News Flash about SEO: Just 20 Years Too Late but, Hey, Who Pays Attention?
June 21, 2023
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Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I read an article which would have been news a couple of decades ago. But I am a dinobaby (please, see anigif bouncing in an annoying manner) and I am hopelessly out of touch with what “real news” is.
An entrepreneur who just learned that in order to get traffic to her business Web site, she will have to spend big bucks and do search engine optimization, make YouTube videos (long and short), and follow Google’s implicit and explicit rules. Sad, MBA, I believe. The Moping Mistress of the Universe is a construct generated by the ever-innovative MidJourney and its delightful Discord interface.
The write up catching my attention is — hang on to your latte — “A Storefront for Robots: The SEO Arms Race Has Left Google and the Web Drowning in Garbage Text, with Customers and Businesses Flailing to Find Each Other.” I wondered if the word “flailing” is a typographic error or misspelling of “failing.” Failing strikes me as a more applicable word.
The thesis of the write up is that the destruction of precision and recall as useful for relevant online search and retrieval is not part of the Google game plan.
The write up asserts:
The result is SEO chum produced at scale, faster and cheaper than ever before. The internet looks the way it does largely to feed an ever-changing, opaque Google Search algorithm. Now, as the company itself builds AI search bots, the business as it stands is poised to eat itself.
Ah, ha. Garbage in, garbage out! Brilliant. The write up is about 4,000 words and makes clear that ecommerce requires generating baloney for Google.
To sum up, if you want traffic, do search engine optimization. The problem with the write up is that it is incorrect.
Let me explain. Navigate to “Google Earned $10 Million by Allowing Misleading Anti-Abortion Ads from Fake Clinics, Report Says.” What’s the point of this report? The answer is, “Google ads.” And money from a controversial group of supporters and detractors. Yes! An arms race of advertising.
Of course, SEO won’t work. Why would it? Google’s business is selling advertising. If you don’t believe me, just go to a conference and ask any Googler — including those wearing Ivory Tower Worker” pins — and ask, “How important is Google’s ad business?” But you know what most Googlers will say, don’t you?
For decades, Google has cultivated the SEO ploy for one reason. Failed SEO campaigns end up one place, “Google Advertising.”
Why?
If you want traffic, like the abortion ad buyers, pony up the cash. The Google will punch the Pay to Play button, and traffic results. One change kicked in after 2006. The mom-and-pop ad buyers were not as important as one of the “brand” advertisers. And what was that change? Small advertisers were left to the SEO experts who could then sell “small” ad campaigns when the hapless user learned that no one on the planet could locate the financial advisory firm named “Financial Specialist Advisors.” Ah, then there was Google Local. A Googley spin on Yellow Pages. And there have been other innovations to make it possible for advertisers of any size to get traffic, not much because small advertisers spend small money. But ad dollars are what keeps Googzilla alive.
Net net: Keep in mind that Google wants to be the Internet. (AMP that up, folks.) Google wants people to trust the friendly beastie. The Googzilla is into responsibility. The Google is truth, justice, and the digital way. Is the criticism of the Google warranted? Sure, constructive criticism is a positive for some. The problem I have is that it is 20 years too late. Who cares? The EU seems to have an interest.
Stephen E Arnold, June 21, 2023
Smart Software: The Dream of Big Money Raining for Decades
June 14, 2023
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Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
The illustration — from the crafty zeros and ones at MidJourney — depicts a young computer scientist reveling in the cash generated from his AI-infused innovation.
For a budding wizard, the idea of cash falling around the humanoid is invigorating. It is called a “coder’s high” or Silicon Valley fever. There is no known cure, even when FTX-type implosions doom a fellow traveler to months of litigation and some hard time among individuals typically not in an advanced math program.
Where’s the cyclone of cash originate?
I would submit that articles like “Generative AI Revenue Is Set to Reach US$1.3 Trillion in 2032” are like catnip to a typical feline living amidst the cubes at a Google-type company or in the apartment of a significant other adjacent a blue chip university in the US.
Here’s the chart that makes it easy to see the slope of the growth:
I want to point out that this confection is the result of the mid tier outfit IDC and the fascinating Bloomberg terminal. Therefore, I assume that it is rock solid, based on in-depth primary research, and deep analysis by third-party consultants. I do, however, reserve the right to think that the chart could have been produced by an intern eager to hit the gym and grabbing a sushi special before the good stuff was gone.
Will generative AI hit the $1.3 trillion target in nine years? In the hospital for recovering victims of spreadsheet fever, the coder’s high might slow recovery. But many believe — indeed, fervently hope to experience the realities of William James’s mystics in his Varieties of Religious Experience.
My goodness, the vision of money from Generative AI is infectious. So regulate mysticism? Erect guard rails to prevent those with a coder’s high from driving off the Information Superhighway?
Get real.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2023
Bad News for Humanoids: AI Writes Better Pitch Decks But KFC Is Hiring
June 12, 2023
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Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Who would have envisioned a time when MBA with undergraduate finance majors would be given an opportunity to work at a Kentucky Fried Chicken store. What was the slogan about fingers? I can’t remember.
“If You’re Thinking about Writing Your Own Pitch Decks, Think Again” provides some interesting information. I assume that today’s version of Henry Robinson Luce’s flagship magazine (no the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition) would shatter the work life of those who create pitch decks. A “pitch deck” is a sonnet for our digital era. The phrase is often associated with a group of PowerPoint slides designed to bet a funding source to write a check. That use case, however, is not where pitch decks come into play: Academics use them when trying to explain why a research project deserves funding. Ad agencies craft them to win client work or, in some cases, to convince a client to not fire the creative team. (Hello, Bud Light advisors, are you paying attention.) Real estate professionals created them to show to high net worth individuals. The objective is to close a deal for one of those bizarro vacant mansions shown by YouTube explorers. See, for instance, this white elephant lovingly presented by Dark Explorations. And there are more pitch deck applications. That’s why the phrase, “Death by PowerPoint is real”, is semi poignant.
What if a pitch deck could be made better? What is pitch decks could be produced quickly? What if pitch decks could be graphically enhanced without fooling around with Fiverr.com artists in Armenia or the professionals with orange and blue hair?
The Fortune article states: The study [funded by Clarify Capital] revealed that machine-generated pitch decks consistently outperformed their human counterparts in terms of quality, thoroughness, and clarity. A staggering 80% of respondents found the GPT-4 decks compelling, while only 39% felt the same way about the human-created decks. [Emphasis added]
The cited article continues:
What’s more, GPT-4-presented ventures were twice as convincing to investors and business owners compared to those backed by human-made pitch decks. In an even more astonishing revelation, GPT-4 proved to be more successful in securing funding in the creative industries than in the tech industry, defying assumptions that machine learning could not match human creativity due to its lack of life experience and emotions. [Emphasis added]
Would you like regular or crispy? asks the MBA who wants to write pitch decks for a VC firm whose managing director his father knows. The image emerged from the murky math of MidJourney. Better, faster, and cheaper than a contractor I might add.
Here’s a link to the KFC.com Web site. Smart software works better, faster, and cheaper. But it has a drawback: At this time, the KFC professional is needed to put those thighs in the fryer.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2023
Neeva: Is This Google Killer on the Run?
May 18, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Sometimes I think it is 2007 doing the déjà vu dance. I read “Report: Snowflake Is in Advanced Talks to Acquire Search Startup Neeva.” Founded by Xooglers, Neeva was positioned to revolutionize search and generate subscription revenue. Along the highway to the pot of gold, Neeva would deliver on point results. How did that pay for search model work out?
According to the article:
Snowflake Inc., the cloud-based data warehouse provider, is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire a search startup called Neeva Inc. that was founded by former Google LLC advertising executive Sridhar Ramaswamy.
Like every other content processing company I bump into, Neeva was doing smart software. Combine the relevance angle with generative AI and what do you get? A start up that is going to be acquired by a firm with some interesting ideas about how to use search and retrieval to make life better.
Are there other search outfits with a similar business model? Sure, Kagi comes to mind. I used to keep track of start ups which had technology that would provide relevant results to users and a big payday to the investors. Do these names ring a bell?
Cluuz
Deepset
Glean
Kyndi
Siderian
Umiboza
If the Snowflake Neeva deal comes to fruition, will it follow the trajectory of IBM Vivisimo. Vivisimo disappeared as an entity and morphed into a big data component. No problem. But Vivisimo was a metasearch and on-the-fly tagging system. Will the tie up be similar to the Microsoft acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer. Fast still lives but I don’t know too many Softies who know about the backstory. Then there is the HP Autonomy deal. The acquisition is still playing out in the legal eagle sauna.
Few care about the nuances of search and retrieval. Those seemingly irrelevant details can have interesting consequences. Some are okay like the Dassault Exalead deal. Others? Less okay.
Stephen E Arnold, May 18, 2023
The Gray Lady: Objective Gloating about Vice
May 15, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Do you have dreams about the church lady on Saturday Night Live. That skit frightened me. A flashback shook my placid mental state when I read “Vice, Decayed Digital Colossus, Files for Bankruptcy.” I conjured up without the assistance of smart software, the image of Dana Carvey talking about the pundit spawning machine named Vice with the statement, “Well, isn’t that special?”
The New York Times’s article reported:
Vice Media filed for bankruptcy on Monday, punctuating a years long descent from a new-media darling to a cautionary tale of the problems facing the digital publishing industry.
The write up omits any reference to the New York Times’s failure with its own online venture under the guidance of Jeff Pemberton, the flame out with its LexisNexis play, the fraught effort to index its own content, and the misadventures which have become the Wordle success story. The past Don Quixote-like sallies into the digital world are either Irrelevant or unknown to the current crop of Gray Lady “real” news hounds I surmise.
The article states:
Investments from media titans like Disney and shrewd financial investors like TPG, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars, will
be rendered worthless by the bankruptcy, cementing Vice’s status among the most notable bad bets in the media industry. [Emphasis added.]
Well, isn’t that special? Perhaps similar to the Times’s first online adventure in the late 1970s?
The article includes a quote from a community journalism company too:
“We now know that a brand tethered to social media for its growth and audience alone is not sustainable.”
Perhaps like the desire for more money than the Times’s LexisNexis deal provided? Perhaps?
Is Vice that special? I think the story is a footnote to the Gray Lady’s own adventures in the digital realm?
Isn’t that special too?
Stephen E Arnold, May 15, 2023
Good Enough AI: Decimating Bit-Blasted Wretches
May 9, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I think the writers’ strike will make it possible for certain Hollywood producer types to cozy up with smart software. What works in the cinema wasteland are sequels and remakes of what has sold. My hunch is that purpose-built smart software will be able to output good enough scripts quickly. A few humanoids, maybe even on set actors, can add touches which elevate good enough to pretty good.
There are other humanoid writers now at risk from good-enough outputs. At a Derby Party on May 6, 2023, I whipped out my mobile and illustrated how You.com can crank out a short essay good enough to get an A or a B in a sophomore English class. One person who made a bundle of money selling automobiles said immediately, “I could have used this instead of that PR company and the part-timers who used to drive me crazy with questions.”
This person understood, and he was in his late 70s but still able to remember PR and marketing experts who were supposed to write presentations, ads, and marketing letters.
If a biz whiz heading to the old-age home grasp the concept, imagine what a rotund, confident MBA will do with good enough smart software.
What’s interesting to me is that the Washington Post, under the control of the original bulldozer driver Jeff Bezos, seems to understand what’s going to happen to many scribes, columnists, littérateurs, and scribblers. The ink stained wretches are going to become bit-blasted wretches. “He Wrote a Book on a Rare Subject. Then a ChatGPT Replica Appeared on Amazon” includes a quote from a human involved in smart software created content:
“We published a celebrity profile a month. Now we can do 10,000 a month.”
Net net: Smart software will create many opportunities for “writers” to find their future elsewhere. Fixer uppers of machine generated content may become a hot new gig along with TikTok maker of van life videos, creators of text based wall graffiti, and signs with messages such as “Will edit for food.”
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2023
Once High-Flying Publication Identifies a Grim Future for Writers… and Itself
May 8, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I am not sure what a Hollywood or New York writer does. I do know that quite a few of these professionals are on strike. The signs are not as catchy as the ones protesters in Paris are using. But France is known for design, and Hollywood and New York is more into the conniving approach to creativity in my opinion.
The article “GPT-4 Can’t Replace Striking TV Writers, But Studios Are Going to Try” identifies a problem for writers. The issue is not the the real or perceived abuses of big studios. The key point of the write up is that software, never the core competency for most big entertainment executives, is now a way to disintermediate and decimate human writers.
ChatGPT apps — despite their flaws — are good enough. When creativity means recycling previous ideas, ChatGPT has some advantages; for example, no vacays, no nasty habits, and no agents. Writers have to be renewed which means meetings. Software is licensed which another piece of smart software can process.
In short, writers lose. Even if the ChatGPT produced “content” is not as good as a stellar film like Heaven’s Gate, that’s show business. Disintermediation has arrived. Protests and signs may not be as effective as some believe. Software may be good enough, not great. But it is works fast, cheap, and without annoying human sign carrying protests.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2023
Google Economics: The Cost of Bard Versus Staplers
April 4, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Does anyone remember the good old days at the Google. Tony Bennett performing in the cafeteria. What about those car washes? How about the entry security system which was beset with door propped open with credit card receipts from Fred’s Place. Those were the days.
I read “Google to Cut Down on Employee Laptops, Services and Staplers for Multi-Year Savings.” The article explains:
Google said it’s cutting back on fitness classes, staplers, tape and the frequency of laptop replacements for employees. One of the company’s important objectives for 2023 is to “deliver durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency.” Porat said in the email. “All PAs and Functions are working toward this,” she said, referring to product areas. OKR stands for objectives and key results.
Yes, OKR. I wonder if the Sundar and Prabhakar comedy act will incorporate staplers into their next presentation.
And what about the $100 billion the Google “lost” after its quantum supremacy smart software screwed up in Paris? Let’s convert that to staplers, shall we? Today (April 4, 2023), I can purchase one office stapler from Amazon (Google’s fellow traveler in trashing relevance with advertisements) for $10.98. I liked the Bostitch Office Heavy Duty device, which is Amazon’s number one best seller (according to Amazon marketing).
The write up pointed out:
Staplers and tape are no longer being provided to print stations companywide as “part of a cost effectiveness initiative,” according to a separate, internal facilities directive viewed by CNBC.
To recoup that $100 million, Google will have to not purchase 9,107,468.12. I want to retain the 0.12 because one must be attentive to small numbers (unlike some of the fancy math in the Snorkel world). Google, I have heard, has about 100,000 “employees”, but it is never clear which are “real” employees, contractors, interns, or mysterious partners. Thus each of these individuals will be responsible for NOT losing or breaking 91 staplers per year.
I know the idea of rationing staplers is like burning Joan of Arc. It’s not an opportunity to warm a croissant; it is the symbolism of the event.
Google in 2023 knows how to keep me in stitches. Sorry, staples. And the cost of Bard? As the real Bard said:
Poor and content is rich and rich enough,
But riches fineless is as poor as winter
To him that ever fears he shall be poor. (Othello, III.iv)
Stephen E Arnold, April 4, 2023
Stanford: Llama Hallucinating at the Dollar Store
March 21, 2023
Editor’s Note: This essay is the work of a real, and still alive, dinobaby. No smart software involved with the exception of the addled llama.
What happens when folks at Stanford University use the output of OpenAI to create another generative system? First, a blog article appears; for example, “Stanford’s Alpaca Shows That OpenAI May Have a Problem.” Second, I am waiting for legal eagles to take flight. Some may already be aloft and circling.
A hallucinating llama which confused grazing on other wizards’ work with munching on mushrooms. The art was a creation of ScribbledDiffusion.com. The smart software suggests the llama is having a hallucination.
What’s happening?
The model trained from OWW or Other Wizards’ Work mostly works. The gotcha is that using OWW without any silly worrying about copyrights was cheap. According to the write up, the total (excluding wizards’ time) was $600.
The article pinpoints the issue:
Alignment researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky summarizes the problem this poses for companies like OpenAI:” If you allow any sufficiently wide-ranging access to your AI model, even by paid API, you’re giving away your business crown jewels to competitors that can then nearly-clone your model without all the hard work you did to build up your own fine-tuning dataset.” What can OpenAI do about that? Not much, says Yudkowsky: “If you successfully enforce a restriction against commercializing an imitation trained on your I/O – a legal prospect that’s never been tested, at this point – that means the competing checkpoints go up on BitTorrent.”
I love the rapid rise in smart software uptake and now the snappy shift to commoditization. The VCs counting on big smart software payoffs may want to think about why the llama in the illustration looks as if synapses are forming new, low cost connections. Low cost as in really cheap I think.
Stephen E Arnold, March 21, 2023
Crypto and Crime: Interesting Actors Get Blues and Twos on Their Systems
January 31, 2023
I read a widely available document which presents information once described to me as a “close hold.” The article is “Most Criminal Crypto currency Is Funneled Through Just 5 Exchanges.” Most of the write up is the sort of breathless “look what we know” information. The article which recycles information from Wired and from the specialized services firm Chainalysis does not mention the five outfits currently under investigation. The write up does not provide much help to a curious reader by omitting open source intelligence tools which can rank order exchanges by dollar volume. Why not learn about this listing by CoinMarketCap and include that information instead of recycling OPI (other people’s info)? Also, why not point to resources on one of the start.me pages? I know. I know. That’s work that interferes with getting a Tall, Non-Fat Latte With Caramel Drizzle.
The key points for me is the inclusion of some companies/organizations allegedly engaged in some fascinating activities. (Fascinating for crime analysts and cyber fraud investigators. For the individuals involved with these firms, “fascinating” is not the word one might use to describe the information in the Ars Technica article.)
Here are the outfits mentioned in the article:
- Bitcoin Fog – Offline
- Bitzlato
- Chatex
- Garantex
- Helix – Offline
- Suex
- Tornado Cash – Offline
Is there a common thread connecting these organizations? Who are the stakeholders? Who are the managers? Where are these outfits allegedly doing business?
Could it be Russia?
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2023
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