AI & The Reality of Silicon Valley

The one with the 🤭

Hello everyone!

Let’s dive directly into the topic!

Last year, generative AI took center stage, with ChatGPT becoming the star of the show. After its debut, it swiftly gathered over 100 million monthly users. Industry leaders were touting this as just the tip of the iceberg, implying that generative AI was on the brink of transforming society and could even be a threat to humanity.

However, right from the start, there were numerous reasons to be skeptical of the hype. It wasn't exactly shocking that a free tool would draw in a lot of users, especially with the media's incessant coverage. And there was a lingering question: were the industry's ambitious claims about the technology's potential truly in line with its actual capabilities?

Fast forward to last month, and data from SimilarWeb - the same company that earlier highlighted ChatGPT's rapid user growth - tells a different tale. Just over six months since its launch, ChatGPT's global traffic fell by 9.7% in June, and unique users dropped by 5.7%. Some have tried to justify this decline by suggesting it's due to students finishing school and no longer using the tool for their assignments. However, SimilarWeb's data suggests that the service's growth began to slow down as early as March, well before the June drop.

Source: SimilarWeb

Even if we chalk up the dip in traffic to students not using the tool as much — a notion I'm not entirely sure about — it doesn't look great for a product that's supposedly at the cusp of transforming our lifestyle, work, and digital interactions. In my view, this data hints at the unstable base on which the generative AI excitement has been constructed, indicating that its reputation is more about exaggerated hype than actual promise.

Let's forget about the promised improvements; even the features we used to have are now in worse shape than before. How so?

And the further paper: How Is ChatGPT’s Behavior Changing over Time?

Major players in the tech world, such as Google and Microsoft, are fervently jumping on the bandwagon, infusing their offerings with AI's capability to craft and modify text — a feature that's now in high demand.

The next big breakthrough

When generative AI made its debut at the tail end of 2022, Silicon Valley was in a tough spot. The industry had built its operating model on the premise of low interest rates, but central banks were quickly raising them for the first time in over a decade. This move choked off easy access to capital and shattered the conventional notion of tech companies burning through cash to fuel rapid growth. At the same time, the industry's previous major investments had also crumbled.

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The tech landscape seemed bleak with headlines dominated by layoffs, plunging stock values, and controversies surrounding FTX and Silicon Valley Bank. It felt as if the tech industry was bracing itself for a prolonged period of introspection after facing years of mockery and scrutiny. However, the narrative has shifted. The buzz now revolves around artificial intelligence. Chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google's Bard, as well as astonishing image generators like Dall-E and Midjourney, are the talk of the town.

After the fall of crypto and the metaverse, it was unclear what would fill the gap — but the industry needed something to bolster its position during a slump it hadn't experienced in years. There's a rejuvenated optimism, reminiscent of the era when Steve Jobs transformed the tech world, suggesting that technology is poised to make a significant mark once again. Investors were on the lookout for a fresh idea to spark another wave of investment, and that's when ChatGPT burst onto the scene. So the Tech Giants -GAMAM- need to re-structure their play.

Google re-joins into the game

Let me give some examples from Google, the five kings of Silicon Valley. We know these kings want to be the monopoly, right? Google's ambitious plans to revamp its search engine in the face of the growing excitement around generative AI and chatbots are worth a closer look. We are going to the I/O event, 2023.

The tech giant, which once championed the open web, now seems to be pulling content onto its platform, offering snippets from various websites directly in its search results. This approach might reduce the need for users to visit external sites, but it also allows Google to monetize content that it didn't create. Essentially, Google profits from the work of others, while the original content creators might see a decline in traffic and revenue.

One significant shift in Google's approach is the move from the traditional "10 blue links" to a model where the Search Generative Experience generates an answer, pushing the blue links off the screen.

from here to…

At first glance, this might seem like a user-friendly update. But dig a little deeper, and it's clear that the goal is to keep users within Google's ecosystem for longer by providing direct answers, reducing the need to visit other sources across the web. This shift could potentially limit our exposure to diverse sources of information, which is a concerning prospect.

Looking back at Google's history, it's clear that the tech giant has consistently influenced the open web, from the rise of search engine optimization to the launch of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). While these initiatives are often framed as efforts to improve user experience, they have often served to strengthen Google's control over the web. This pattern of behavior raises questions about the true motivations behind Google's latest plans.

🤓 NK’s two cents

There's also a warning to be heeded about the potential drawbacks of widespread adoption of generative AI tools. If we embrace the vision advocated by companies like Google, we could be heading towards a future where these companies further centralize power and control over our digital experiences. This is a sobering thought, and one that we should all take seriously.

As we navigate the digital future, we need to stay vigilant and question the narratives presented to us. After all, the web should be a space for all, not just a playground for tech giants. It's crucial to ensure that the development and deployment of technologies like generative AI and AI-integrated search are done in a way that benefits everyone, not just a select few.

This move by Google offers a glimpse into the real power dynamics at play in the AI era. It's crucial for us to recognize how companies are leveraging AI to centralize power and reshape our digital experiences. The real concern isn't about futuristic AI scenarios; it's about the tangible actions of corporations today and their implications for our lives.

Extra: Don't fall for the fanfare

Despite the buzz, it's becoming increasingly evident that the transformative potential of generative AI has been overstated. The initial narrative was that it would revolutionize search, specifically enabling Microsoft's Bing to snatch market share from Google by integrating OpenAI's tools into its search engine. However, that didn't happen. If anything, Google's market share has slightly risen.

Image generators continue to face their own set of issues. They're not intelligent, and they can't create anything new. They merely remix versions of the images on which the models have been trained. It would be detrimental to our culture if we allowed AI to dictate the future of human creativity. Even the most hyped chatbots, like ChatGPT, aren't living up to expectations. Regular users have reported that the tool's performance has been deteriorating over time, and recent research seems to support this.

This doesn't mean that generative AI won't have any impact, but it's unlikely to be as transformative as CEOs, investors, and tech enthusiasts would have us believe. The myth of its inevitability and broad applicability will likely be used against workers, particularly at a time when they have an unusual amount of leverage to make demands from their employers. AI could be a tool used to undermine that power.

Once again, the tech industry has misled us in an attempt to consolidate their power and increase their wealth, and much of the media was all too willing to play along. We need to stop falling for Silicon Valley's unfulfilled promises and recognize the deception before it's too late.

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