It’s been a while since a new release has consumed the tech community as much as ChatGPT. It’s the latest offering from OpenAI and is from Elon Musk, who founded it.
This chatbot, trained on massive pools of data and now able to answer any query you might have, gained more than a million users in less than a week. Post after post on Twitter revealed the inanimate interface crafting eloquent, believable prose on whatever topic was asked of it.
Economist Tyler Cowen even got it to write a passable poem in iambic pentameter about economist Thomas Schelling’s theory of deterrence for foreign policy.
ChatGPT isn’t perfect and struggles with facts sometimes, as Joe Weisenthal found when he asked it to write his obituary.
However, The Atlantic columnist Ian Bogost argues that the chatbot is not as good at understanding human language, meaning they are unlikely to generate any satisfying response.
But to Bogost’s boss, Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson, those imperfections won’t hinder the disruption this technology poses to a key part of the internet: search.
The chatbot will soon handle the majority of people’s general queries, leaving Google’s algorithm behind. The move will lead to a faster, more natural search experienceGoogle Assistant is the most popular chatbot on the market and the third-most used app overall, with nearly 100 million active users worldwide. The company plans to make Assistant a standalone app by moving away from Google Search.“We’re focused on building personal assistants that are conversational, who talk naturally and converse in a way that feels like talking to another person.
Rather than spending time googling something, people will ask a chatbot, who’ll give them an immediate answer. and save them time.Just like with automated voice calls, chatbots will be able to do anything that they can do on a website, but on the phone. They’ll also have a natural conversation flow to make it feel like they’re talking to an actual person and not just looking at words on a screen.
Web2 upended
It’s hard to overstate how transformative that idea is. The idea of computers being able to think like people and do the things that we do. The reality, of course, is a bit more complicated than that.
Websites are building themselves on a hierarchy, more visited sites having more power. This ties into the idea of search engines, where you always want to show up in the first page. of search results.This hierarchy is how people are able to find out about new products, services, etc.Business websites want to be more accurate in the information they provide and have better content then the competitors. This is a way for them to gain credibility and an advantage over competition.A website that provides less accurate or poor-quality content on their site will typically rank lower on Google than a website with higher quality content and rankings.
We in digital media have been slaves to SEO for decades, constantly trying to satisfy the ever-changing demands of Google by tweaking the SEO elements of our content posts (headlines, in particular)
But more than just media organizations, this phenomenon is affecting brands and ventures in other industries who are struggling to find their bearings. Google’s search engine algorithms dictate where content goes.
From that structure was built Web2’s core business model: the sale of user data to advertisers who pay fees based on the number of page views, unique visitors, or sessions.
All of that, conceivably, could go away.
Web3’s chance
What does this mean for the cryptocurrency market?
I think we may have just stumbled on the catalyst to take the digital economy into the decentralized Web 3.0 era, creating new and exciting business opportunities for non-fungible tokens (NFT), stablecoin payment systems and metaverse projects.
Open Metaverse enthusiasts are eager to see the emergence of decentralized apps on blockchains. In order to do this, they anticipate that a considerable amount of users will have to adopt the technology in order for it to be successfully implemented.
Could it be that the deployment of digital collectibles in gaming is fueling the digitization trend?
Would it come from household consumer brands and entertainment companies developing direct NFT-based engagement strategies to forge “ownership” relationships with their customers and fans?
Would it lie in the new models of collective value creation and shared intellectual property spearheaded by projects such as Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape Yacht Club?
This major assumption lies in assuming that these Web3 ideas are able to drive the opportunity based on their own intrinsic appeal.
But what has been a problem is that people have always been addicted to or dependent on the communities from this model. We keep going to Facebook because there are more people there.
The possibility of a future without the use of Web3 technology provided by OpenAI is terrifying. The conversion to an alternative web where we have no idea what fate awaits us due to the disruption of Web2 society is a possibility that leaves us all with a sense of dread.
As the all-familiar Web2 ad model is about to get flipped on its head, how can brands and media companies reach their customers & audiences? Maybe through NFTs.
Nike, Starbucks, Anheuser Busch and many other brands have been busy experimenting with NFT for a number of months.
All of them are championed as a new way of connecting more deeply and meaningfully with loyal fans. It could go from being cute ideas to being a viable revenue stream.
All of this together suggests a massive challenge for web 2.0 companies in the near future. There are also fears that AI like ChatGPT may get manipulated and do even more harm to free will than surveillance.
