Google AI Search: A Wrench in SEO Methods
April 17, 2025
Does AI finally spell the end of SEO? Or will it supercharge the practice? Pymnts declares, “Google’s AI Search Switch Leaves Indie Websites Unmoored.” The brief write-up states:
“Google’s AI-generated search answers have reportedly not been good for independent websites. Those answers, along with Google’s alterations to its search algorithm in support of them, have caused traffic to those websites to plunge, Bloomberg News reported Monday (April 7), citing interviews with 25 publishers and people working with them. The changes, Bloomberg said, threaten a ‘delicate symbiotic relationship’ between businesses and Google: they generate good content, and the tech giant sends them traffic. According to the report, many publishers said they either need to shut down or revamp their distribution strategy. Experts this effort could ultimately reduce the quality of information Google can access for its search results and AI answers.”
To add insult to injury, we are reminded, AI Search’s answers are often inaccurate. SEO pros are scrambling to adapt to this new reality. We learn:
“‘It’s important for businesses to think of more than just pure on-page SEO optimization,’ Ben Poulton, founder of the SEO agency Intellar, told PYMNTS. ‘AI overviews tend to try and showcase the whole experience. That means additional content, more FAQs answered, customer feedback addressed on the page, details about walking distance and return policies for brands with a brick-and-mortar, all need to be readily available, as that will give you the best shot of being featured,’ Poulton said.”
So it sounds like one thing has not changed: Second to buying Google ads, posting thoroughly good content is the best way to surface in search results. Or, now, to donate knowledge for the algorithm to spit out. Possibly with hallucinations mixed in.
Cynthia Murrell, April 17, 2025
Google AI: Invention Is the PR Game
April 17, 2025
Google was so excited to tout its AI’s great achievement: In under 48 hours, It solved a medical problem that vexed human researchers for a decade. Great! Just one hitch. As Pivot to AI tells us, "Google Co-Scientist AI Cracks Superbug Problem in Two Days!—Because It Had Been Fed the Team’s Previous Paper with the Answer In It." With that detail, the feat seems much less impressive. In fact, two days seems downright sluggish. Writer David Gerard reports:
"The hype cycle for Google’s fabulous new AI Co-Scientist tool, based on the Gemini LLM, includes a BBC headline about how José Penadés’ team at Imperial College asked the tool about a problem he’d been working on for years — and it solved it in less than 48 hours! [BBC; Google] Penadés works on the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria. Co-Scientist suggested the bacteria might be hijacking fragments of DNA from bacteriophages. The team said that if they’d had this hypothesis at the start, it would have saved years of work. Sounds almost too good to be true! Because it is. It turns out Co-Scientist had been fed a 2023 paper by Penadés’ team that included a version of the hypothesis. The BBC coverage failed to mention this bit. [New Scientist, archive]"
It seems this type of Googley AI over-brag is a pattern. Gerard notes the company claims Co-Scientist identified new drugs for liver fibrosis, but those drugs had already been studied for this use. By humans. He also reminds us of this bit of truth-stretching from 2023:
"Google loudly publicized how DeepMind had synthesized 43 ‘new materials’ — but studies in 2024 showed that none of the materials was actually new, and that only 3 of 58 syntheses were even successful. [APS; ChemrXiv]"
So the next time Google crows about an AI achievement, we have to keep in mind that AI often is a synonym for PR.
Cynthia Murrell, April 17, 2026
AI Impacts Jobs: But Just 40 Percent of Them
April 16, 2025
AI enthusiasts would have us believe workers have nothing to fear from the technology. In fact, they gush, AI will only make our jobs easier by taking over repetitive tasks and allowing time for our creative juices to flow. It is a nice vision. Far-fetched, but nice. Euronews reports, “AI Could Impact 40 Percent of Jobs Worldwide in the Next Decade, UN Agency Warns.” Writer Anna Desmarais cites a recent report as she tells us:
“Artificial intelligence (AI) may impact 40 per cent of jobs worldwide, which could mean overall productivity growth but many could lose their jobs, a new report from the United Nations Department of Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has found. The report … says that AI could impact jobs in four main ways: either by replacing or complementing human work, deepening automation, and possibly creating new jobs, such as in AI research or development.”
So it sounds like we could possibly reach a sort of net-zero on jobs. However, it will take deliberate action to get there. And we are not currently pointed in the right direction:
“A handful of companies that control the world’s advancement in AI ‘often favour capital over labour,’ the report continues, which means there is a risk that AI ‘reduces the competitive advantage’ of low-cost labour from developing countries. Rebeca Grynspan, UCTAD’s Secretary-General, said in a statement that there needs to be stronger international cooperation to shift the focus away ‘from technology to people’.”
Oh, is that all? Easy peasy. The post notes it is not just information workers under threat—when combined with other systems, AI can also perform physical production jobs. Desmarais concludes:
“The impact that AI is going to have on the labour force depends on how automation, augmentation, and new positions interact. The UNCTAD said developing countries need to invest in reliable internet connections, making high-quality data sets available to train AI systems and building education systems that give them necessary digital skills, the report added. To do this, UNCTAD recommends building a shared global facility that would share AI tools and computing power equitably between nations.”
Will big tech and agencies around the world pull together to make it happen?
Cynthia Murrell, April 16, 2025
Stanford AI Report: Credible or Just Marketing?
April 14, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
I am not sure I believe reports or much of anything from Stanford University. Let me explain my skepticism. Here’s one of the snips a quick search provided:
I think it was William James said great things about Stanford University when he bumped into the distinguished outfit. If Billie was cranking out Substacks, he would probably be quite careful in using words like “leadership,” “ethical behavior,” and the moral sanctity of big thinkers. Presidents don’t get hired like a temporary worker in front of Home Depot. There is a process, and it quite clear the process and the people and cultural process at the university failed. Failed spectacularly.
Stanford hired and retained a cheater if the news reports are accurate.
Now let’s look at “The 2025 AI Index Report.”
The document’s tone is one of lofty pronouncements.
Stanford mixes comments about smart software with statements like “
Global AI optimism is rising—but deep regional divides remain.
Yep, I would submit that AI-equipped weapons are examples of “regional divides.”
I think this report is:
- Marketing for Stanford’s smart software activities
- A reminder that another country (China) is getting really capable in smart software and may zip right past the noodlers in the Gates Computer Science Building
- Stanford wants to be a thought leader which helps the “image” of the school, the students, the faculty, and the wretches in fund raising who face a tough slog in the years ahead.
For me personally, I think the “report” should be viewed with skepticism. Why? A university which hires a cheater makes quite clear that the silly notions of William James are irrelevant.
I am not sure they are.
Stephen E Arnold, April 14, 2025
Programming in an AI World: Spruiked Again Like We Were Last Summer
April 14, 2025
Software engineers are, reasonably, concerned about losing their jobs to AI. Australian blogger Clinton Boys asks, "How Will LLMs Take Our Jobs?" After reading several posts by programmers using LLMs for side projects, he believes such accounts suggest where we are headed. He writes:
"The consensus seems to be that rather than a side project being some sort of idea you have, then spend a couple of hours on, maybe learn a few things, but quickly get distracted by life or a new side project, you can now just chuck your idea into the model and after a couple of hours of iterating you have a working project. To me, this all seems to point to the fact that we are currently in the middle of a significant paradigm shift, akin to the transition from writing assembly to compiled programming languages. A potential future is unfolding before our eyes in which programmers don’t write in programming languages anymore, but write in natural language, and generative AI handles the gruntwork of actually writing the code, the same way a compiler translates your C code into machine instructions."
Perhaps. But then, he ponders, will the job even fit the title of "engineer"? Will the challenges and creative potential many love about this career vanish? And what would they do then? Boys suggests several routes one might take, with the caveat that a realistic path forward would probably blend several of these. He recognizes one could simply give up and choose a different career entirely. An understandable choice, if one can afford to start over. If not, one might join the AI cavalcade by learning how to create LLMs and/or derive value from them. It may also be wise to climb the corporate ladder—managers should be safer longer, Boys expects. Then again one might play ostrich:
"You could also cross your fingers and hope it pans out differently — particularly if, like me you find the vision of the future spruiked by the most bullish LLM proponents a little ghoulish and offensive to our collective humanity."
Always an option, we suppose. I had to look up the Australian term "spruik." According to Wordsmith.org, it means "to make an elaborate speech, especially to attract customers." Fitting. Finally, Boys says, one could bet on software connoisseurs of the future. Much as some now pay more for hand-made pastries or small-batch IPAs, some clients may be willing to shell out for software crafted the old-fashioned way. One can hope.
Cynthia Murrell, April 14, 2025
Meta a Great Company Lately?
April 10, 2025
Sorry, no AI used to create this item.
Despite Google’s attempt to flood the zone with AI this and AI that, Meta kept popping up in my newsfeed this morning (April 10, 2025). I pushed past the super confidential information from the US District Court of Northern District of California (an amazing and typically incoherent extract of super confidential information) and focused on a non-fiction author.
The Zuck – NSO Group dust up does not make much of a factoid described in considerable detail in Wikipedia. That encyclopedia entry is “Onavo.” In a nutshell, Facebook acquired a company which used techniques not widely known to obtain information about users of an encrypted app. Facebook’s awareness of Onavo took place, according to Wikipedia, prior to 2013 when Facebook purchased Onavo. My thought is that someone in the Facebook organization learned about other Israeli specialized software firms. Due to the high profile NSO Group had as a result of its participation in certain intelligence-related conferences and the relatively small community of specialized software developers in Israel, Facebook may have learned about the Big Kahuna, NSO Group. My personal view is that Facebook and probably more than a couple of curious engineers learned how specialized software purpose-built to cope with mobile phone data and were more than casually aware of systems and methods. The Meta – NSO Group dust up is an interesting case. Perhaps someday someone will write up how the Zuck precipitated a trial, which to an outsider, looks like a confused government-centric firm facing a teenagers with grudge. Will this legal matter turn a playground-type of argument about who is on whose team into an international kidney stone for the specialized software sector? For now, I want to pick up the Meta thread and talk about Washington, DC.
The Hill, an interesting publication about interesting institutions, published “Whistleblower Tells Senators That Meta Undermined U.S. Security, Interests.” The author is a former Zucker who worked as the director of global public policy at Facebook. If memory serves me, she labored at the estimable firm when Zuck was undergoing political awakening.
The Hill reports:
Wynn-Williams told Hawley’s panel that during her time at Meta: “Company executives lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress and the American public,” according to a copy of her remarks. Her most explosive claim is that she witnessed Meta executives decide to provide the Chinese Communist Party with access to user data, including the data of Americans. And she says she has the “documents” to back up her accusations.
After the Zuck attempted to block, prevent, thwart, or delete Ms. Wynn-Williams’ book Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism from seeing the light of a Kindle, I purchased the book. Silicon Valley tell-alls are usually somewhat entertaining. It is a mark of distinction for Ms. Wynn-Williams that she crafted a non-fiction write up that made me downright uncomfortable. Too much information about body functions and allegations about sharing information with a country not getting likes from too many people in certain Washington circles made me queasy. Dinobabies are often sensitive creatures unless they grow up to be Googzillas.
The Hill says:
Wynn-Williams testified that Meta started briefing the Chinese Communist party as early as 2015, and provided information about critical emerging technologies and artificial intelligence. “There’s a straight line you can draw from these briefings to the recent revelations that China is developing AI models for military use,” she said.
But isn’t open source AI software the future a voice in my head said?
What adds some zip to the appearance is this factoid from the article:
Wynn-Williams has filed a shareholder resolution asking the company’s board to investigate its activity in China and filed whistleblower complaints with the Securities and Exchange Administration and the Department of Justice.
I find it fascinating that on the West Coast, Facebook is unhappy with intelware being used on a Zuck-purchased service to obtain information about alleged persons of interest. About the same time, on the East coast, a former Zucker is asserting that the estimable social media company buddied up to a nation-state not particularly supportive of American interests.
Assuming that the Northern District court case is “real” and “actual factual” and that Ms. Wynn-Williams’ statements are “real” and “actual factual,” what can one hypothesize about the estimable Meta outfit? Here are my thoughts:
- Meta generates little windstorms of controversy. It doesn’t need to flood the zone with Google-style “look at us” revelations. Meta just stirs up storms.
- On the surface, Meta seems to have an interesting public posture. On one hand, the company wants to bring people together for good, etc. etc. On the other, the company could be seen as annoyed that a company used his acquired service to do data collection at odds with Meta’s own pristine approach to information.
- The tussles are not confined to tiny spaces. The West Coast matter concerns what I call intelware. When specialized software is no longer “secret,” the entire sector gets a bit of an uncomfortable feeling. Intelware is a global issue. Meta’s approach is in my opinion spilling outside the courtroom. The East Coast matter is another bigly problem. I suppose allegations of fraternization with a nation-state less than thrilled with the US approach to life could be seen as “small.” I think Ms. Wynn-Williams has a semi-large subject in focus.
Net net: [a] NSO Group cannot avoid publicity which could have an impact on a specialized software sector that should have remained in a file cabinet labeled “Secret.” [b] Ms. Wynn-Williams could have avoided sharing what struck me as confidential company information and some personal stuff as well. The book is more than a tell-all; it is a summary of what could be alleged intentional anti-US activity. [c] Online seems to be the core of innovation, finance, politics, and big money. Just forty five years ago, I wore bunny ears when I gave talks about the impact of online information. I called myself the Data Bunny. and, believe it or not, wore white bunny rabbit ears for a cheap laugh and make the technical information more approachable. Today many know online has impact. From a technical oddity used by fewer than 5,000 people to disruption of the specialized software sector by a much-loved organization chock full of Zuckers.
Stephen E Arnold, April 10, 2025
AI Horn Honking: Toot for Refact
April 10, 2025
What is one of the things we were taught in kindergarten? Oh, right. Humility. That, however, doesn’t apply when you’re in a job interview, selling a product, or writing a press release. Dev.to’s wrote a press release about their open source AI agent for programming in IDE was high ranking: “Our AI Agent + 3.7 Sonnet Ranked #1 Pn Aider’s Polyglot Bench — A 76.4% Score.”
As the title says, Dev.to’s open source AI programming agent ranked 76.4%. The agent is called Refact.ai and was upgraded with 3.7 Sonnet. It outperformed other AI agents, include Claude, Deepseek, ChatGPT, GPT-4.5 Preview, and Aider.
Refact.ai does better than the others because it is an intuitive AI agent. It uses a feedback loop to create self-learning and auto-correcting AI agent:
• “Writes code: The agent generates code based on the task description.
• Fixes errors: Runs automated checks for issues.
• Iterates: If problems are found, the agent corrects the code, fixes bugs, and re-tests until the task is successfully completed.
• Delivers the result, which will be correct most of the time!”
Dev.to has good reasons to pat itself on the back. Hopefully they will continue to develop and deliver high-performing AI agents.
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2025
China and AI: Moving Ahead?
April 10, 2025
There’s a longstanding rivalry between the United States and China. The rivalry extends to everything from government, economy, GDP, and technology. There’s been some recent technology developments in this heated East and West rivalry says The Independent in the article, “Has China Just Built The World’s First Human-Level AI?”
Deepseek is a AI start-up that’s been compared to OpenAI with its AI models. The clincher is that Deepseek’s models are more advanced than OpenAI because they perform better and use less resources. Another Chinese AI company claims they’ve made another technology breakthrough and it’s called “Manus.” Manus is is supposedly the world’s first fully autonomous AI agent that can perform complex tasks without human guidance. These tasks include creating a podcast, buying property, or booking travel plans.
Yichao Ji is the head of Manu’s AI development. He said that Manus is the next AI evolution and that it’s the beginning of artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI is AI that rivals or surpasses human intelligence. Yichao Ji said:
“ ‘This isn’t just another chatbot or workflow, it’s a truly autonomous agent that bridges the gap between conception and execution,’ he said in a video demonstrating the AI’s capabilities. ‘Where other AI stops at generating ideas, Manus delivers results. We see it as the next paradigm of human-machine collaboration.’”
Meanwhile Dario Amodei’s company designed Claude, the ChatGPT rival, and he predicted that AGI would be available as soon as 2026. He wrote an essay in October 2024 with the following statement:
“ ‘It can engage in any actions, communications, or remote operations,’ he wrote, ‘including taking actions on the internet, taking or giving directions to humans, ordering materials, directing experiments, watching videos, making videos, and so on. It does all of these tasks with a skill exceeding that of the most capable humans in the world.’”
These are tasks that Manus can do, according to the AI’s Web site. However when Manus was tested users spotted it making mistakes that most humans would spot.
Manus’s team is grateful for the insight into its AI’s flaws and will work to deliver a better AGI. The experts are viewing Manus with a more critical eye, because Manus is not delivering the same results as its American counterparts.
It appears that the US is still developing higher performing AI that will become the basis of AGI. Congratulations to the red, white, and blue!
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2025
AI: Job Harvesting
April 9, 2025
It is a question that keeps many of us up at night. Commonplace ponders, "Will AI Automate Away Your Job?" The answer: Probably, sooner or later. The when depends on the job. Some workers may be lucky enough to reach retirement age before that happens. Writer Jason Hausenloy explains:
"The key idea where the American worker is concerned is that your job is as automatable as the smallest, fully self-contained task is. For example, call center jobs might be (and are!) very vulnerable to automation, as they consist of a day of 10- to 20-minute or so tasks stacked back-to-back. Ditto for many forms of many types of freelancer services, or paralegals drafting contracts, or journalists rewriting articles. Compare this to a CEO who, even in a day broken up into similar 30-minute activities—a meeting, a decision, a public appearance—each required years of experiential context that a machine can’t yet simply replicate. … This pattern repeats across industries: the shorter the time horizon of your core tasks, the greater your automation risk."
See the post for a more detailed example that compares the jobs of a technical support specialist and an IT systems architect.
Naturally, other factors complicate the matter. For example, Hausenloy notes, blue-collar jobs may be safer longer because physical robots are more complex to program than information software. Also, the more data there is on how to do a job, the better equipped algorithms are to mimic it. That is one reason many companies implement tracking software. Yes, it allows them to micromanage workers. And also it gathers data needed to teach an LLM how to do the job. With every keystroke and mouse click, many workers are actively training their replacements.
Ironically, it seems those responsible for unleashing AI on the world may be some of the most replaceable. Schadenfreude, anyone? The article notes:
"The most vulnerable jobs, then, are not those traditionally thought of as threatened by automation—like manufacturing workers or service staff—but the ‘knowledge workers’ once thought to be automation-proof. And most vulnerable of all? The same Silicon Valley engineers and programmers who are building these AI systems. Software engineers whose jobs are based on writing code as discrete, well-documented tasks (often following standardized updates to a central directory) are essentially creating the perfect training data for AI systems to replace them."
In a section titled "Rethinking Work," Hausenloy waxes philosophical on a world in which all of humanity has been fired. Is a universal basic income a viable option? What, besides income, do humans get out of their careers? In what new ways will we address those needs? See the write-up for those thought exercises. Meanwhile, if you do want to remain employed as long as possible, try to make your job depend less on simple, repetitive tasks and more on human connection, experience, and judgement. With luck, you may just reach retirement before AI renders you obsolete.
Cynthia Murrell, April 9, 2025
AI Addicts Are Now a Thing
April 9, 2025
Hey, pal, can you spare a prompt?
Gee, who could have seen this coming? It seems one can become dependent on a chatbot, complete with addition indicators like preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, loss of control, and mood modification. "Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot," reports The Byte. Writer Noor Al-Sibai cites a recent joint study by OpenAI and MIT Media Lab as she writes:
"To get there, the MIT and OpenAI team surveyed thousands of ChatGPT users to glean not only how they felt about the chatbot, but also to study what kinds of ‘affective cues,’ which was defined in a joint summary of the research as ‘aspects of interactions that indicate empathy, affection, or support,’ they used when chatting with it. Though the vast majority of people surveyed didn’t engage emotionally with ChatGPT, those who used the chatbot for longer periods of time seemed to start considering it to be a ‘friend.’ The survey participants who chatted with ChatGPT the longest tended to be lonelier and get more stressed out over subtle changes in the model’s behavior, too. Add it all up, and it’s not good. In this study as in other cases we’ve seen, people tend to become dependent upon AI chatbots when their personal lives are lacking. In other words, the neediest people are developing the deepest parasocial relationship with AI — and where that leads could end up being sad, scary, or somewhere entirely unpredictable."
No kidding. Interestingly, the study found those who use the bot as an emotional or psychological sounding board were less likely to become dependent than those who used it for "non-personal" tasks, like brainstorming. Perhaps because the former are well-adjusted enough to examine their emotions at all? (The privacy risks of sharing such personal details with a chatbot are another issue entirely.) Al-Sibai emphasizes the upshot of the research: The more time one spends using ChatGPT, the more likely one is to become emotionally dependent on it. We think parents, especially, should be aware of this finding.
How many AI outfits will offer free AI? You know. Just give folks a taste.
Cynthia Murrell, April 9, 2025
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