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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

#221

Post by BigJono »

javcasas wrote: post #171
tokioyoyo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with reviews is that on Reddit, it’s almost guaranteed that you’re reading a PR company’s post. Starting 2020, marketing agencies have been openly advertising that they game Reddit threads for product placements. If you know anyone working in those departments, just ask around. Then guru-influencer-like people started selling growth hack tactics. Pretty much, again, openly discussing purchasing old Reddit…

> The problem with reviews is that on Reddit, it’s almost guaranteed that you’re reading a PR company’s post. Sure. But, in the comments, you will find out that if you press both control and m and backspace at the same time, the keyboard explodes. Unlike Google, that when searching about explodey keyboards it gives you 37 pages of "10 reasons why this is the best keyboard that totally doesn't explode".

The comments are absolutely astroturfed to fuck as well, but you're right, there's at least some small signal in there, whereas average Google results have an amount indistinguishable from zero.

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

#222

Post by ForTheKidz »

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.

For the most part, google drives me to documentation rather than Stack Overflow. Much faster than chatgpt can produce the answer, I might add.

Sure, not all questions can be answered with documentation, but once you know your domain and tech stack well most of these resources fall off a cliff in terms of value. Curiously at that point it's much easier to use ChatGPT because you can babysit it with one eye while thinking ahead with the other.

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

#223

Post by arp242 »

joelthelion wrote: post #163
johnfn wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, not sure I agree with you about SO. The experience I have with SO 99%+ of the time is that I google my question, get a result on SO which has a correct and decent quality answer, and I'm back to work. That's a pretty great experience, and I certainly wouldn't say that it misses the bar to be a 'quality platform'. I do agree the moderation is overbearing at times, but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwate…

> The experience I have with SO 99%+ of the time is that I google my question, get a result on SO which has a correct and decent quality answer, and I'm back to work. You and I are talking about different things. Before these great questions and answers ended up in your search result, someone asked them, and someone else provided a good answer. I used to be one of these people. I got 50k+ SO karma, mostly by asking g…

> SO moderators don't even read your questions anymore before closing them for a random reason

Note that most of these are just regular people with close-to-vote powers, not elected or appointed moderators with special powers.

I think one major problem is that there is an entire class of people who rarely or never ask or answer questions, or even comment, and all they do is "moderate" the site by closing questions. Literally all they do. Some of these have extremely specific and narrow views on how the site "should" be. I absolutely hate it: who the hell are you? You're not even using the core function of the site. Fuck off trying to tell me how I "ought" to be using it. I don't want to gatekeep who is or isn't "part of the community", but people gatekeeping how the site can be used without actually using the site is just absolutely toxic.

There are a number of other issues as well. I can go on for a long time. But to be honest I no longer care: the site has been taken over by nihilistic capitalists who care not one iota about any aspect of the site other than the ability to earn a buck (previously it was a commercial enterprise as well, sure, but it wasn't 100% about earning a buck and many in leadership positions genuinely cared about "doing right by our community" as well). And that is probably just as much of a reason for the decline of Stack Overflow as anything else.

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

#224

Post by shagie »

Talanes wrote: post #200
shagie wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also recommend the written story for Zima Blue (the Love Death and Robots version was much more focused on the artistic aspect) and the question of wine.

Interestingly, went to do a search for "Zima Blue", and because the sidebar decided I wanted information about the tv episode, it gave me a Spanish Wikipedia link ( https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zima_Blue ). The equivalent page in English Wikipedia redirects to "Zima Blue and Other Stories", instead.

Zima Blue is the name of the story. It was made into a Love Death and Robots episode. The book Zima Blue and Other Stories is the most widely known collection that its found in (since its in the title), but it has been published in many others.

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?196048

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

#225

Post by yalogin »

My search pattern has completely changed. I just go to chatgpt or meta ai directly these days for topics/queries I need help recall or summarization with. This is usually most of the searches. The only reason I use google is for maps based info.

I cannot see the use for Webmd and other sites that provide information along specific verticals, anymore. People are going to WebMD and these sites out of habit and that is it, the same info can already be summarized by an LLM today. That habit is powerful and what will give these sites some time to pivot if they can

Over time as genAI becomes better, everything that doesn't have any time based function will be consumed by it.

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

#226

Post by ViktorRay »

yalogin wrote: post #225

My search pattern has completely changed. I just go to chatgpt or meta ai directly these days for topics/queries I need help recall or summarization with. This is usually most of the searches. The only reason I use google is for maps based info. I cannot see the use for Webmd and other sites that provide information along specific verticals, anymore. People are going to WebMD and these sites out of habit and that is…

You should try Perplexity too. In my experience Perplexity is far better than Google Gemini or Meta AI for searching for info and getting summaries.

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

#227

Post by TZubiri »

Looks like those whose business model is producing shitty content are struggling, and those that provide quality content, are doing well.

Wikiepdia: Good Quora: Bad Reddit: Good CNet: Bad

It makes sense, as LLM content is of mediocre quality, if you want something of good and reliable quality you go elsewhere.

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

#228

Post by dredmorbius »

literalAardvark wrote: post #212
dredmorbius wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had sufficiently similar experiences. Usually an LLM chatbot going off half-cocked before I'd fully specified my question, and taking offence to my "please shut the fuck up" (usually after a series of requests to stop). I suspect if I'd kept that up the session might well have closed.

Sounds like you might have absolutely no idea how to create a prompt for an LLM. Telling it to stop is just creating a spurious prompt, lowering the quality of your interaction for no gain.

So, https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/>?

Care to enlighten us heathens?

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

#229

Post by TZubiri »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #209
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.

> - SO has overbearing moderation. Chatgpt doesn't close your question the second you've submitted it. Even worse your question is slightly different and you asked it because the one they just linked as a duplicate didnt help or didnt fit fully. I get so angry when someones asking the right question but some a-hole SO mod closes it almost as if they took no care to compare context and want to meet some obscure metric…

Still, much of ChatGPTs success in code can be owed to SO success in generating a mountain of useful googleable archives.

See stacksort: https://xkcd.com/1185

Remember that the objective of SO is not to provide answers to users who post questions, but to provide answers to users who google questions.

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

#230

Post by TZubiri »

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.

I get that for subreddit bans, but I've never had a sitewide ban.
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