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> So now you need something like ChatGPT to cut through the noise? I once employed a journalist to write about the pros and cons of wedding insurance. Just to

by dazc 4y ago

> So now you need something like ChatGPT to cut through the noise? I once employed a journalist to write about the pros and cons of wedding insurance. Just to give you a clue how long ago this was, it was a unique article at the time. Many years years later, every article you will read about wedding insurance (there will be many thousands) is around 90% similar in style and content to the one I paid for. I dare say you could use any other topic as an example, one thoroughly researched original and many thousand similar copies. I can't see how ChatGPT is not going to make this situation much worse?

idopmstuff 4y ago
My guess is that ChatGPT is going to solve the SEO spam problem by changing the way we search for things. Instead of searching for webpages that have information about a topic, we're going to ask an AI. It'll tell you what the pros and cons of wedding insurance are, and because eventually it'll have access to your calendar, it'll tailor that answers to the specifics of the fact that you're having a destination wedding during monsoon season in the area. Once this kind of AI search becomes the default way we look for information, there won't be a point to creating SEO spam anymore. It'll create other problems, of course, but that's the way it goes with new technology.
- wpietri 4y ago
  > Instead of searching for webpages that have information about a topic, we're going to ask an AI. I think this is probably true for some people, the same sort of person who sees something on Facebook and assumes that it's true. [1] But there are quite a lot of people for whom "according to whom?" is the next question after being told something factual. For them, I think search's job is to find relevant sources and get out of the way. But I think even finding out is a long way away. The main thing that ChatGPT has nailed is glibness. It produces text that sounds authoritative, whether or not it's correct. And it's often incorrect. People may try ChatGPT search out of novelty or because it feels human. But if they depend on it and feel the real-world impact of a confidently wrong answer, they're going to treat it as a human that's untrustworthy. A blowhard, a liar, a fool. So I'm sure the major search players are going to be very cautious rolling out chat-like things. Google has spent decades building up consumer trust, and the don't need a zillion articles about people who a too-confident chat steered wrong. [1] E.g., That men in white vans are kidnappers: vhttps://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/tech/facebook-white-vans/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/tech/facebook-white-vans/inde...
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    > But if they depend on it and feel the real-world impact of a confidently wrong answer, they're going to treat it as a human that's untrustworthy. A blowhard, a liar, a fool. Maybe that's good. There are glib liars on the net, and not all of them are ChatGPT. If people learn to be skeptical of fine-sounding content on the net, maybe they'll apply it to humans, too.
    - xg15 4y ago
      Yes, but how would you practically do that? The most basic technique for estimating trust in an answer today is to check the sources, see who said it, why, who is agreeing with them, etc. It some AI just spits out an answer without any references, you cannot do that. You either have to blindly trust the answer, which will be dangerous, or you'll have to blindly distrust the answer, at which point the AI will be useless.
      - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Step 1: No sources? No trust. Step 2: Sources? Check them. Do they exist at all? Do they say what the thing in question says they say? Step 3: Check for other (non-cited) sources that confirm what the cited sources say. Check for other sources that dispute it.
        rgrieselhuber 4y ago
        Also, who funded the sources and what biases do they have?
  - Cyberdog 4y ago
    > But I think even finding out is a long way away. The main thing that ChatGPT has nailed is glibness. It produces text that sounds authoritative, whether or not it's correct. And it's often incorrect. Perfect example I found a while back: If you know Chinese or Japanese, ask ChatGPT for the stroke order of a certain character and watch how confidently it tells you how to draw a nonsensical scribble. Even when you ask it for the stroke order of 一, it will tell you to draw a vertical line!
- Out_of_Characte 4y ago
  Regardless of spam, there is another fundamental issue with AI, Accountability. Any text you've read had a real person behind it with real intentions. Malice and greed or honesty and exploration. It would be very difficult to hold an AI accountable for any offence committed on accuracy or honesty. With a person, you can slowly get to the bottom of it and develop a relationship. AI will muddy the waters of people writing and thinking instead of offloading everything to an AI that could do it faster and you'd even evade any responsibility for your text as you could claim that the AI might have inaccuracies and does not reflect your own opinion
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    Very good point.
  - idopmstuff 4y ago
    I don't think what you're saying really applies to SEO articles, though. If you don't get wedding insurance because you read some SEO article that recommends against it, even if the advice is clearly bad, can you really hold them accountable? It's tough for me to imagine you'd win that lawsuit. > With a person, you can slowly get to the bottom of it and develop a relationship. With this kind of content (with most content on the internet, I'd argue), you really can't.
    - Out_of_Characte 4y ago
      I'd agree that there is no significant difference in accountability between content farms and AI. But I think that's burying the lede because what makes HN so appealing to many is the personally written blogposts and experts in specific fields or silly hobby projects. AI has the unique ability to mimick all of that for highly specific audiences with significantly lower cost and effort. This would impact curation efforts of many different user-generated websites and posts and could create a new status quo where a nobody could be treated guilty of AI-Generated articles, SEO hacking and upvote manipulation before entertaining the thought that a natural person could be making their first concerted effort for their reputation and prove their honesty. For now HN is a bastion of conversation across many countries and domains
- specproc 4y ago
  I've already had the SEO guy at work ask me how we might go about influencing model output. What a time to be alive.
  - artificial 4y ago
    Watch, they'll have Kenyans review the output. It'll be human curated AI stuff, wonder if it'll be a new take on curated directories?
- ren_engineer 4y ago
  ChatGPT is trained on those same SEO spam blog posts, so I'm not sure how it solves the fundamental problem. People aren't going to create content for corporate giants to vacuum up as training material for their AI
- nickfromseattle 4y ago
  >Once this kind of AI search becomes the default way we look for information, there won't be a point to creating SEO spam anymore What about creating new, relevant, interesting content that no-one will ever see because search no-longer exists? Will site owners continue to do it knowing AI will crawl it, and never send traffic? Probably....not? How do LLMs of the future get better if website owners are no longer incentivized to create content?

by dazc 4y ago

idopmstuff 4y ago

My guess is that ChatGPT is going to solve the SEO spam problem by changing the way we search for things. Instead of searching for webpages that have information about a topic, we're going to ask an AI. It'll tell you what the pros and cons of wedding insurance are, and because eventually it'll have access to your calendar, it'll tailor that answers to the specifics of the fact that you're having a destination wedding during monsoon season in the area. Once this kind of AI search becomes the default way we look for information, there won't be a point to creating SEO spam anymore. It'll create other problems, of course, but that's the way it goes with new technology.

wpietri 4y ago
> Instead of searching for webpages that have information about a topic, we're going to ask an AI. I think this is probably true for some people, the same sort of person who sees something on Facebook and assumes that it's true. [1] But there are quite a lot of people for whom "according to whom?" is the next question after being told something factual. For them, I think search's job is to find relevant sources and get out of the way. But I think even finding out is a long way away. The main thing that ChatGPT has nailed is glibness. It produces text that sounds authoritative, whether or not it's correct. And it's often incorrect. People may try ChatGPT search out of novelty or because it feels human. But if they depend on it and feel the real-world impact of a confidently wrong answer, they're going to treat it as a human that's untrustworthy. A blowhard, a liar, a fool. So I'm sure the major search players are going to be very cautious rolling out chat-like things. Google has spent decades building up consumer trust, and the don't need a zillion articles about people who a too-confident chat steered wrong. [1] E.g., That men in white vans are kidnappers: vhttps://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/tech/facebook-white-vans/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/04/tech/facebook-white-vans/inde...
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  > But if they depend on it and feel the real-world impact of a confidently wrong answer, they're going to treat it as a human that's untrustworthy. A blowhard, a liar, a fool. Maybe that's good. There are glib liars on the net, and not all of them are ChatGPT. If people learn to be skeptical of fine-sounding content on the net, maybe they'll apply it to humans, too.
  - xg15 4y ago
    Yes, but how would you practically do that? The most basic technique for estimating trust in an answer today is to check the sources, see who said it, why, who is agreeing with them, etc. It some AI just spits out an answer without any references, you cannot do that. You either have to blindly trust the answer, which will be dangerous, or you'll have to blindly distrust the answer, at which point the AI will be useless.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      Step 1: No sources? No trust. Step 2: Sources? Check them. Do they exist at all? Do they say what the thing in question says they say? Step 3: Check for other (non-cited) sources that confirm what the cited sources say. Check for other sources that dispute it.
      - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
        Also, who funded the sources and what biases do they have?
- Cyberdog 4y ago
  > But I think even finding out is a long way away. The main thing that ChatGPT has nailed is glibness. It produces text that sounds authoritative, whether or not it's correct. And it's often incorrect. Perfect example I found a while back: If you know Chinese or Japanese, ask ChatGPT for the stroke order of a certain character and watch how confidently it tells you how to draw a nonsensical scribble. Even when you ask it for the stroke order of 一, it will tell you to draw a vertical line!
Out_of_Characte 4y ago
Regardless of spam, there is another fundamental issue with AI, Accountability. Any text you've read had a real person behind it with real intentions. Malice and greed or honesty and exploration. It would be very difficult to hold an AI accountable for any offence committed on accuracy or honesty. With a person, you can slowly get to the bottom of it and develop a relationship. AI will muddy the waters of people writing and thinking instead of offloading everything to an AI that could do it faster and you'd even evade any responsibility for your text as you could claim that the AI might have inaccuracies and does not reflect your own opinion
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Very good point.
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  I don't think what you're saying really applies to SEO articles, though. If you don't get wedding insurance because you read some SEO article that recommends against it, even if the advice is clearly bad, can you really hold them accountable? It's tough for me to imagine you'd win that lawsuit. > With a person, you can slowly get to the bottom of it and develop a relationship. With this kind of content (with most content on the internet, I'd argue), you really can't.
  - Out_of_Characte 4y ago
    I'd agree that there is no significant difference in accountability between content farms and AI. But I think that's burying the lede because what makes HN so appealing to many is the personally written blogposts and experts in specific fields or silly hobby projects. AI has the unique ability to mimick all of that for highly specific audiences with significantly lower cost and effort. This would impact curation efforts of many different user-generated websites and posts and could create a new status quo where a nobody could be treated guilty of AI-Generated articles, SEO hacking and upvote manipulation before entertaining the thought that a natural person could be making their first concerted effort for their reputation and prove their honesty. For now HN is a bastion of conversation across many countries and domains
specproc 4y ago
I've already had the SEO guy at work ask me how we might go about influencing model output. What a time to be alive.
- artificial 4y ago
  Watch, they'll have Kenyans review the output. It'll be human curated AI stuff, wonder if it'll be a new take on curated directories?
ren_engineer 4y ago
ChatGPT is trained on those same SEO spam blog posts, so I'm not sure how it solves the fundamental problem. People aren't going to create content for corporate giants to vacuum up as training material for their AI
nickfromseattle 4y ago
>Once this kind of AI search becomes the default way we look for information, there won't be a point to creating SEO spam anymore What about creating new, relevant, interesting content that no-one will ever see because search no-longer exists? Will site owners continue to do it knowing AI will crawl it, and never send traffic? Probably....not? How do LLMs of the future get better if website owners are no longer incentivized to create content?