[awill88]

At this point, anybody here likely has had the privilege of being educated to prefer primary sources of information over secondary, tertiary, etc.

The indexing feature that search engines for years provided was a side-effect and benefit of the internet’s success.

There have always been challenges with this as it is not immediately clear what should be treated as “primary source” information — it takes time and skill — the user in this model is accountable for their own exploration and consumption of other peoples’ knowledge.

AI seems to be purposefully at odds with that. So, for me, the distrust and avoidance is well-placed.

That said, it’s a powerful tool that has a place in the world, but I hope it doesn’t come at a detriment to the colloquial understanding of what it means to “search the web”