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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

#131

Post by ehnto »

mvdtnz wrote: post #54
adriand wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 guess a corollary question is, are there methods (i.e. the chatbot version of SEO) to get your company into chatbot recommendations? It wasn't enough for you lot to ruin search results, now you're seeking ways to pollute AI chat bots?

Which is why open source AI will be so important to support.

It's not this individuals fault, it's the pretty obvious outcome of monetising this absolutely enormous venture capital spend. Advertising infects every possible medium as soon as the dollars make sense.

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

#132

Post by nickpsecurity »

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.

That was the main reason I stopped using Google and Quora. I wanted real, relevant results. Instead, they tried to trick me with advertisements.

These companies are just intentionally throwing away users.

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

#133

Post by nickpsecurity »

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.

The company itself will ban you for similar reasons. The views could be a faith with a billion people. Still hate speech or harassment for peacefully sharing it. Whereas, mockery of that group was allowed in the same spaces.

Given the state of the world, I'm not sure if that will help or hurt their marketing. Probably help with enough like-minded people. Same for social nets with opposing views.

I'm not sure what effect AI will have on places like Reddit due to the community factors. It will be interesting to watch.

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

#134

Post by jgalt212 »

jgalt212 wrote: post #127

> Yet, despite the challenges, Quora still pulls in just under 1 billion visits a month. Man, those a big numbers. I would have bet two orders of magnitude lower.

and the author report this about Wikipedia

> Also, over 5B visits a month - consider me impressed.

How does Wikipedia only do 5X the visits that Quora does? Which number is way off?

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

#137

Post by milesrout »

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.

If you even comment on certain subreddits you'll get banned from swathes of the site.

The model of independent subreddits only works if they are really independent. But in practice, all the big subreddits are run by the same people, heavily overlapping groups, who are in constant communication and coordination with each other via discord (previously IRC).

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

#138

Post by milesrout »

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…

Does it matter to you whether the answers you are given are correct? Google results are sometimes wrong but the web gives you signals about reliability, like the author, etc. If I want to know who wrote a paper, I can google the paper's name and get an ACM page about the paper or a PDF of the paper and read the author's name. Very reliable. If ChatGPT says the name I have no clue if it is right.

Multiple sources is a good thing. Using just ChatGPT is like only ever using Wikipedia as a source of all information, but put through a filter that removes all sources and attribution information and cross linking and history and those notices at the top of pages saying the article has issues AND normalising the writing style so that you can't even use bad spelling and grammar as a signal of inaccuracy.

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

#139

Post by milesrout »

nitwit005 wrote: post #107
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After some experience and testing, I've become well aware not to use LLMs to ask questions like "who did X" and "what is company Y's policy about Z", because they tend to hallucinate responses (even for well-known people). What I've not yet figured out how to deal with is how to handle being surrounded by a society of people who go ahead and trust LLMs for their factual answers anyway. I think even if I'm careful abo…

I suspect this is more of a case of garbage-in garbage-out. The existing web results have invented answers. People created websites to "answer" people's search queries about celebrity net worth, if some celebrity is gay, if they are in a relationship, etc. They obviously frequently did not know, and made a guess, or relied on tabloids as a source, who also frequently make things up.

Yes but it is quite obvious that you are on a site like that so you can ignore it. How am I meant to know if ChatGPT was trained on those websites? How do I know when it is effectively drawing from that vs drawing from a reliable source?

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

#140

Post by nitwit005 »

milesrout wrote: post #139
nitwit005 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this is more of a case of garbage-in garbage-out. The existing web results have invented answers. People created websites to "answer" people's search queries about celebrity net worth, if some celebrity is gay, if they are in a relationship, etc. They obviously frequently did not know, and made a guess, or relied on tabloids as a source, who also frequently make things up.

Yes but it is quite obvious that you are on a site like that so you can ignore it. How am I meant to know if ChatGPT was trained on those websites? How do I know when it is effectively drawing from that vs drawing from a reliable source?

It seems you already know the answer to that, which is that you don't.
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