> all of these agents will be most useful to users if they provide valuable answers

This is a bald assertion.

Do you doubt the statement on how to maximize usefulness? Or do you mean that the companies behind the models might not optimize (exclusively) for usefulness to the user?

I do share doubts about the latter.

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ceejayoz 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Do you doubt the statement on how to maximize usefulness?

Yes; the customer here is the site using it, not Google end users, who'll tend to accept whatever's the top search result even if it's deeply wrong or complete slop.

The wellbeing of search users isn't really the priority here, right?

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vincko 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, that is correct. We help the brands, not the end user.

Let me try to rephrase the line of thinking:

To maximize value to the end user, the [AI search] models generally aim to be helpful. The companies building these models [OpenAI, etc.] are incentivized to make the model use helpful content.

Our goal is to be aligned with their objective function long term. And that incentivizes us to create helpful content.

Not all of this is a given. We don't know for sure how it will play out. There will always be ways to game the system. But we think those will get fixed over time.

Edit: added some clarifications on what I mean by "models"

	▲	ceejayoz 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Let me rephrase, too. > To maximize value to the paying customer, the models generally aim to be seen as helpful by Google's algorithm. The companies building these models are incentivized to make the model seem to use helpful content. SEO does the same thing; the appearance of useful to Google is more important than the actual being useful to Google's visitors.