The Parasite Kills the Host
by Maria Bustillos
The failure of tech journalists to appreciate the disaster that is Google’s plan to incorporate generative AI into its search engine is even worse than the original disaster. At their annual I/O conference on Tuesday, Google executives promised that the new, AI-powered Google search results will return more than just a list of sources for the information you seek; AI-Google will now decide, for itself, what you were looking for, compose its own response, and serve that up as your answer.
“Let Google do the Googling for you,” the company brayed.
The correct answer to this suggestion is “No, and fuck you,” but tech critic Casey Newton chose to describe the slogan as “elegant.” “It’s a phrase that identifies browsing the web... as a chore, something better left to a bot,” he added (addled, perhaps from years of reporting on some of the worst businesspeople ever to live).
These people at Google are actively congratulating themselves for taking all the discovery and fun out of investigating things for yourself, out of imagining new avenues of inquiry—out of learning itself. “Browsing the web” is a poor and pallid way to describe “human connection,” which is what the internet was made to enable. It’s not “entertaining” to “browse the web,” it’s the living embodiment and evolution of global culture.
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