When you want to know something online, you Google it — that’s how it’s been for years, but what happens when Google decides you can’t just search for things like you used to?
The world was forced to confront that reality on Tuesday when the company announced its iconic search bar would be “totally reimagined with AI” in what it described as the biggest change to the web’s favourite search engine in 25 years.
The comment section was full of people telling Google this was a terrible idea nobody had asked for.
Some users threatened to walk out on the world’s most popular search engine if the change was implemented. They even had alternatives prepared for this exact scenario.
Users reacting to the company’s announcement on X asked it to please do away with the idea of putting AI in everything and let the internet heal.
One user, probably tired of fighting the AI surge and wanting to not experience any more of it, asked Google to at least allow people to opt out of the new development.
While Google’s move seems common-sense on the surface, especially in the context of the rise of AI chatbots as tools of retrieving information, that’s not the full picture. AI agents — including Google’s own Gemini which the AI-search feature will operate on — are known to be susceptible to manipulation.
The bots often push popular but unverified information as fact, leading to a dangerous potential to spread misinformation. While some services — including Google’s current system of AI summaries — attempt to counter this by citing sources, many people do not check these citations before accepting the information as factual.
There are also the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence, with the technology having been criticised for its heavy clean water usage.
Estimates indicate 10 to 50 prompts on an AI agent use up roughly half a litre of water; multiply that by three and its the water an average person needs to consume in a day, multiply it by millions and we have an environmental crisis waiting to happen.
With water scarcity and misinformation both being prevalent issues, it’s worth asking if AI really is the next frontier of technology or if we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.
