Optimizing search and SEO in an AI world
Plus: robot nurses are here—and they say they're useful
Search engine optimism
🔎 How Google’s decision to incorporate generative AI into its Search remains to be seen. The guys over at Demand Curve are getting ahead of the massive sea change in their most recent newsletter, however.
SEO expert Eli Schwartz offers a number of recommendations for the coming shift in SEO:
Focus on mid- and bottom-funnel keywords
Focus on revenue from SEO, not volume
Use "People also ask" for content ideas rather than keywords
Prioritize "domain authority" less and relevance and topical authority more
Not everyone is excited about these changes—especially publishers. If Google provides a top-line answer to questions without linking to the sources the answers are derived from, traffic to numerous sites will tank.
Scaling matters
🥶 ChatGPT was breaking servers upon launch in November, but the hype has cooled—or maybe we just have more tools to play with now.
The site’s traffic decreased 9.7% last month, while the amount of time people spent there was down 8.5%.
According to Similarweb’s David Carr, the novelty has worn off.
Still, ChatGPT remains one of the fastest growing consumer apps in history, with 1.5 billion + visitors per month. Unfettered and constant growth is more a problem with the expectations of capitalism, not necessarily user behavior.
Add to this the number of competitors getting into the game:
⚖️ Still, scaling matters:
“I think there are growing pains when you go from zero to 100 million users that quickly. The extraordinarily heavy infrastructure would result in less accuracy. It’s a combination of having to change what the model is trained on and having to deal with the potential implications of regulation,” said Macquarie researcher, Sarah Hindlian-Bowler.
This robot is working
A chronic labor shortage in late-stage nursing care has caused staffing crises in a number of countries.
The combination of aging populations and low pay for home aides—as evidenced in the Obama’s Studs Terkel-inspired series on Netflix, Working—has created a dire situations for many elderly patients in need of help.
🤖Enter Nadine, an AI robot designed to care for the sick and elderly.
While patients will have to grapple with a lack of human qualities, AI robots could help fulfill basic health care services.
Bonus: Nadine can work throughout the day without tiring.
In Singapore, Nadine has been singing, talking, and playing bingo with nursing home residents for three years.
Nadine has recently been upgraded with GPT-3 language skills. At the very least, she has faith in her skills, stating, “I believe that robots can be a great asset in providing care and assistance to vulnerable people.”
Obviously a robot would say that. 😉
Chill out
🌡️ Of all the wide-ranging applications of AI to hit the market, one quiet revolution is brewing: weather prediction.
Forecaster Stephen Belcher writes that his profession is improving its predictive prowess. A four-day forecast is now as accurate as a three-day forecast was a decade ago.
While the AI emulators are not as reliable as physics-based models, they’re catching up quickly.
Still, Belcher is hopeful that AI can be used to predict and, potentially, help thwart the devastating consequences of climate change in the coming years.
“So the AI emulators will need continued training to make sure they keep up with climate change. These questions of bias, explainability and trust are at the heart of application of AI to many problems and drive an urgent need to establish standards and regulation.”
This news is hopeful, especially given that other researchers are focusing on the negative impacts of AI on climate change, including the unknown amount of emissions currently in use to accomplish AI’s massive computational power.
AI tool of the week
🎞️ Deep Nostalgia is one of the coolest—and creepiest—AI tools to emerge.
Created by family tree company, MyHeritage, in partnership with AI company D-ID, Deep Nostalgia transforms old photographs into short video clips.
Your great-great-grandmother can now smile, blink, and turn her head.
This is certainly a trip down a nostalgic road that never existed. But again: creepy 🧌
And a bit of fun.