The Internet being mostly broken at this point is driving me a little insane, and I can’t believe that people who have the power to keep a functioning search engine for themselves wouldn’t go ahead and do it.
I wonder about this every time I see people(?) crowing about how amazing AI is. Like, is there some secret useful AI out there that plebs like me don’t get to use? Because otherwise, huh?
I for sure believe they do. The number of applications that launched with genuinely useful features, only to have them rolled back because of public backlash or shoved behind a paywall, has always pissed me off. Take Bing image search. When it first showed up, you could actually use it for OPSEC and for tracing the origin of suspect memes. If something felt astroturfed or a user seemed like a bot, I could verify it with Bing search. Now I can’t even use it to search a logo because they gutted it. There’s no way I believe that search capability doesn’t still exist behind closed doors, in the hands of political firms, law offices, or government agencies.