How do we save the open web?

I read Anil Dash’s post linked by Tim Chambers today, and find it hard to see past the inevitable outcome. When we can’t tell between a human or an LLM system participating in the open web, there are no plausible guards against the decimation of openness.

My initial thoughts have been towards the idea of a closed system which has openness inside. Rival closed systems that regulate their inside. Taken to an extreme, this would be specific hardware and operating systems designed to only permit vetted software to run that was known not to include LLMs. Putting aside the feasibility of such a system, it would be the ethical opposite of the foundational principle of open-computing: to participate by writing your own software.

If sharing your ideas, thoughts, knowledge on the web means feeding a beast that is rapidly controlling your own access to information, that’s a deal a decent proportion of thinking people would not feel comfortable making. Where are these things to be shared instead?

Yes, in-person. Yes, books and printed media. As much as I value those things, the international and immediate nature of the open web is then lost. We regress in levels of global connection.

I don’t have any answers - but I truly hope some emerge, and quickly.