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LLM chats are replacing my web search usage. When I’m solving a software problem a succinct chat response, complete with an example custom to my situation, is exactly what I used to look for in my search queue. When I’m looking for general information, my browser (Arc) will search 10+ sites and aggregate the answers. That’s how I discovered tickets to The Sound of Music two nights ago, by searching for things to do in Chicago today.

Quality information is a baseline necessity for an LLM to consume, but all that grows from that baseline - summaries, comparisons, compilations, syntheses - can be so quickly and thoroughly accomplished by an LLM that it’s hardly useful anymore. Developers of a public API need to produce accurate documentation, but now an LLM can generate the examples on-the-fly. Theatre events need to be published, but it’s not useful for a human to compile date night ideas.

For my own website, the most valuable content is that which offers a definition or sample of an idea. What I personally benefit from is not those building blocks but the ways that insights spark from synthesis. Ironically, that makes my site’s content mostly useful as a bare repository, with tools on top that bring out its value. I wonder if there’s a way to go backwards; to figure out what building blocks are missing from a more robust final result?