Yesterday, Microsoft announced that they integrated ChatGPT into search, which I know is not how you expected this article to begin... but here we are. It's been a topic I've been following for some time given that so much of what I've developed in terms of skillset, has been utilizing search engine optimization best methods and practices.
I use this not just for the website I manage, but also, for other ones I've helped move forward and grow. It's a process that's far from rocket science, and is more or less, just optimizing user interface to present the best possible user experience. For instance, instead of an empty sidebar on a website, you put an ad or a best-of list. Things you missed! Top Featured Articles of the week! Look at all these things you must read! Stuff to commodify your attention with clicky-dos all for a fraction of a penny in ad revenue.
Modern SEO based on UI is a method that's picked up in popularity as of late thanks to a multitude of applications that have come and grown these past few years. It's also become popular because of video games - a space where UI has become essential thanks to the multitudes of releases that have to feel and interact differently from one another (think Playstation controller versus a mouse and keyboard) but also, because of how available mobile games have grown... along with the ad revenue they bring with it.
From Candy Crush to Pokemon Go... so much of that industry was just... fun ways of laying out a system. Stuff to efficiently organize and grab people's attention via click-methods and menus. It was kind of like organizing an attache case in the original Resident Evil games. Or, for those more meticulously minded, getting your thrills by checking off digital to-do lists.
This new form of AI more-or-less is changing how internet searches will work.
Previously, much of this space relied on a clean interface and organizable data for a bot to crawl and index, and understand. But now? It's a lot less about what a robot finds and presents for a user to pick up, as much as it is, about what you do to engage with the robot, with it taking from these spaces, and delivering a presentation to the user based on language models and what the AI finds as popular talking points. Not necessarily factual, mind you, but definitely clickable... which is sort of the BuzzFeed style of digital journalism popularized this past decade.
Journalism will change. A lot of the query-driven searches (so... all of journalism) will no longer drive traffic compared to actually having unique stories and news. Having a voice, and better yet an actual diverse team of writers, will help because the stories will become more about the people writing it, if not equally than in as much as, it is about the actual subject material.
Marketing, will focus less on keywords and search queries, compared to having already bits of data ready for an AI to absorb and recount later to a user. Search is no longer about the person now. It's about what data an AI can deliver to your doorstep. It's about what's most addictive about the language culture of today to get you to stay on board with a product.
The thing most places are too afraid to tell you is that a large chunk of these layoffs are partially inspired by this new reality.
Yes, there were redundant and over-hired sections of the job market today for certain, all for promises of growth that never came to pass, but the part that I think most of us see in terms of the writing on the wall: is that the AI bot can push out this addictive clickbait content drivel faster than any human can.
And while it's got a slew of fact-check problems... what you're witnessing now is only the beginning. Machine learning? Well, that's something I think most people are taking for granted - the idea that it's learning and will get better and make a lot of these types of writing and coding, the basics becoming more or less, redundant.
I dated a mathematician in 2018. She switched out of her Master's program to move into finance before moving away. She sort of warned me this reality was incoming. How machine learning, and by proxy AI, would dominate the market and change everything very soon. That this isn't the type of thing to ignore by a long shot...
Marketing, coding, journalism, and media. We let so much of this side of the industry be dictated by google search and web-based traffic. Everything from your social media hits to your search engine queries is codified and authenticated by a mixture of how many people visit a page, but also, how much engagement it hits on social media. This analysis. This data analytics... which for a while, was sort of the crux of modern web-based industries... will I think, be analyzed and organized using these new AI tools - effectively replacing a lot of how the algorithm worked for the sake of attempting to create a better user experience... by which I mean, what's more addictive and sticky. The kinds of creative content that keep you engaged in an ever-glutenous attention economy.
What you're seeing here is the death of something that's dominated how we've done things for the past 10-plus years. And a new methodology of doing something far better... or far worse...
There was this movie written by Andy Kaufman, one of my favorite screenwriters. It's called... "I'm thinking of Ending Things."
That's how I've been feeling lately. I just want to end things, now. Not in a cry for help so to say as much as it is, I think we need to stop. Or at least, I need to stop... Stop feeling plugged in and sort of dying, the more I realize, things will never get better in the world. Sort of take control of what's right in front of me and let go.
Anyway, I really wanted to see this film when it came out.
I didn't have a chance to because I was busy improving my website's SEO during the heart of the pandemic.
The past five years have been chasing this stability that never felt stable in this kind of writing, doing what everyone asked of me, and trying to chase a thing that never felt genuine.
I think that this is it.
I want to end things.
I want to write stuff that feels genuine.
I want to be okay just being me and sharing with you my truth:
That I think we're all fucked. But we don't have to be...
Anyway, I'm tired of this and am breaking up with the old process. Old me. We're done now. And I'm moving on to something new. Let's go new me and find a new way of doing things.
The robots are here to stay, either way.
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