Story perspectives

AI Powers 35% of New Sites, Sparks Consciousness Debate

4/27/2026

Summary

Story summary

Researchers found that about 35% of websites launched since late 2022 were AI-generated or AI-assisted, reshaping the web.
Using Pangram v3, they observed AI pages are less semantically diverse, more positive, and show no rise in verified falsehoods.
DeepMind scientist Alexander Lerchner posted a paper claiming AI cannot achieve consciousness, which philosophers said repeats old arguments lacking citations, and which Google later marked with a disclaimer without endorsing the conclusions.

History

Historical Context

In February 2019 OpenAI announced GPT-2, a 1.5-billion-parameter model, but released only a limited demo due to misuse concerns. The full model arrived in November 2019, prompting the Allen Institute’s fake-news detector and warnings from researchers like Jeremy Howard. Those debates foreshadowed today’s industry caution, seen in Google’s launch of Bard and Microsoft’s integration of AI features into Bing and Edge as AI-generated content proliferates.

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Story summary

Researchers found that about 35% of websites launched since late 2022 were AI-generated or AI-assisted, reshaping the web.
Using Pangram v3, they observed AI pages are less semantically diverse, more positive, and show no rise in verified falsehoods.
DeepMind scientist Alexander Lerchner posted a paper claiming AI cannot achieve consciousness, which philosophers said repeats old arguments lacking citations, and which Google later marked with a disclaimer without endorsing the conclusions.

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