How will AI change SEO?

GM! Welcome to The Status Code.

We're like giraffe, gracefully reaching for AI news

Here’s what we have for today:

1. 👨‍⚖️About Sam Altman’s hearing

2. 🤖Robot week for AI

3. 🖇 SEO and Generative AI

(Estimated reading time: 3 minutes 45 seconds)

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Two main stories of last week. If you have only ~2 minutes to spare

1/ 👨‍⚖️Everything you need to know about Sam Altman’s hearing

Sam Altman and two other AI leaders attended a US Senate sub-committee hearing this week. He was with AI thought leader Gary Marcus and Christina Montgomery, IBM’s chief privacy trust officer.

Here's a run-through:

1/ Sam owns no equity in OpenAI

The big surprise from this hearing is that Sam Altman doesn't have equity in OpenAI. Who knew the guy who juggled companies at YC wouldn't have equity in the world's biggest startup today?

Sam said, “I’m doing this because I love it.”

2/ Government intervention needed

Sam wants the government involved in AI regulation. He suggests creating an AI license to regulate and reduce biases.

3/ Tackling climate change and curing cancer

In his first words, Sam's mentioned that they established OpenAI to address climate change and cure cancer. Who wouldn’t love that to happen?

4/ Biggest concern: Significant harm to the world

Sam said this is why they started OpenAI and they'll go above and beyond to prevent it.
He said,” If this technology goes wrong, it could go very wrong!”

5/Predicting illicit behavior for voters

Sam believes AI can manipulate, persuade, and provide one-on-one interaction. Companies can adopt policies to address this.

Some think this hearing was a publicity stunt to save OpenAI from open source.

Sam believes AI licenses can solve the problem .This is because licenses could restrict the spreading of disinformation and discrimination.

This license can become a big headache for many open-source companies in the run. It is because they can diminish the capabilities of open-source models.

Businesses will find it harder to adapt open-source models when there is more formalities in it.

So, we have a Ironman vs. Cap situation.(or should I say Altman)

Facebook and other open-source companies haven't commented on the statements. But, they will if the AI license comes into play.

Licensing could be a bottleneck, even stopping AI development. So, are you on Team Cap or Team Ironman?

2/ 🤖Robot week for AI

This week, a subreddit discussed how AI is taking over call center jobs worldwide.

And, I’ve got five big announcements to back that up:

1. Sanctuary AI's Humanoid Robots

Canadian company Sanctuary AI revealed their new humanoid robots. Phoenix, the robot, is a "general purpose" robot that can do human tasks just as well as we can.

2. Tesla's Optimus

On the same day, Tesla announced Optimus, another general-purpose humanoid. It's not Optimus Prime, but this robot can also do "human" stuff super efficiently.

3. Amazon's Burnham

Leaked documents showed that Amazon is working on a robot called Burnham. Like the others, it's a general-purpose robot that can:

• Alert people in high-risk situations (like leaving the gas on)

• Remember what it sees

• Monitor movements and suggest solutions

The robot's body is strong, but they're still working on its brains.

4. Google's MedPALM-2

Google's medical AI, MedPALM, got an upgrade this week. MedPALM-2 answers medical questions better than other models. As Google focuses more on medical AI, health assistants might have a hard time keeping their jobs.

AI is starting to replace jobs that require hard work. Let's hope some of these innovations are put to good use.

1 trend you can pounce on. Reading time: ~1 minute 45 seconds

🖇 SEO and Generative AI

Today, I am covering a topic dear to me.

SEO and how Generative AI will change it forever.

SEO is a huge growth channel for companies. Companies spend 10.5% of their marketing budgets on SEO. And no wonder…

It brings them qualified visitors that convert better. Dropbox's Business Landing page converts 2.9% of its visitors to customers.

But it's about to change.

How? Generative AI has opened up SEO's biggest chokepoint - content.

So, this is how SEO works.

Imagine you are looking for a short-term rental near your location for two days. There are four ways you can go about it.

• you can search for specific use-case (e.g., “short-term rentals near me”).

• or if you know about a brand, you’ll search for “Airbnb.”

• you could search for competitors (“Trip.com,” “booking.com”).

• or you could search for specific topics (“How do I find budget-friendly alternatives to hotels?”).

And companies looking to build up their acquisition funnel create content around these keywords. It is to lure you into using their service.

But, because content creation takes time, companies made a meticulous keyword strategy and then used their resources to write content. They didn’t want to waste their resource on low-potential keywords.

However, ChatGPT and a suite of other GenAI tools have upended the scenario. Content Creation is no longer a bottleneck.

You can now afford to adopt an agile approach: create first, then reflect and adjust.

So, search engines like Google must navigate the change and change their algorithms. Because as content mirror each other, the value it provides readers will diminish. It’s basic Information 101.

Google and other search engines approach this problem in multiple ways:

1/ Look for other ranking factors:

One metric Google already checks for is how trusty an individual site is.

For that, they analyze “backlinks” for a website. If many other websites link to articles on your website, Google assumes you publish content that resonates with others.

So, Google thinks your website is trustworthy and can push the content to more people. Therefore, websites with more backlinks and off-page factors will likely win in the new world.

2/ Social factors and author ranking:

How Google analyzes content might also change.

Google must find other signals since it will be difficult for Google to differentiate based on content.

It’s difficult to find out whether GPT-4 wrote an article or a real human did.

Google must find other signals.

One way would be ranking authors based on their reach, previous articles, or social channels. Or Google could check individual articles for their retention rate, how they are shared, and time spent. This could be similar to how Social Media companies rank their articles.

But there’s a caveat.

Social Media channels control the content and their analysis. Google doesn’t.

We may have a scenario where Google compels websites to put in Google Analytics to rank better. It has a perfect rationale: with proper analytics, it will have enough signals to rank content.

🦾What happened this week

• Cyborg Content released their AI blog post writer

• Results from comparison between BARD & ChatGPT

• ChatGPT excelled at trading

• Roon’s wrote his thoughts on AGI futures

• Meta unveiled its custom AI chip

• OpenAI launched ChatGPT app for iOS

• Stability AI’s StableStudio ulatest commitment to open-source AI

💰Funding Roundup

• Together, a GenAI startup raised $20M in a seed funding round

• Union.ai , a data company raised $19.1M in Series A funding

• Sightful Debuts AR Laptop with a Fresh $33 Million Funding Round

• HippocraticAI, a healthcare model company raised $50M in seed funding

• Workhack, an AI deployment company raised $1.5M in funding round

• Staffing Startup Instawork Raises $60M To Expand AI Tech

• Mitiga Solutions, raised €13.25M in Series A funding

• Incentivio lands $10M n funding for their restaurant AI

🐤Tweet of the week

😂 Meme of the week

That’s it for this week, folks! If you want more, be sure to follow our Twitter (@CallMeAIGuy)

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