Is artificial intelligence killing the web?

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Buondì.

Before I get on to that, many thanks to the approximately fifty people who responded to last week’s article Who are you and what do you want?

If you’re curious about other club members – who they are and what they want – reading though the comments is fun (click here to see them).

It’s not too late to add your own comment, or to respond to what another club member has written. I gave instructions on how to do that in the article: Who are you and what do you want?

I read all the comments but this time responded to almost none (though I was tempted) because Stefi, Bug and I have been at the beach, keeping Italian nonno company while Swedish nonna is off visiting relatives.

Bug has learnt that sea water tastes salty and that sand isn’t good to eat. But he can’t yet keep his mouth closed when splashing in the shadows, or sandy fingers out of his mouth.

In moments not spent ‘relaxing’ I’ve been catching up on this week’s Economist, which our wonderful provincial library service allows me to download for free instead of having to pay $10 or whatever it now is.

There I read that major Internet sites are reporting significant drops in traffic, as people are now asking chat-bots for answers instead of using search engines and visiting websites. Wikipedia and Tripadvisor were mentioned as examples.

Suppose you want to know what the best restaurant is in the town you’re visiting or who the Italian street you’re staying in is named after, just ask your friendly A.I. assistant. You won’t be directed to Tripadvisor or Wikipedia.

But I’m a fossil, and a Luddite fossil at that (find out who the Luddites were, in Italian, here), so resistant to new technologies which threaten to put me out of business.

Hence I have A.I. chatbots TURNED OFF whenever that’s possible, though Google Workspace (bastards) have started charging me more each month, whether I like it or not, because of the ‘extra value’ they are now offering.

How so, extra value?

As the Economist article pointed out, use a Google chatbot (probably included with your Gmail) and Google will ‘do the Googling for you’, that’s to say that you’ll be presented with an A.I. generated answer to your search query and so WON’T HAVE TO VISIT THE WEBSITE AND DECIDE FOR YOURSELF.

I tried A.I. a year or so ago with the query ‘How to learn Italian?‘ and remember getting reasonable and coherent, if not very original, advice. As I can’t now put my hands on what I may have written about that then, I’ve just repeated the experiment.

Try it for yourself, why don’t you? I’m using Google Chrome, so pasted How to learn Italian? into the search bar.

Instead of the first result being the wonderful Wikipedia, or the opinionated OnlineItalianClub.com, Chrome shows me what it calls an “AI Overview”, WITH NO LINKS TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL.

Effectively Chrome’s A.I. bot has scraped the free material from the internet and summarised it for me.

I don’t suppose Google will mind if I reproduce the result here. All publicity is good publicity, as they say. The formatting was a mess in the original. I’ve unmessed it a little:

AI Overview

To learn Italian effectively, focus on a mix of structured learning and immersive experiences. Start with a solid foundation in grammar and vocabulary through a textbook or online course, then immerse yourself in the language by listening to Italian music, watching movies, and ideally, interacting with native speakers.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown:

1. Build a Strong Foundation:
Choose a learning method:
Consider using a textbook, online courses (like Duolingo or Babbel), or even a structured program like ItalianPod101.
Focus on grammar and vocabulary:
Learn basic grammar rules and essential vocabulary to build a solid base.
Read aloud and listen actively:
Imitate the Italian pronunciation and intonation while reading and listening to audio materials.
Take notes:
While some advise against excessive note-taking, summarizing content and creating flashcards can be helpful for retention.

2. Immerse Yourself:
Passive Immersion:
Expose yourself to the language through music, podcasts, and movies without actively trying to understand everything. This helps familiarize you with the rhythm and sounds of Italian.
Active Immersion:
Intentionally listen to content, analyze it, and try to understand the meaning. You can use transcripts, translate, and repeat what you hear.
Watch Italian movies and TV shows:
Start with subtitles and gradually reduce reliance on them as your comprehension improves.
Listen to Italian music and podcasts:
Find music and podcasts on topics that interest you to make the learning process more enjoyable.

3. Practice Speaking:
Find a language partner: Interact with native Italian speakers online or in person to practice speaking and improve your fluency.
Use language learning apps with speaking features: Many apps allow you to record yourself speaking and compare your pronunciation with native speakers.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes: Embrace errors as a natural part of the learning process.

4. Make it Fun:
Find creative ways to learn: Journaling in Italian, inventing stories, taking cooking classes, or even singing along to Italian songs can make learning more engaging.
Set realistic goals and track your progress: Celebrate your achievements to stay motivated.
Make learning a daily habit: Even short, regular practice sessions can be more effective than infrequent, long ones.

5. Consider Studying in Italy:
Immerse yourself in the culture:
Living in Italy, even for a short period, can significantly accelerate your language acquisition.
Take language classes and stay with a local family:
This provides a structured learning environment and an opportunity to practice your Italian in real-life situations.
By combining structured learning with immersive experiences and a positive attitude, you can successfully learn Italian and enjoy the process.

AI responses may include mistakes.

Well, lots to digest there… My own article on the topic (not included in Chrome’s search results) is here:

How to learn Italian (or any language)

You may prefer the ‘AI Overview‘. That’s up to you. But I don’t.

I put thirty years’ worth of teaching and learning experience into mine. The A.I. bot just summarised some of the web’s most popular sites and is careful to point out that AI responses may include mistakes.

I also checked to see what Google Chrome’s A.I. bot would have to say in response to the query “What’s the best Italian school?” Our school in Bologna was included, which was nice, though that’s because Google famously modifies search results based on the user’s location.

I’m in Rimini right now, so the A.I. overview included a school in Rimini and two in nearby Bologna, ours and a competitor’s. No links to any of the websites, though (you’ll find our school’s site here.)

Try to eliminate the A.I. bot’s geographical bias by typing the rather stupid question “What’s the best Italian school in the world?” and you might notice that ‘school’ is interpreted in two different ways, as ‘language school’ (like ours in Bologna), but also as ‘college/university’.

Basically the bot wasn’t sure what I was asking, so hedged its bets.

Scuola Leonardo da Vinci (nice people, I know the owners) may have the biggest marketing budget out of all Italian language schools in Italy, so get the best rankings in search engines, but not even they claim to be the best Italian school in the world.

While the University of Bologna (“As the oldest university in the Western world, it consistently ranks among the top universities in Italy and the world“), besides not being an Italian language school at all, is by no means one of the best universities in the world.

Insomma, a nonsense answer to a silly question. But I persisted.

Typing “best site for learning Italian” predictably turned up Duolingo, funded by millions of dollars of investors’ capital, so very visible whether good or otherwise. OnlineItalianClub.com (funded by me working for free) was fourth in the bot’s list of suggestions. Still no links, though, so no new ‘members’.

Back to the Economist: their journalist’s point is that however useful the new technology may turn out to be (not very, in my opinion, at least not yet), there’s a problem looming.

A.I. is ‘trained’ using data, lots and lots of it. Think the whole of the freely-available Internet, for instance, including sites like OnlineItalianClub.com and Wikipedia, but not ‘walled gardens’ like Facebook.

Meta’s A.I. will be trained on its own content, from Facebook and other social networks. Whoever has access to lots of data can, theoretically, train an A.I. system on it, and so make money, or at least stop others stealing their users away.

There are already open-source algorithms that you could use to create your own A.I. bot, were you so inclined. But it would only be as good as your data set.

No massive data set? Oh dear… Assuming you’re not the owner of a search engine or a social media empire, you’d have to use the free internet, just like other poveracci. Or pay millions. Either way, your end result would be unlikely to stand out, as competitors could do the same thing.

But that’s not the problem the article focused on. What concerns the Economist writer, and presumably the owners of Tripadvisor, Wikipedia and other sites that have experienced a drop in web traffic since A.I. bots came into general use, is that if sites are offering free content in return for advertising or donations but are no longer getting free traffic from search engines (people clicking links), their business model is likely to suffer, and may soon become unsustainable.

Why would ‘content creators’ bother to build new, innovative sites, or expand their existing offer, if the A.I. bot just summarises their work and DOESN’T EVEN LINK TO THEIR WEBSITE?