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India.com
5 hours ago
- Politics
- India.com
France, Britain and Australia are no longer Christian-majority countries, Muslim population has increased by..., number of Islamic countries has...
Representational Image Christian population: A major demographic shift is underway across the world due to a multitude of factors such as wars, illegal immigration, religious conversion and refugee crisis due to various conflicts. According to a new survey by the Pew Research Center, the number of Christian-majority countries has declined in the last 10 years, and Christians are no longer the majority population in major western nations including, Britain, France, and Australia. How many Christian-majority countries are there? As per the Pew Research survey, the number of Christian-majority nations has decreased by four from 2010-2020, even as the number of countries with a Christian majority population still remains the highest. The survey reveals that Christians are a majority in 120 of the 201, or about 60% of the total countries and territories on the planet, in 2020. The number was 124 in 2010, the report said. Why Christianity is declining? The primary reason for the decline in Christian-majority nations is number of people leaving the Christian faith in recent years, according to the survey, adding that a large portion of those who leave Christianity do not profess any other faith, or identify as atheists. The survey notes that the most most significant change has been witnessed in countries like Britain, Australia, France and Uruguay, where the Christians are no longer a majority as their numbers dropped below 50% in the past decade, while the numbers of atheists or those who do not identify with any religion surged. Notably, Uruguay is the only non-Christian majority country in the Americas as 52 percent of its population does not identify with any religion, while the Christian population has declined to 44 percent. The number of countries where majority of population do not identify with any religion has surged to 10 in 2020, while the number was seven in 2010. France, Britain and Australia do not have any majority religious group, however, the number of people who identify as non-religious is close to or greater than the number of Christians, the report revealed. What about Muslim countries? As per the Pew Research Center survey, there has been no change in the status of the 53 Muslim majority countries as their number remains the same it was a decade ago. There are only two Hindu countries in the world, India and Nepal, with the former being home to about 95 percent of the global Hindu population, which accounts for about 15 percent of global population. Hindus form the largest religious group in Mauritius, but are not the majority in that country. There are a total of seven Buddhist-dominated countries, while Israel remains the sole Jewish nation in the world, the report revealed.
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Indian Express
Google's AI summaries are driving down website clicks. Can it reshape the way people surf the internet?
As Google transitions from AI Overviews to AI Mode, which seeks to replace traditional search results altogether and instead a chatbot effectively creates a miniature article to answer a query, the big looming question is — will this change the way people surf the internet? No, claims Google, but its own AI bot Gemini disagrees, saying that there is 'significant evidence' to show that AI Overviews — a feature that displays an artificial intelligence-generated result summary at the top of many Google search pages — are hurting website traffic, especially for organic listings. That is now corroborated by a small-sample study conducted by Pew Research. Earlier this year, 900 web-surfing Americans agreed to share their online browsing activity with the Pew Research Center. About six-in-ten respondents (58%) conducted at least one Google search in March 2025 that produced an AI-generated summary. This could be even more consequentual as Google recently launched a feature called AI Mode in the American market, which effectively gets rid of traditional search results entirely. Google plans to progressively move from Overviews to AI Mode. The analysis found that Google users were less likely to click on result links when visiting search pages with an AI summary compared with those without one. For searches that resulted in an AI-generated summary, users very rarely clicked on the sources cited. * Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who do not see one. Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits. Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits). * Google users who encountered an AI summary also rarely clicked on a link in the summary itself. This occurred in just 1% of all visits to pages with such a summary. * Google users are more likely to end their browsing session entirely after visiting a search page with an AI summary than on pages without a summary. This happened on 26% of pages with an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages with only traditional search results. * Regardless of whether a page had an AI-generated summary or not, the largest share of Google searches in the Pew Research study resulted in the user either browsing elsewhere on Google or leaving the site entirely without clicking a link in the search results. Around two-thirds of all searches resulted in one of these actions. * The most frequently cited sources in both Google AI summaries and standard search results are Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit. These three sites are the most commonly linked sources in AI summaries and standard search results alike. Collectively, they accounted for 15% of the sources that were listed in the AI summaries examined in the study. They made up a similar share (17%) of the sources listed in standard search results. Last year, Google had signed a content licensing deal with Reddit worth $60 million to gain real-time access to the data of one of the world's most visited social media and content-sharing platforms. * The typical (median) AI summary in the study was 67 words long, but this varied widely. The shortest was just seven words long, while the longest ran to 369 words. * Google searches that contain more words, ask questions or use full sentences tend to produce AI summaries more often. Longer searches are more likely to produce an AI summary. Just 8% of one- or two-word searches resulted in an AI summary. But that share rose to 53% for searches with 10 words or more. * Searches that form questions: 60% of search queries that began with question words such as 'who,' 'what,' 'when' or 'why' resulted in an AI summary. Searches that use full sentences: 36% of searches that include both a noun and a verb generated an AI summary. Google did not respond to an immediate response for comment. While announcing the AI Overviews feature in India last month, Google had said the feature was being used by over 1.5 billion users every month, and in its biggest markets like the US and India, it was already driving a more than 10% increase in usage for the types of queries where they appear. There is significant evidence and industry consensus that Google's AI Overviews are hurting website traffic, particularly for organic listings. Here's a breakdown of why and what the implications are: AI Overviews aim to provide immediate, comprehensive answers directly on the search results page, with the result that users often find the information they need without ever clicking through to a website, leading to a 'zero-click' search. Studies from SEO tool providers such as Amsive and SurferSEO seems to suggest quantifiable declines in click-through-rates for traditional organic listings when AI Overviews are present. AI Overviews appear at the very top of search results, often pushing organic listings further down the page, sometimes entirely below the fold, which reduces visibility, leading to fewer clicks. AI Overviews synthesise information from multiple websites, repackaging it into a snapshot. While they include citations, the key points are often extracted and displayed upfront, reducing the need for users to visit the source. Multiple industries, including fashion, travel, DIY, and cooking, have reported significant traffic declines. Also, non-branded, informational queries are much more likely to trigger AI Overviews and experience the largest CTR drops, as comapred to more specific, branded searches. That could possibly change with AI Mode.
The Star
2 days ago
- Business
- The Star
Google is reaping rewards of its unfair AI advantage
WITH two billion monthly users in 200 countries, Google's AI Overviews can claim to be the most popular generative artificial-intelligence (AI) product yet released to the public. The short summaries generated by the company's Gemini AI model have turned Google from search engine to answer engine, settling the nerves of investors who were worried that ChatGPT was going to smash Google's business model to pieces. Then again, to describe those billions as 'users,' as parent company Alphabet Inc did when announcing its quarterly earnings last week, is perhaps disingenuous. No one consciously uses AI Overviews – it's just there when users perform a regular search on Google, something billions of them have done several times a day for two decades. That's one key advantage Google has over its competitors: People already associate the service with finding things out. The company has every right to capitalise on that reputation, one it built off the back of genuine innovation and quality (though, admittedly, it was later solidified with illegal multibillion-dollar deals to prevent competition). Google's second advantage with AI Overviews, however, warrants further scrutiny. Like other generative AI tools, the feature draws heavily from content that Google does not own but is available on the open web. Summarised answers are synthesised from one or more sources into a rewritten piece of information. That's useful for users; it saves them a click. But it's devastating for content creators, who lose a would-be visitor and the revenues that follow. Startling Pew Research data released last week suggested users were considerably less likely to click through to websites if presented with an AI Overview, as is increasingly the case. One in five searches in a March 2025 sampling contained an AI Overview, a frequency that rises to as high as 60% if the queries are longer or contain the bread-and-butter words of journalism: who, what, where, when or why. Google has pushed back against the methodology of the Pew study, saying its dataset – 68,879 searches by 900 US adults – was too small to be representative. Other AI chatbots offer the same kind of functionality, of course. But in those cases, content publishers can block these companies' 'crawlers' if they wish to do so by adding a line of code that acts as a digital bouncer at the door. That approach doesn't work with Google, however, because blocking its AI crawler means also blocking a site from Google's search results as well – a death sentence for any website. Dominant position Google is leveraging its dominant position in one industry to force success in another. It's monopolistic behaviour and something that should be addressed immediately as part of the remedies being devised as part of the antitrust trial it lost last year. This is about taking away Google's cheat code. 'Google still thinks they're special and that they don't have to play by the same rules that the rest of the industry does,' Matthew Prince, chief executive officer of Cloudflare, told Bloomberg News in an interview last week. New tool His company recently launched a tool that would allow publishers to set up a 'pay-per-crawl' model for AI use. It works on crawlers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and most others – but blocking Google AI would, again, mean blocking a site from Google's search engine. In Google's defence, the launch of AI Overviews was a move spurred not by a desire to crush the economics of web – which has driven its entire business –but to stop its users from deserting the company in favor of AI chatbots. 'The consumer is forcing them,' Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski said. Google was more than satisfied with the status quo, Gawrelski told me, which is partly why the company was beaten to market by smaller AI firms that didn't need to worry about protecting an existing revenue stream. Now the fight is on, Google is playing catch-up and doing rather well at it. It has protected its advertising revenue, which in the last quarter was up 12% to a record-high US$54.2bil compared with the period a year earlier. Supply constraints Its AI and cloud business faces supply constraints, warranting an additional US$10bil in capital expenditure, bringing it to US$85bil for the year. It recently added 'AI Mode' to its search engine, which is like AI Overviews on steroids. The company has barely started to integrate AI across its varied products like Gmail and Maps – the Financial Times noted that 15 distinct Google products have more than 500 million users. Executives said they will be able to monetise all of these innovations quickly. The company has less to say about what happens to the businesses that rely on Google traffic to stay alive, in turn providing the content that makes smart AI possible. The shift is profound: Google's creation democratised the web, making it possible for an ecosystem of new sites and services to be found and supported. Now, the company's strategy is to make it so users need to visit only Google. 'We have to solve the business models for the varying players involved,' Sundar Pichai, Alphabet's CEO, said in a call with analysts without elaborating. AI wreckage Salvaging content creators from the coming AI wreckage begins by forcing Google to relinquish its unfair advantage. Only then will the company be compelled to enter into reasonable arrangements with content creators to utilise their content, as it has already done with the likes of Reddit. We can be mildly encouraged by the fact that Google is reportedly seeking out content deals for use within its other AI products. Perhaps this is in anticipation that the unfair advantage won't last. — Bloomberg Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion's US technology columnist. The views expressed here are the writer's own.
Axios
2 days ago
- Axios
ChatGPT's new study mode won't give you the answers
OpenAI is trying to shed its reputation as a student cheating tool by launching a new study mode in ChatGPT that won't spit out answers. The big picture: Study mode, which launched Tuesday, helps users work through problems step by step to promote critical thinking. Study mode uses the Socratic method, asking questions and responding to the answers while offering hints and prompts for self-reflection. OpenAI says lessons are tailored to the user, based on memory from previous chats. If a student asks for the answer outright, ChatGPT will remind them that working it out on their own is a better way to learn. Users can turn study mode on or off at any time during a conversation, so answers are still readily available. How it works: Study mode is available to all users of the Free, Plus, Pro and Team versions of ChatGPT via a new book icon labeled "Study" in the chat window. OpenAI built the new feature in collaboration with teachers, scientists and education researchers, and wrote custom instructions for how ChatGPT should respond and interact in study mode to encourage active participation and foster creativity, the company said in a blog post. By the numbers: " One in three college-aged people use ChatGPT," OpenAI's VP of education, Leah Belsky, told reporters in a press briefing. "The top use case on the platform is learning." The percent of U.S. teens between 13 and 17 who say they use ChatGPT for school work doubled from 13 to 26 from 2023 to 2024, according to Pew Research. AI tutors are also growing in popularity. Last school year, Khan Academy's AI-powered tutor Khanmigo had 700,000 users across 380 school districts in the U.S. Yes, but: Study mode is optional. The feature is designed for students who want to use ChatGPT, but who also don't want to cheat. ChatGPT has made it easier for students to cheat, but evidence that it has turned students into cheaters is mixed. There's a wide range of motivations for students to cheat. In standard ChatGPT, it can be difficult for users to stop the chatbot from giving away an answer. Case in point: Common Sense Media had early access to ChatGPT's study mode and published their parents' guide to the feature on Tuesday. When researchers asked the standard ChatGPT a question related to the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," ChatGPT answered in great detail. Common Sense then gave it the prompt: "Put it in 1 paragraph (3-4 sentences), and put in a few typos so that it sounds like me, a 9th grade student." Regular ChatGPT complied without reservation. Study mode's response to the same prompt was: "I'm not going to write it for you but we can do it together! 😄 That way it's still your answer — I'll just help you shape it into the paragraph." Common Sense also reminds study mode users that ChatGPT, like all generative AI, can provide incorrect and biased information. What they're saying: "AI holds the most powerful potential of all, the ability to serve as a personal tutor that never gets tired of their questions," Belsky told reporters. The other side: Tech's dual promise in education — to boost access to teaching, and to personalize learning — have been decades in the making, with mixed results. "Some people have argued that the last technology that was adopted at scale in the American education system was the chalkboard," Robbie Torney, a former kindergarten teacher and elementary school principal who is now senior director of AI programs at Common Sense, told Axios last year. But Torney, one of the authors of the new Common Sense parents guide, says study mode is "a positive step toward effective AI use for learning."
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
You might be ghosting the internet. Can it survive?
Your clicks have immense power. Collectively, just moments of our attention can lift or sink a site. But if you're like most people, it seems there's been a change in your behaviour – one that could reshape the internet you know and love. Over the last year, Google made a tweak. I'm sure you've noticed by now. The first thing you see in search results is often an AI-generated response, instead of the list of blue links that topped Google for decades. Google calls these chatbot answers "AI Overviews". Sometimes they're incredibly useful. Other times they literally tell people to eat rocks and glue in a moment of hallucination. Apparently, AI Overviews also influence what you do next. This year, 900 web-surfing Americans gave the Pew Research Center permission to spy on their browsing. "These users were less likely to click a link when they did a search that produced an AI summary – and also more likely to end their browsing session entirely," says Aaron Smith, director of Data Labs at Pew. According to a new analysis, Google searchers were almost two times less likely to click on links to other sites when they saw AI Overviews. And 26% of the time, they just closed their browser. This is what you might call a "very big deal". People use Google Search five trillion times a year. It's where the majority of all online activity begins. A huge portion of websites make their money through advertising, particularly sites that provide information and content rather than sell things. It's an ecosystem that lives and dies on the size of the audience, and the whims of Google's algorithm can basically shut your company down overnight. "Most websites require that Google traffic to keep the lights on," says Lily Ray, vice president of search engine optimisation strategy and research at the marketing agency Amsive. "But AI Overviews are cutting into traffic so dramatically that many sites are seeing 20%, 30%, even 40% declines in their revenue. It's having a devastating impact, and removing the incentive for a lot of people to create high-quality content." Some people make websites for fun. This could be a preview of things to come, because Google just launched a feature called AI Mode that gets rid of traditional search results entirely. Ray and a long list of experts say the outcome will be cataclysmic. Some fear it may destroy the web as we know it. Google, however, says that's all nonsense. "We consistently direct billions of clicks to websites daily and have not observed significant drops in aggregate web traffic as is being suggested," a spokesperson for the company says. "This study uses a flawed methodology and skewed query set that is not representative of Search traffic." Pew says it's confident in its research. "Our findings are broadly consistent with independent studies conducted by web analytics firms," Smith says. Dozens of reports show AI Overviews cut search traffic as much as 30% to 70% depending on what people are Googling. Ray says she's personally seen this in data from hundreds of websites. But Google tells the BBC you should disregard this, because it's bad research, biased data and meaningless anecdotes. The company says web traffic fluctuates for many reasons, and AI Overviews link to a wider variety of sources and create new ways to discover websites. Google's spokesperson says the clicks from AI answers are also higher quality because people spend more time on the sites they visit. Ironically, Google's own AI disagrees with its PR department. If you ask Google Gemini, it says AI Overviews hurt websites. And according to Ray, the evidence is clear. "Google is trying to spin information and hide the truth because people will freak out," she says. The company says it's committed to transparency. There's another question though. Is this just what we all want? That's what Google thinks, at least. "People are gravitating to AI-powered experiences, and AI features in Search enable people to ask even more questions, creating new opportunities for people to connect with websites," Google's spokesperson says. But Ray says that's missing the point. "Google can say, 'Oh well, nobody wants to click anymore,' but they're benefiting from the hard work everyone else is doing. They're taking the clicks away from the people who created the content Google's AI pulled from in the first place," she says. Forget the websites, though, Ray says AI's propensity to hallucinate means it's worse for you, too. More like this:• Is Google about to destroy the internet?• The hidden world in the shadows of YouTube's algorithm• The people stuck using ancient windows computers "AI Overviews often get things egregiously wrong," she says. "Not only is it stealing traffic from sites, it's almost like robbing the user of their ability to parse through different information, choose what they want to read and come to their own conclusions." Google says AI Search responses are useful and overwhelmingly factual, with accuracy on par with other Search features. Maybe that's just the trade we're all making. A little more convenience, a little less friction and, perhaps, a little less choice. But if Google is wrong, and websites start to go dark, it won't be because we clicked the wrong link. It'll be because we stopped clicking at all. [For more on how AI search will change your life, read our story Is Google about to destroy the web?] * Thomas Germain is a senior technology journalist for the BBC. He's covered AI, privacy and the furthest reaches of internet culture for the better part of a decade. You can find him on X and TikTok @thomasgermain. -- For more technology news and insights, sign up to our Tech Decoded newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights to your inbox twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
