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It's the natural evolution of content marketing & SEO. I work at an IT company where we have ~15 ppl building and managing a few SaaS apps for the travel indust

It's the natural evolution of content marketing & SEO. I work at an IT company where we have ~15 ppl building and managing a few SaaS apps for the travel industry, and we have 50-60 ppl doing marketing as a service for our customers. They write page after page of content that barely get read. It all just exists to make the google bot happy. And that works. They bring in more customers & revenue apparently. (honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it's all wasted and the added revenue is due to the better website and backoffice, but what do i know.) So it seems only natural to have AI generate that content for the Google bot and stop wasting all this effort. Obviously I can't prove nobody reads this content, but seriously.. A landing page about hot-tubs and how cool it is to have one in your holiday home? Doubt that anyone actually reads that.. EDIT: I guess my point is also: it's already flooded with crap, just look at al the blog spam for things like 'how to start nginx'

sshine 3y ago
1. Good old days, humans talk to humans. 2. Someone invents a bot, humans talk to bots. 3. Someone invents another bot, bots talk to bots. This is the story of SEO, banner ads, stock trading, consumer pricing. There are probably many other cases. The tech help spam: initially an attempt for a bot to talk to a human, but with LLMs crawling search results and aggregating answers, your answer to "how to start nginx" becomes the output of bot-bot interaction: an average of several generated answers (some initially and occasionally by humans).
barbariangrunge 3y ago
Those 60 people can have a new job: fact checking the lies that the new ais produce
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  Why would they? Google sees more content so you now have more nodes connected to you, so you appear higher. Whether it's true or false doesn't matter to Google.
  - anyonecancode 3y ago
    This seems similar to, maybe even a restatement of, the "how do you detect AI-written content" problem. If someone could provide a way to programmatically detect accurate, high quality content, it would solve the SEO spam problem. It would also as a side-effect solve the AI-content problem. Or maybe it's the other way around and it would solve the AI-content problem and as a side effect the SEO spam problem. Well, they'll soon be the exact same thing, and either way I'm not sure it's solvable.
    - unilynx 3y ago
      The detection needs to be almost perfect for it not to be worth it for the AI to simply retry until it's passed the detection.
- gwright 3y ago
  I think it confuses things immensely to anthropomorphize large language models. LLMs don't lie or tell the truth they just spit out text that is in alignment with the training model. Don't give them agency they don't have.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Yes and when you’re using “serverless” services there are actually servers running somewhere. At this point, it’s not insightful for someone to mention either on HN.
    - gwright 3y ago
      If we are going to expand the discussion to general inaccuracy in human communication we are going to need a much larger thread. I do agree with you that "serverless" is a misnomer and not a useful technical term. I'm guessing the marketing team wasn't fond of "dynamically provisioned and auto-scaled pool of virtual machine instance-based services".
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        So then should we also get rid of terms like “bugs in code”, “viruses” as it relates to computers, etc? In a technical forum, most people have the domain specific knowledge and the “well actually” is not actually needed.
  - homami 3y ago
    I don't lie either. I just spit out words that is in alignment with my mental model for optimizing my future.
    - what-wait 3y ago
      Quoting someone on the internet, saying: 'They are just liquidating their assets.' Their lies are simple: they rule us. (-;
    - 3y ago
- echelon 3y ago
  They can become AI-empowered content creators. Their own Miyazakis, Scorseses, and Eilishes. [1] [1] This isn't sarcasm. I think that's the world we're headed to. Hundreds of thousands of little creators serving their own unique niches. A world without Disney.
- taberiand 3y ago
  If an article is posted to a blog, and nobody is there to read it, does it even matter if it lies? What they want is to optimise the ranking Google gives them. If Google's ranking filters out falsehoods then lies can be optimised away automatically.
- tacocataco 3y ago
  Jobs to fact check the lies profit motivated humans generate should already exist.
dayvid 3y ago
The reason I can't stand ChatGPT answers is that it's trained on overly wordy SEO articles that need at least 500 words

sshine 3y ago

1. Good old days, humans talk to humans. 2. Someone invents a bot, humans talk to bots. 3. Someone invents another bot, bots talk to bots. This is the story of SEO, banner ads, stock trading, consumer pricing. There are probably many other cases. The tech help spam: initially an attempt for a bot to talk to a human, but with LLMs crawling search results and aggregating answers, your answer to "how to start nginx" becomes the output of bot-bot interaction: an average of several generated answers (some initially and occasionally by humans).

barbariangrunge 3y ago

Those 60 people can have a new job: fact checking the lies that the new ais produce

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Why would they? Google sees more content so you now have more nodes connected to you, so you appear higher. Whether it's true or false doesn't matter to Google.
- anyonecancode 3y ago
  This seems similar to, maybe even a restatement of, the "how do you detect AI-written content" problem. If someone could provide a way to programmatically detect accurate, high quality content, it would solve the SEO spam problem. It would also as a side-effect solve the AI-content problem. Or maybe it's the other way around and it would solve the AI-content problem and as a side effect the SEO spam problem. Well, they'll soon be the exact same thing, and either way I'm not sure it's solvable.
  - unilynx 3y ago
    The detection needs to be almost perfect for it not to be worth it for the AI to simply retry until it's passed the detection.
gwright 3y ago
I think it confuses things immensely to anthropomorphize large language models. LLMs don't lie or tell the truth they just spit out text that is in alignment with the training model. Don't give them agency they don't have.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Yes and when you’re using “serverless” services there are actually servers running somewhere. At this point, it’s not insightful for someone to mention either on HN.
  - gwright 3y ago
    If we are going to expand the discussion to general inaccuracy in human communication we are going to need a much larger thread. I do agree with you that "serverless" is a misnomer and not a useful technical term. I'm guessing the marketing team wasn't fond of "dynamically provisioned and auto-scaled pool of virtual machine instance-based services".
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      So then should we also get rid of terms like “bugs in code”, “viruses” as it relates to computers, etc? In a technical forum, most people have the domain specific knowledge and the “well actually” is not actually needed.
- homami 3y ago
  I don't lie either. I just spit out words that is in alignment with my mental model for optimizing my future.
  - what-wait 3y ago
    Quoting someone on the internet, saying: 'They are just liquidating their assets.' Their lies are simple: they rule us. (-;
  - 3y ago
echelon 3y ago
They can become AI-empowered content creators. Their own Miyazakis, Scorseses, and Eilishes. [1] [1] This isn't sarcasm. I think that's the world we're headed to. Hundreds of thousands of little creators serving their own unique niches. A world without Disney.
taberiand 3y ago
If an article is posted to a blog, and nobody is there to read it, does it even matter if it lies? What they want is to optimise the ranking Google gives them. If Google's ranking filters out falsehoods then lies can be optimised away automatically.
tacocataco 3y ago
Jobs to fact check the lies profit motivated humans generate should already exist.

dayvid 3y ago

The reason I can't stand ChatGPT answers is that it's trained on overly wordy SEO articles that need at least 500 words