AI search is referred to as a "doomsday cult" due to its potential to degrade the quality of the data it relies on, effectively poisoning the informational commons. This happens in two main ways:

1. Pollution of Data: AI systems often generate content that is subsequently used to train other AI algorithms. This can lead to a cycle where AI-generated content, which may not always be high-quality, becomes the basis for future AI-generated content, further degrading the quality of information available. As one excerpt puts it, "The AI is polluting that data with AI content currently, but it also can begin to destroy that data by making it unprofitable for people to create more of it in the future" 00:21:11.

2. Economic Impact on Content Creation: The increasing presence of AI-generated content can make it less profitable for human creators to produce original content. This economic disincentive could lead to a reduction in the amount of high-quality, human-generated content available, further exacerbating the problem. This is highlighted in the statement, "destroy the training data for the AI itself because it needs all that work that we're all doing to train" 00:21:01.

Curation as a Solution:
Curation can help mitigate these issues by distinguishing high-quality, human-generated content from AI-generated content. Effective curation involves platforms and algorithms that can differentiate between these types of content and prioritize the former. This is crucial because it ensures that the data fed into AI systems remains reliable and valuable, thus preserving the integrity of the informational commons. As noted, "We have to sort out what is human, what is AI-generated" 00:06:37.

By implementing robust curation practices, platforms can maintain a higher standard of content quality, which benefits both human users and the AI systems that rely on this data for training and improvement.