{"id":84400,"date":"2023-08-25T04:00:13","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T08:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=84400"},"modified":"2023-08-24T18:40:48","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T22:40:48","slug":"shrinking-traffic-is-always-a-bad-sign-but-especially-if-your-technology-is-touted-as-the-biggest-breakthrough-of-the-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/08\/25\/shrinking-traffic-is-always-a-bad-sign-but-especially-if-your-technology-is-touted-as-the-biggest-breakthrough-of-the-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Shrinking traffic “is always a bad sign – but especially if your technology is touted as the biggest breakthrough of the century”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t know about anyone else, but with every site I visit these days seeming to be eager that I try out their new AI, I’m deep in AI-fatigue. Ted Gioia<\/a> says that unlike all expectations, demand for AI seems to be shinking<\/em> rather than growing:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The AI hype is collapsing faster than the bouncy house after a kid’s birthday<\/a>. Nothing has turned out the way it was supposed to.<\/p>\n

For a start, take a look at Microsoft \u2014 which made the biggest bet on AI. They were convinced that AI would enable the company’s Bing search engine to surpass Google.<\/p>\n

They spent $10 billion dollars<\/a> to make this happen.<\/p>\n

And now we have numbers to measure the results. Guess what? Bing’s market share hasn’t grown at all<\/a>. Bing’s share of search It’s still stuck at a lousy 3%.<\/p>\n

In fact, it has dropped slightly since the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n

What’s wrong? Everybody was supposed to prefer AI over conventional search. And it turns out that nobody cares<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What makes this especially revealing is that Google search results are abysmal nowadays. They have filled them to the brim with garbage. If Google was ever vulnerable, it’s right now.<\/p>\n

But AI hasn’t made a dent.<\/p>\n

Of course, Google has tried to implement AI too. But the company’s Bard AI bot made embarrassing errors at its very first demo<\/a>, and continues to do bizarre things\u2014such as touting the benefits of genocide and slavery<\/a>, or putting Hitler and Stalin on its list of greatest leaders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So it’s no surprise that many people are now doing searches at Reddit or TikTok<\/a>, instead of conventional search engines. This could have been Bing’s great opportunity, but instead its AI bot is turning into the next Clippy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Consumers don’t want grotesque AI responses filled with errors and outrageous claims. Who could have guessed it?<\/p>\n

The same decline is happening at ChatGPT’s website. Site traffic is now shrinking<\/a>. This is always a bad sign \u2014 but especially if your technology is touted as the biggest breakthrough of the century.<\/p>\n

If AI really delivered the goods, visitors to ChatGPT should be doubling every few weeks.<\/p>\n

This is what a demand pattern for real innovation looks like.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

How key innovations grew
(source<\/a>)<\/p><\/div>\n

I used to study this stuff for a living \u2014 some people even called me the “King of the S-Curves” back then. (Hey, I’ve been called worse.)<\/p>\n

As you can see, a real tech breakthrough grows at a ridiculously rapid pace in its early days. Look at how fast people adopted radio or the smartphone or electricity. And these required huge investments by consumers.<\/p>\n

But they’re giving AI away for free at Bing \u2014 and it’s not growing at all.<\/p>\n

This is not how consumers respond to transformative technology. The current demand pattern resembles, instead, what we would call a fad<\/em> or craze<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And this is just one warning sign among many.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know about anyone else, but with every site I visit these days seeming to be eager that I try out their new AI, I’m deep in AI-fatigue. Ted Gioia says that unlike all expectations, demand for AI seems to be shinking rather than growing: The AI hype is collapsing faster than the bouncy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,28,15],"tags":[1506,328,94],"class_list":["post-84400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-media","category-technology","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-google","tag-microsoft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-lXi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84400"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84403,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84400\/revisions\/84403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}