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

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

#71

Post by drdaeman »

vecter wrote: 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…

The problem with this approach is that LLM gives me unreliable answers. I know this because sometimes I ask things that I used to knew but forgot and needed to refresh my memory - and sometimes the answers were incorrect. So, unfortunately, a search engine validation step is still a necessity.

Asking LLM to provide a link does NOT work, as they hallucinate links just fine, and give links that are either broken or do not contain the information LLM says it should. Using search tools through a LLM (like ChatGPT's "search" function) sort of works (at least the link will be correct - still need to check if the contents means what LLM says it does), but it's quite limited and cannot be fine-tuned (I don't use Google but rather prefer Kagi, and I tend to heavily rely on Kagi's lenses, site: queries and negative terms to scope and refine searches).

In other words: please do NOT trust LLM's answers, even if they sound plausible. Always verify.

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

#72

Post by charlieyu1 »

mvdtnz wrote: post #48
_benj wrote: post #26

I’ve seen this shift in my own usage. I find myself appending “Reddit” to the end of my searches a lot more often, I have pinned Wikipedia to the top of my search results (in kagi) and I haven’t visited stackoverflow in months, although I see that perplexity quotes it quite often when I ask it coding questions… I’m just a sample of one, but it’s certainly interesting to see how apparently I’m just one of many

It's shocking to me that people would intentionally seek Reddit threads. The quality of the discussion on that site is absolutely appalling beyond belief.

At least some of them are written by humans and some of them are good. Maybe good 20-50% of the time, still better than 100% SEO crap.

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

#73

Post by pipes »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #68
layer8 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, this doesn’t change the problem that Q&A platforms have a hard time competing with LLMs, and I don’t see how that is likely to change.

It is frankly absurd that they should be expected to These LLMs could not exist without them, but now they're expected to compete? If all of the Q&A platforms die off, how are LLM training datasets going to get new information? This whole AI boom is typical corporate shortsightedness imo. Kill the future in order to have a great next quarter I hope I'm wrong. If I am right, then I hope we figure this out before AI ha…

In my experience, they do seem to be very good at synthesizing answers from docs. However I don't know if that will work for edge cases which is one of the things SO is good at.

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

#74

Post by linuxftw »

dougb5 wrote: post #58
pestaa wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use a CDN in front of it? Would something like Cloudflare help with bot detection?

I'm on AWS and use their WAF service to do some rudimentary bot blocking, but CDNs (their Cloudflare equivalent, Cloudfront) have been too expensive in the past and the bot control mechanisms they offer have too many false positives. Perhaps I should check it out again. Part of the problem is the economics of it -- I've chosen to self-fund a high traffic site without ads, and that's on me. But it was possible to do t…

Cloudflare is free. Give it a try.

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

#75

Post by pipes »

bluedino wrote: post #30
immibis wrote: 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.

Reddit is awful now. Some sub reddits are so anal about following new post guide lines every question I ask is automatically removed. And I've tried really hard to follow the rules. I have given up asking. Also who thought it was a good idea to put a wall of rules text at the top of every thread. It is a pain to scroll past and I'm pretty certain no one except crazy people read them.

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

#77

Post by inetknght »

nitwit005 wrote: post #69
staticautomatic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sure I can make a couple of surprising or insightful articles for my current industry, and then I'll run dry. Most topics require data or information in some form, which requires time to accumulate. You end up rate limited. Even at the scale of a decent sized company, you often can only produce interesting content occasionally.

> Most topics require data or information in some form, which requires time to accumulate. You end up rate limited. Even at the scale of a decent sized company, you often can only produce interesting content occasionally.

That sounds like a good thing tbqh

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

#78

Post by pjc50 »

adriand wrote: post #9
corentin88 wrote: post #2

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.

What are the effective marketing channels for specialized/niche B2B companies these days, now that - presumably - the long tail search result strategy is no longer effective? A friend of mine was telling me that his company was very pleased when they were able to ask ChatGPT "what is the best SaaS for X?" where X = their niche, and their company was the first thing it recommended. It surprised me that this was a thin…

I'm sure the AI company will eventually let you bid to be ranked in the answers.

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

#79

Post by DaSHacka »

whiplash451 wrote: post #25
dig1 wrote: post #10

The actual trend these days is that if your company struggles, blame AI ;) I can't say about WebMD and Chegg, but Quora and SO started going downhill before this AI (boom or bubble, whatever you call it) due to their policies, politics, and management. IMHO, of course.

ChatGPT nearly killed Chegg https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/comments/1cwq...

Doesn't surprise me whatsoever.

All Chegg has going for it is a database of answers for homework assignments that typically use per-student randomized numbers—so students have to recalculate their specific answer manually by following the steps—and "verified tutors" that constantly give wrong answers to even highschool-level math questions.

Every college student I know uses ChatGPT (and now DeepSeek) for tons of assignments, usually via the free plan.

Once you experience that, it gets really tempting to cancel that $20/month chegg subscription and never look back.

I find professors pitiful fearmongering over 'the big bad ChatGPT' a little funny, such as when they insist they "have secret tools to detect AI usage" and "it can't answer the questions correctly anyway", so "you shouldn't even try it".

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

#80

Post by Terr_ »

darth_avocado wrote: post #15
joelthelion wrote: post #8

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.

Quora has sucked for a while now. When the second answer on every question is completely unrelated to the question asked, in some weird attempt to make you look up more content on the site, the site starts losing its usefulness.

Yeah, it's so blatantly frustratingly tone-deaf that the real message is: "This site purposely wants to be full of irrelevant spammy shit, so get whatever you needed and get out ASAP."
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