Google paywall AI summaries

Imagine it’s 1991. You’re at a bar arguing with a friend. Or maybe you’re getting ice cream. It doesn’t matter. What’s important is you’re arguing and neither of you know the real answer to the question or issue at hand. Until recently, you couldn’t pull out a digital rectangle and magically get an answer. For sake of time, I’m not going to delve into our fragmented society and the moving target that is “truth” given the amount of media sources we have to choose from, but you get my point.

It’s too easy to Google things. Now, with AI summaries, it’s even easier to rapidly gather new information (which we quickly forget). This got me thinking. What if we added some friction? Imagine there were paywalls preventing you from seeing AI summaries, especially dumb ones.

Google will likely never do this because it would kneecap product metrics around “AI adoption”, but I do wish that people still put in at least a tiny bit of critical thought when seeking out new information. However, with the way things are trending, I doubt that’s how things will shake out.

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