I understand this "vibe search" meme is the prevalant narrative coming from "users just want star trek" google, but I've got to wonder what long-term impacts focusing on users who don't grasp how to work software will be. It's probably fine or positive for short-term revenue, but this is also culture loss: the users who know what they want will move on to more functional software. 100% of the feedback I've seen about recent changes has been frustration that a reliable tool has stopped working. Obviously, this is selection bias but it's still meaningful.

And the impact on discourse has been, frankly, scary. People screenshotting the search output as a source seems to be the norm now, even if it's obviously incoherent or straight-up incorrect.

EDIT: I suppose I can adapt to a search engine that expects me to interact with it like a human. I just have no clue how to translate most of my skills. I am desperately hoping there's a way to turn off semantic interpretation of a given query.

Even more generally you need the elite strata within society to actually lead and promote high culture with a sense of noblesse oblige rather than optimize everything for just satiating the base desires of the masses (the middle class) and the rabble (the under class).

This eventually destroys the society because the elite strata itself is drawn from a small selection of the children from the middle and underclass who are identified as having elite qualities and are put into elite schools and other elite conditioning institutions. When you don’t even show these types of children what high culture even is then they don’t have an avenue to express and develop their elite talents and sensibilities, then they never get identified, or perhaps the special tracks and institutions for them don’t even exist by that point

This eventually starves the elite strata of genuinely elite people