AI outside of work

Hadley Wickham · 14 Aug 2026

Hadley Wickham did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Web search has been declining for ten years because of content written to chase rankings and ad money.

Their wordsOverall it feels like search has been steadily declining for the last 10 years, thanks to content creators who chase high rankings with low quality writing in order to make money from advertising.
Our reading
The same content rot that degraded web search will eventually come for AI answers.

Their wordsI expect the same content rot will eventually come for AI results, but for now the quality is generally much better.

Keep reading

The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.