Will AI Kill Google?

'The past 15 years were unique in ways that might be a bad predictor of our future,' writes the Washington Post, with a surge in the number of internet users since 2010, and everyone spending more time online.

But today, 'lots of smart people believe that artificial intelligence will upend how you find information. Googling is so yesterday.'

Sam Altman, the top executive overseeing ChatGPT, has said that AI has a good shot at shoving aside Google search. Bill Gates predicted that emerging AI will do tasks like researching your ideal running shoes and automatically placing an order so you'll 'never go to a search site again.' In defending itself from a judge's decision that it runs an illegal monopoly, Google says the company might be roadkill as AI and other new technologies change how you find information. (On Wednesday, the U.S. government asked the judge to overhaul Google to undo its monopoly.)

But predictions of Google's looming obsolescence have been wrong before, which calls for humility in fortune-telling our collective technology habits. We're devilishly unpredictable.... Maybe it's right to extrapolate from how people are starting to use AI today. Or maybe that's the mistake that Jobs made when he said no one was searching on iPhones. It wasn't wrong in 2010, but it was within a few years. Or what if AI upends how billions of us find information and we still keep on Googling? 'The notion that we can predict how these new technologies are going to evolve is silly,' said David B. Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor who has spent decades studying the technology industry.

Amit Mehta, the judge overseeing the Google monopoly case, formed his own view on AI moving us away from searching Google. 'AI may someday fundamentally alter search, but not anytime soon,' he said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.