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AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

elenaverna.com

31–40 of 318 posts

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#31

The ones that struggle had pre-existing issues : - quora pivoted from quality content to cheap clickbait - SO has overbearing moderation. Chatgpt doesn't close your question the second you've submitted it. And so on. In short, quality platforms are fine.

um, I would argue overbearing moderation is positive for overall "quality" of content. But not as useful as ChatGPT that will spoon feed you answers and not care about misspellings, bad English, asking the same question, etc. It is truly remarkable how good it is.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#32
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor does ChatGPT ban you from the entire network because you answered a Palestine question on the politics sub-section. (Happened to me.) It's like Stack Exchange doesn't want questions and answers any more, just wants to harvest Google traffic and shows ads. Actual content production is too hard.

> Nor does ChatGPT ban you from the entire network because you answered a Palestine question on the politics sub-section. (Happened to me.) Some Reddit subs (as well as web forums/messageboards) have the same problem. If your views don't align with the majority (or the minority, if they run the sub), you're likely to get banned or lose the ability to post.

We need P2P social media where bigoted, power hungry mods can't enforce their unilateral views on everyone else.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#33

Content marketing is dead. AI has killed it. One of our main marketing channels was writing SEO-oriented articles on our company’s blog. The traffic has steadily decreased over the last year despite huge efforts. That doesn’t mean SEO is dead though.

Disagree. The old way of doing SEO blogspam is dead, and good riddance. Well curated, high quality content written by humans, with information and insights you can’t get from LLMs, will reign. Long live curation.

can't get from LLMs for 6 months until the next training run?

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#34
AI is killing my website but in a different way than what's discussed in the article: Content scrapers are completely out of control, spiking my serving costs and degrading performance for human users. There seem to be hundreds of them and they've gotten very good at looking like human users so they're hard to block or throttle. I can't prove they're all AI-related scrapers, but I've been running the site for 25 years and this issue only became problematic starting in, oh, late 2022 or so.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#35
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More competition is good though - people are just going to be much more picky and if your content is not distinguishable from AI slop then it deservedly will perish.

This ignores the volume problem. Human written content can be copied and rewritten via AI in a bunch of different ways, instantly. Human content will go away not because it's bad, but because it's immediately drowned out in a way that is unfixable.

There will be people paying for premium content and people writing it. A new technology doesn't suddenly remove human demand.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#36
I've noticed that since I've started using ChatGPT, I've almost entirely stopped using Google (except for the rare case where I need a specific website but don't remember the URL). In addition to a bunch of technical questions related to my work, my ChatGPT chat log has the most mundane things like:

  - What is platos frios
  - Can you download Netflix videos to your local device
  - Who composed the Top Gun theme
  - Who have been the most successful American Idol winners
  - If I check-in the day before a United Airlines flight, can I still buy additional checked bags when I go to the airport
  - If I'm buying a Schwinn IC4 indoor spin bike, do I need a floormat for it also
  - What is pisco 
  - In the US, what is the format for EINs?
  - Is it bad to use tap water in your humidifier?
  - Which NBA players are on supermax contracts
  - What are some of the best steakhouses in Manhattan?
  - How much and how long does it take to procure a DUNS number?
  - In terms of real estate, what is historic tax credit development
LLMs give me the answers I want immediately. Before, I would use Google basically as a proxy to find websites that I'd then have to sift through to find the answers to these questions. It was another layer of indirection. Now that I can have an LLM just tell me the answer (you still need to approach it with a skeptical eye, since it can certainly get some things wrong), I don't need to "search" the search results pages themselves and read multiple articles and blog posts to hopefully find the answer to my question.

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#37

The ones that struggle had pre-existing issues : - quora pivoted from quality content to cheap clickbait - SO has overbearing moderation. Chatgpt doesn't close your question the second you've submitted it. And so on. In short, quality platforms are fine.

I think this is true.

I personally hated those Seo clickbait pages for a while, because it was so hard to find the information i'm looking for.

doing all of this with ai now.

On the other hand, I really like to read a good article more than ever before

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#38

Content marketing is dead. AI has killed it. One of our main marketing channels was writing SEO-oriented articles on our company’s blog. The traffic has steadily decreased over the last year despite huge efforts. That doesn’t mean SEO is dead though.

>One of our main marketing channels was writing SEO-oriented articles on our company’s blog.

So, blogspam?

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#39
post #36

I've noticed that since I've started using ChatGPT, I've almost entirely stopped using Google (except for the rare case where I need a specific website but don't remember the URL). In addition to a bunch of technical questions related to my work, my ChatGPT chat log has the most mundane things like: - What is platos frios - Can you download Netflix videos to your local device - Who composed the Top Gun theme - Who ha…

I really like having the site where the answer came from so I can instantly judge how likely the answer is to be correct.

Chat GPT does correctly answer your question about airline bags, but I have no way of knowing if it made that answer up or not because so many airlines have the same policy.

Google at least gives you links to the United baggage policies. The AI overview in Google also "cites its sources", which sort of gives you the best of both worlds. (I'm sure the accuracy of Google's AI vs. ChatGPT is up for debate)

Re: AI is killing some companies, yet others are thriving – let's look at the data

#40

The ones that struggle had pre-existing issues : - quora pivoted from quality content to cheap clickbait - SO has overbearing moderation. Chatgpt doesn't close your question the second you've submitted it. And so on. In short, quality platforms are fine.

True, but Q&A platforms were the prime collateral damage for ChatGPT. I am not sure that quality content on a Q&A platform would help you much. You’d have to pivot significantly.

Isn't that because ChatGPT is trained on those QA platforms? If real humans aren't answering questions on the Internet, how will LLMs learn the answers to those questions?
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