anymore?
OptionOfT
Because soon the information you get with GenAI will contain ads in a way that you cannot distinguish it from real information.
You want the ability to look at 4-5 sources, vet them, and draw your own conclusions.
solardev
Well, on the web, you get 4-5 sources, all of which are ads, three of which are owned by the same company and the other two are generated SEO spam.
trod1234
Imagine AI telling you its safe and proper to water bath can meat for food preservation, and what that actually means when you eat the canned meat following those directions. Same goes for mushrooms, or anything else that might literally kill you.
We've reached a point where AI is not accountable for harms, while being capable of killing people through selective curation of information it provides.
grugagag
Need to add AI agents are also raising hosting web content costs. The freebie won’t last for too long before AI will have to pay something to crawl the web
andsoitis
Good news is AI needs the WWW but humans don’t need the WWW
ge96
No, web has new info to feed ai
echelon
The web has been replaced by walled garden apps.
Most people consume Reddit through, specifically, the iOS version of the app. The same is true of TikTok and Instagram. This is how most people get their news.
Google destroyed web discoverability and search. Platforms sucked up all of the value and monopolized distribution.
The indie web is pretty much dead for normal people. It's only us developer / hacker / enthusiasts that have websites and play around with CSS.
The news and content gets consumed by most people through apps and the walled-gardens.
bfung
What new data will GenAI train on if there’s no Web?
a nothing burger article with no real ideas.
If we can get dinner from mom, who needs a grocery store?
Seems like the same logic to me. Isn't the Web where the information came from?