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AI slop and search engines have destroyed the web

Introduction: the present state of the typical user experience of a web user (now more correctly web used)

It is pretty clear that the Internet is not what it used to be. Now much of the web usage, done by a normal user, is a passive action. We log in into our personal accounts in social media and we get shoved down our throats whatever the algorithm wants us to see. What was once called the web surfing - beware of the term used that has an aura connected to something extreme, active and hard like surfing - now is more of a web eating slop, a passive action, we are not consuming slops, but rather it consumes us.

So the mechanics of the reel, that was essentially popularized by TikTok in the middle 2010' is now omnipresent on every social media used by the masses. The algorithms have became better and better at selecting exactly what is more useful to steal time from the user, so the experience on the web is more entertaining, but more miserable. Nothing makes sense in places like this social media, nothing in the real world even resembles vaguely the fast change of arguments one is now used to see on this horrendous machines.

Still, even if you want to free yourself of social media, which usually is a net positive action, you cannot use properly the web because it is invaded by useless stuff, and there is no search engine good enough for this situation. The experience is such that only if you know exactly what to find you may find it, otherwise there is no chance to get more knowledgeable and smart on the web. So people are more and more reliant on the LLM, like gemini or ChatGPT, to get information on every topic. This big corporation owned LLM are becoming the ultimate arbiters of what is true, so that, for the vast majority of people, soon there will be no independent information in every subject. There is little to no philanthropy in these projects. If not clear by itself, indeed, I try to explain why these things are not morally good: the information you receive constrains what you think and so limits what you can do, the monopoly on truth is thus monopoly on freedom.

But AI is unstoppable, and it is a useful instrument

I am a physics student in the process of becoming a physicist, so for me is clear that machine learning, that is the basis for AI, is a very useful tool, that has been used in scientific and diagnostic application since the '90. Still we cannot deny that from the surge of LLM based chatbots something fundamental has changed. We can trace the most important changes we have witnessed to in the last years since 2022:

  1. functioning chatbots have emerged in the consumer market, non human intellects that with an acceptable success probability, that has been increased with time, could answer to human questions like a human expert, but much faster and cheaper;
  2. these chatbots have been popularized by an AI-fever that made people rush on every AI labeled product (voice, video, image generation software etc.);
  3. people have been polarized in pro-AI and anti-AI factions;
  4. most importantly there is a perceived and effective depreciation of certain skills, in particular: coding, math problem solving, data analysis. In general intelligence is being more and more treated like a commodity, measurable in dollars like all commodities with an ever decreasing price.

I will, for example, cite an anecdote: one of my physics professor, a condensed matter and quantum expert, somewhat of a theoretician who had also experienced lab works, when had the occasion to address some alumni in a private setting drew three circles, and said:
- These are the three main areas in physics: experimental, computational and theoretician, given the fact that non human entities can compute and theorize cheaper and maybe better, it is more comfortable, if you are not very very convinced, to stay in the experimentalist circle in the current situation You can easily imagine how something like that is not only impressing but also scary for someone who wants to be a theoretician.
Now be aware that a lot of professor say there is no such risk at all, or that also the experimentalist will face the same exact destiny because of automated lab. I believe that experimentalist are somewhat secured by the fact that AI has got no hands now, that is factually true. I can imagine an experimentalist, like I am (wanna) be, also more dynamical in the post AI job market, because is closer to a plumber or a technician than a theory guy who just know how to use a pencil and a paper sheet1.

But what's the matter? A moral matter

The huge concern for me is not that AI will take our jobs, because I do not believe it will be realized2, and even if realized it could be also peaceful. The great concern comes from the fact that people know and somewhat accepts that their only value can come from the burden of working, that if they cannot work they do not deserve to live. This is the horrendous dialectics that emerges from the fear of the young people facing the AI problem. This is not even positivism, is completely contradictory nihilism: we are nothing worthless, but we must live.

The only hope is that people will awake from the darkness of their hearts and minds and find a moral guide to their restored hopes. AI times may be good times to end the Calvinist work ethic, mixed with transhumanism and pure hate that fills our world.

I thus salute the dear reader of this page, and hope for him the best in this strange times!

Thanks for the attention, Aug. 2026, Rome, Tommaso Virgilii.