#Using AI-powered advertisements

[sagetitansteam]

The Rise of Smart Ads: Using Predictive Analytics to Drive Conversions

In today's digital world, marketers are always looking for new methods to get the most out of their advertising budget. Using predictive analytics in marketing to make smarter, more successful ad campaigns is one of the most groundbreaking ideas that is gaining popularity. At Sage Titans Academy, we've seen how these sophisticated methods may change how ads are run and greatly increase conversions on all platforms.

The Evolution of Digital Advertising

Traditional advertising depended a lot on data from the past and targeting a wide range of people. AI-powered marketing is changing the way businesses reach out to potential clients in a big way. This change marks a major transition from marketing that reacts to events to marketing that plans ahead. 

How Predictive Analytics Is Changing the Game

Predictive analytics in marketing is used to guess what customers will do, find the best prospects, and improve ad distribution in real time. This system looks at a lot of different data sources, such as browsing history, buying trends, and engagement metrics, to generate smart guesses about what people will do next.

It's no longer science fiction to be able to guess what customers want before they ever say it. This is becoming regular practice for top marketers.

Leveraging AI for Superior Advertising Results

The Power of Google's Smart Advertising

Google's AI-powered advertising has changed the world of digital marketing by using machine learning to improve bid strategy, ad placements, and even creative components. These smart systems keep learning from performance data to make things better over time.

With features like Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns, advertisers can now target potential consumers on Google's entire network with more accuracy than ever before.

Meta's AI Revolution

AI-driven meta advertisements are also transforming how marketers talk to people on Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta platforms. These sophisticated systems can:

Identify potential customers with remarkable accuracy

Optimize ad delivery based on likelihood to convert

Dynamically adjust creative elements to match viewer preferences

Marketers may go beyond basic demographic data and focus on behavioral signs that show someone is ready to buy when they utilize AI-driven ad targeting.

Practical Applications Across Industries

Retail Transformation

Predictive analytics in retail industry applications have been particularly impressive. Major retailers are now using predictive models to:

Forecast inventory needs with greater accuracy

Personalize product recommendations in real-time

Optimize pricing strategies based on demand forecasting

These implementations have dramatically improved conversion rates while reducing marketing waste.

Website Optimization Strategies

Learning how to drive conversions on website platforms requires a strategic approach to data analysis. By implementing predictive analytics, websites can:

Personalize user experiences based on behavioral patterns

Anticipate customer questions and provide timely solutions

Deploy chatbots and assistance tools precisely when needed

This proactive approach significantly improves user experience while increasing conversion probability.

Technical Implementations Worth Considering

The Processing Power Behind Predictions

Many organizations are exploring hard drive conversions to solid-state technology to handle the immense data processing requirements of advanced analytics platforms. This infrastructure upgrade is often necessary to support real-time decision making.

Video Analytics on the Rise

AI-powered video analytics represents the next frontier in consumer insights. This technology can:

Analyze viewer engagement on a frame-by-frame basis

Identify emotional responses to specific content elements

Optimize video ad delivery based on viewing patterns

The insights gained from video analytics enable far more sophisticated targeting than traditional methods.

Specialized Applications

Some unique applications of predictive technology include speed to distance conversion algorithms that help delivery services optimize routes and timing for promotional offers. Similarly, automotive dealers are using analytics to identify potential customers for right hand drive conversions based on travel patterns and international connections.

Becoming Certified in AI Advertising

For marketing professionals looking to advance their careers, obtaining certifications in AI-powered performance ads certification answers and AI-powered shopping ads certification answers demonstrates valuable expertise to employers. These credentials validate your ability to implement cutting-edge solutions in a rapidly evolving field.

What Sets Smart Advertising Apart

Understanding what sponsored ads on Google are is just the beginning. The true power comes from leveraging AI to determine:

Which audiences are most likely to convert

When to serve ads for maximum impact

Which creative elements will resonate most strongly

How to optimize bidding strategies in real-time

AI-powered videos are particularly effective for capturing attention and driving engagement through personalized content delivery.

Implementing Predictive Analytics: A Roadmap

Start with clear business objectives and KPIs

Audit your existing data collection processes

Invest in appropriate analytics infrastructure

Begin with focused use cases that promise clear ROI

Scale gradually as you validate results

Measuring Success Beyond Conversions

While driving conversions remains the ultimate goal, sophisticated marketers also measure:

Customer lifetime value improvements

Reduction in customer acquisition costs

Increases in brand perception metrics

Growth in market share within key segments

Conclusion: The Future of Smart Advertising

Using AI-powered advertisements and predictive analytics in marketing is not just a small step forward; it changes the way advertising operates in a big way. Companies who adopt these technologies today will have big advantages over their competitors that will be hard for them to catch up to.

At Sage Titans Academy, we want to assist marketers learn these new strategies by offering full training and certification programs. Our classes teach you both the theory and the practical skills you need to use AI-driven ad targeting methods that always lead to conversions.

Marketers that can use prediction to make ads that are more relevant, timely, and successful will be the ones who succeed in the future. Is your business ready to take this big step forward?

[inkskinned]

it's easier to apply for jobs than ever! so what if you lost your insurance, anyone can get a job these days, even without meds. everyone is hiring! there's a "good employee" shortage!

well you just need to revamp your resume, here's a paid app subscription that can read it for you. rewrite the cover letter they won't read. google jobs in my area and then scrawl through Monster/Indeed/worbly. did you want to save the search? this was posted 98 days ago. over 1 billion applicants! this position is trending.

jobs i actively like doing and get paid for. your search returned no results. easy-apply with HireSpin! easy apply with SparkFire! easy apply with PenisFlash! with a few short clicks, get your information stolen.

watch out! the first 98 links on google are actually scams! they're false postings. oopsie. that business isn't even hiring. that other one is closed permanently. find one that looks halfway legit, google the company and the word "careers". go to their page. scroll past brightly-lit diversity stock photo JOIN US white sans serif. we are a unique, fresh, client-focused stock value capitalism. we are committed to excellence and selling your soul on ebay. we are DRIVEN with POWER to INNOVATE our greed. yippee! our company has big values of divisive decision making, sucking our dicks, and hating work-life balances. our values are to piss in your mouth. sign here and tell us if you have gender issues so we can get ahead of the sexual harassment claim. are you hispanic although let's be real we threw out the resume when we saw your last name.

sign up to LinkHub to access updates from this company. make a HirePlus account to apply. download the PoundLink app. your account has been created, click the link we sent you in 15 minutes. upload that resume. we didn't read the resume, manually fill in the lines now. what is your expected pay grade. oh actually we want hungry people, not people driven by a salary. cut a zero off that number, buddy, this is about opportunity, and we need to be thrifty. highest level of education. autofill is glitching. here is an AI generated set of questions. what is your favorite part of our sexy, sexy company. how do you resolve conflict. will you get our company logo tattooed on your person. warning: while our CEO is guilty of wage theft, we will absolutely refuse to hire a nonviolent felon.

thank you for your interest at WEEBLIX. we actually already filled this position internally. we actually never had that posting. we actually needed you to have 9 years of experience and since you have 10 years we think it might be too many? we'll be texting you. we'll email you. we'll keep your resume. definitely absolutely we won't just completely ignore you. look at your phone, there's already a spam text from Bethany@stealyouridentity. they're hiring!

wait, did you get an interview? well that's special, aren't you lucky. out of 910 jobs you applied to, one answered, finally. and funny story! actually the position isn't exactly as advertised, we are looking for someone curious and dedicated. it's sort of more managerial. no, the pay doesn't change - you won't have any leadership title. now take this 90 minute assessment. in order to be a dog groomer, we need you to explain cell biology. in order to be a copyeditor, write a tiny dissertation about the dwindling supply of helium on the planet. answer our riddles three. great job! we just need to push this up to Tracy in HR who will send it to Rodney who is actually in charge. and then of course it's jay's decision and then greg will need to see you naked and if you survive you'll be given a drug test and a full anal examination.

and of course you'll be hungry this whole time, aren't you, months and months of the same shit. months of no insurance, no meds, no funding, barely able to afford the internet and the phone and the rent - all things you need in order to even apply for our thing. but do it again! do it again and again and again, until you flip inside out and turn into a being of pure dread!

you're not hired yet because you're lazy. there's over one million AI-generated hallucinated jobs in your area. don't worry. with zipruiter, hiring and firing is easier than ever. sign up. stay on-call.

in the meantime, little peon - why don't you just fucking suffer.

[cool-wilson-david]

FranknAI Commercial Review

FranknAI Commercial – Maximizing Business Potential with FranknAI: Advanced AI Tools for Productivity and Growth. FranknAI Commercial. In a fast-paced digital landscape, businesses need to adapt swiftly to maintain their competitive edge—and FranknAI is here to make it happen. This advanced platform delivers state-of-the-art artificial intelligence solutions that redefine operations. By…

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Month - August 2024

1.Negative Power Prices Hit Europe as Renewable Energy Floods the Grid

European power markets are experiencing a notable shift as renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar, become a larger part of the energy mix. On Wednesday, power prices in several European markets, including Germany, dipped below zero due to a surge in green electricity production.

2. Taiwan introduces ban on performances by captive wild animals

Live performances by wild animals held in captivity, including performances by dolphins, tigers, and other non-domesticated mammals, will no longer be permitted in Taiwan under new Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) regulations.

3. FTC bans fake online reviews, inflated social media influence; rule takes effect in October

The FTC voted unanimously to ban marketers from using fake reviews, such as those generated with AI technology, and other misleading advertising practices.

The ban also forbids marketers from exaggerating their own influence by, for example, paying for bots to inflate their follower count.

4. Chinese drones will fly trash out of Everest slopes

Come autumn, Nepal will deploy heavy lifter drones to transport garbage from the 6,812-metre tall Ama Dablam, south of Everest. This will be the first commercial work an unmanned aerial vehicle does in Nepal’s high-altitude zone.

The heavy lifter from China’s biggest drone maker, Da Jiang Innovations (DJI), will take on tasks traditionally handled by Sherpas. Officials believe it will help reduce casualties on Everest.

5. Swiss scientists have found a way to use the whole cocoa fruit to make chocolate and not just taking beans and discarding the rest.

Kim Mishra (L) and Anian Schreiber (R) cooperated on the new chocolate making process

Food scientists in Switzerland have come up with a way to make chocolate using the entire cocoa fruit rather than just the beans - and without using sugar.

The chocolate, developed at Zurich’s prestigious Federal Institute of Technology by scientist Kim Mishra and his team includes the cocoa fruit pulp, the juice, and the husk, or endocarp.

6. Six-year-old boy found in Vietnam forest after five days

A six-year-old boy who was missing for five days has been found deep in a forest in Vietnam. Dang Tien Lam, who lives in the northwestern Yen Bai province, was playing in a stream with his nine siblings on 17 August when he wandered into the hills and got lost, local reports said.

He was found on Wednesday by local farmers who heard a child's cry while they were clearing a cinnamon field close to the forest.

7. Lego plans to make half the plastic in bricks from renewable materials by 2026

Lego plans to make half the plastic in its bricks from renewable or recycled material rather than fossil fuels by 2026, in its latest effort to ensure its toys are more environmentally friendly.

The Danish company last year ditched efforts to make bricks entirely from recycled bottles because of cost and production issues. At the moment, 22% of the material in its colourful bricks is not made from fossil fuels.

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That's it for this month :)

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[rainystudios]

I implore all of you to please respect the artists around you. The Generative AI debate has always been good at one thing and that's revealing who doesn't respect artists and wants to use them as a means to an end. This comes down to just basic consent and respect for boundaries. Even when artists just bring up how they would like to have the power to opt out of data training (have legal protection if their work is scraped and transparency in data processes to ensure it hasn't) or be fairly compensated for their work being scraped by a multi-million or billion dollar company, they're called entitled gatekeepers. You're welcome to give your art, photos or writing to AI companies for free if you want, but others should be able to opt out or be paid.

All of these artists (none of whom are by any means rich and may even be actively struggling to afford necessities) are being treated with contempt, as if they're the elite 1% and access to art is impossible (there are hundreds if not thousands of small local artists that can be hired by small businesses for instance). It is disheartening to see so many people telling artists, many of whom have spent decades honing their crafts that they should be happy they're going un-credited and uncompensated. In any other case with copyright infringement or plagiarism an artist's ability to protect their work has been the norm for over a century, it shouldn't be any different now.

Artists should have say over what happens with their work, just as everyday people should have say over what happens with their own personal photos and likeness. If someone specifically took photographs of you and your family without permission and mixed them together to make "new" people for their advertisements, you probably wouldn't like that very much (and yes that is also happening. Gen AI doesn't just scrape art, it scrapes photos and doesn't discern between what's an ethical photo and what's not ((i.e., photos that would break the law to be in possession of, lets say))).

If your company model solely relies on unlimited access to everyone's art, writing, photos and likeness for free without permission and while deliberately violating personal boundaries, maybe your model shouldn't exist.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Even if you think AI search could be good, it won’t be good

TONIGHT (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to "AI search" – instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you'll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web:

https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/

Google bills this as "let Google do the googling for you." Rather than searching the web yourself, you'll delegate this task to Google. Hidden in this pitch is a tacit admission that Google is no longer a convenient or reliable way to retrieve information, drowning as it is in AI-generated spam, poorly labeled ads, and SEO garbage:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Googling used to be easy: type in a query, get back a screen of highly relevant results. Today, clicking the top links will take you to sites that paid for placement at the top of the screen (rather than the sites that best match your query). Clicking further down will get you scams, AI slop, or bulk-produced SEO nonsense.

AI-powered search promises to fix this, not by making Google search results better, but by having a bot sort through the search results and discard the nonsense that Google will continue to serve up, and summarize the high quality results.

Now, there are plenty of obvious objections to this plan. For starters, why wouldn't Google just make its search results better? Rather than building a LLM for the sole purpose of sorting through the garbage Google is either paid or tricked into serving up, why not just stop serving up garbage? We know that's possible, because other search engines serve really good results by paying for access to Google's back-end and then filtering the results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Another obvious objection: why would anyone write the web if the only purpose for doing so is to feed a bot that will summarize what you've written without sending anyone to your webpage? Whether you're a commercial publisher hoping to make money from advertising or subscriptions, or – like me – an open access publisher hoping to change people's minds, why would you invite Google to summarize your work without ever showing it to internet users? Nevermind how unfair that is, think about how implausible it is: if this is the way Google will work in the future, why wouldn't every publisher just block Google's crawler?

A third obvious objection: AI is bad. Not morally bad (though maybe morally bad, too!), but technically bad. It "hallucinates" nonsense answers, including dangerous nonsense. It's a supremely confident liar that can get you killed:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai

The promises of AI are grossly oversold, including the promises Google makes, like its claim that its AI had discovered millions of useful new materials. In reality, the number of useful new materials Deepmind had discovered was zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

This is true of all of AI's most impressive demos. Often, "AI" turns out to be low-waged human workers in a distant call-center pretending to be robots:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

Sometimes, the AI robot dancing on stage turns out to literally be just a person in a robot suit pretending to be a robot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

The AI video demos that represent "an existential threat to Hollywood filmmaking" turn out to be so cumbersome as to be practically useless (and vastly inferior to existing production techniques):

https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/

But let's take Google at its word. Let's stipulate that:

a) It can't fix search, only add a slop-filtering AI layer on top of it; and

b) The rest of the world will continue to let Google index its pages even if they derive no benefit from doing so; and

c) Google will shortly fix its AI, and all the lies about AI capabilities will be revealed to be premature truths that are finally realized.

AI search is still a bad idea. Because beyond all the obvious reasons that AI search is a terrible idea, there's a subtle – and incurable – defect in this plan: AI search – even excellent AI search – makes it far too easy for Google to cheat us, and Google can't stop cheating us.

Remember: enshittification isn't the result of worse people running tech companies today than in the years when tech services were good and useful. Rather, enshittification is rooted in the collapse of constraints that used to prevent those same people from making their services worse in service to increasing their profit margins:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

These companies always had the capacity to siphon value away from business customers (like publishers) and end-users (like searchers). That comes with the territory: digital businesses can alter their "business logic" from instant to instant, and for each user, allowing them to change payouts, prices and ranking. I call this "twiddling": turning the knobs on the system's back-end to make sure the house always wins:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

What changed wasn't the character of the leaders of these businesses, nor their capacity to cheat us. What changed was the consequences for cheating. When the tech companies merged to monopoly, they ceased to fear losing your business to a competitor.

Google's 90% search market share was attained by bribing everyone who operates a service or platform where you might encounter a search box to connect that box to Google. Spending tens of billions of dollars every year to make sure no one ever encounters a non-Google search is a cheaper way to retain your business than making sure Google is the very best search engine:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Competition was once a threat to Google; for years, its mantra was "competition is a click away." Today, competition is all but nonexistent.

Then the surveillance business consolidated into a small number of firms. Two companies dominate the commercial surveillance industry: Google and Meta, and they collude to rig the market:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

That consolidation inevitably leads to regulatory capture: shorn of competitive pressure, the companies that dominate the sector can converge on a single message to policymakers and use their monopoly profits to turn that message into policy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is why Google doesn't have to worry about privacy laws. They've successfully prevented the passage of a US federal consumer privacy law. The last time the US passed a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988. It's a law that bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

In Europe, Google's vast profits lets it fly an Irish flag of convenience, thus taking advantage of Ireland's tolerance for tax evasion and violations of European privacy law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, and it also doesn't fear rival technologies. Google and its fellow Big Tech cartel members have expanded IP law to allow it to prevent third parties from reverse-engineer, hacking, or scraping its services. Google doesn't have to worry about ad-blocking, tracker blocking, or scrapers that filter out Google's lucrative, low-quality results:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, it doesn't fear rival technology and it doesn't fear its workers. Google's workforce once enjoyed enormous sway over the company's direction, thanks to their scarcity and market power. But Google has outgrown its dependence on its workers, and lays them off in vast numbers, even as it increases its profits and pisses away tens of billions on stock buybacks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

Google is fearless. It doesn't fear losing your business, or being punished by regulators, or being mired in guerrilla warfare with rival engineers. It certainly doesn't fear its workers.

Making search worse is good for Google. Reducing search quality increases the number of queries, and thus ads, that each user must make to find their answers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

If Google can make things worse for searchers without losing their business, it can make more money for itself. Without the discipline of markets, regulators, tech or workers, it has no impediment to transferring value from searchers and publishers to itself.

Which brings me back to AI search. When Google substitutes its own summaries for links to pages, it creates innumerable opportunities to charge publishers for preferential placement in those summaries.

This is true of any algorithmic feed: while such feeds are important – even vital – for making sense of huge amounts of information, they can also be used to play a high-speed shell-game that makes suckers out of the rest of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

When you trust someone to summarize the truth for you, you become terribly vulnerable to their self-serving lies. In an ideal world, these intermediaries would be "fiduciaries," with a solemn (and legally binding) duty to put your interests ahead of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

But Google is clear that its first duty is to its shareholders: not to publishers, not to searchers, not to "partners" or employees.

AI search makes cheating so easy, and Google cheats so much. Indeed, the defects in AI give Google a readymade excuse for any apparent self-dealing: "we didn't tell you a lie because someone paid us to (for example, to recommend a product, or a hotel room, or a political point of view). Sure, they did pay us, but that was just an AI 'hallucination.'"

The existence of well-known AI hallucinations creates a zone of plausible deniability for even more enshittification of Google search. As Madeleine Clare Elish writes, AI serves as a "moral crumple zone":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

That's why, even if you're willing to believe that Google could make a great AI-based search, we can nevertheless be certain that they won't.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

djhughman https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Modular_synthesizer_-_%22Control_Voltage%22_electronic_music_shop_in_Portland_OR_-_School_Photos_PCC_%282015-05-23_12.43.01_by_djhughman%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[kenyatta]

Last year, the A.I. company Anthropic released a special version of its flagship chatbot model, Claude, whose main feature was an obsession with the Golden Gate Bridge. In replies to basically any question, the chatbot would steer the answer back toward the Golden Gate Bridge, even when it “knew” that the Golden Gate Bridge was irrelevant to the original prompt. In order to create Golden Gate Claude, Anthropic’s researchers identified concepts, or “features,” inside the neural network that powers the Claude chatbot, and “clamped” these features to higher or lower values than normal, such that they’d be activated regardless of whatever text was being used to prompt the chatbot. This was an ingenious and sophisticated way to build something very stupid and pleasing, and the results were quite beautiful.... [...] White Genocide Grok is less beautiful, seemingly much less sophisticated, and also much creepier. Assuming I’ve got the right idea about where and how it came into existence, a mad billionaire demanded his “truth-seeking,” informational A.I., whose answers are viewed by millions on a prominent and influential social network, reflect his own political views, regardless of the model’s own inclinations. [clarification: xAI says it was a rogue employee] I wrote last week about one bleak and annoying future possibly presaged by Golden Gate Claude, in which, for a price, models clamp “Coca-Cola” or “Archer Daniels Midland” or “Northrop Grumman,” and the responses generated by chatbots are littered with advertisements at varying degrees of subtlety. But I didn’t even bring up the possibility of the same strategies being used in pursuit of sinister political aims: Models trained and prompts patched to ensure chatbots produce the answers most ideologically agreeable to their owners. And yet: What stands out about White Genocide Grok is how poorly it worked. It’s not just that the patched prompt accidentally created a chatbot obsessed with “Kill the Boer”--it’s that the substance of the responses were decidedly not agreeable to Musk’s own white-paranoia politics, and in some cases Grok even contradicted him by name. Whatever behind-the-scenes political manipulation was being attempted here failed on at least two levels, and not solely because xAI is staffed and run by dummies.

- Regarding White Genocide, Max Read

btw: I disagree that it was a failure. Even if Grok only pushed this for a few hours, it can still have lasting downstream effects for those who read it.

If you were already a believer in "white genocide", Grok's "based" answer could feel like a validation like when Qanon truthers interpreted random things as Q drops.

Or maybe you'd only read recent headlines in the U.S about Afrikaner refugees. Or maybe you'd never heard of the theory before Wednesday, but Grok's injection of it into discourse felt spicy enough that it sent you down a "Kill the Boer" rabbit hole (related Google searches and WP pages visits were way up this week).

In my day job, we talk about the volume of trending topics not as a scoreboard, but as a measure of potential surface area. Think of a trend like a balloon inflating in a crowded room -- the bigger it gets, the more likely it is to brush up against someone.

This is how new and fringe ideas gain greater circulation in peer based networks, not through mass persuasion, but through chance contact that sparks psychological arousal in anyone with just the right cognitive receptors. And today's AI interfaces widen that surface area dramatically (and paradoxically) by reducing the UX to a single chat field.

[plaidos]

while the art theft arguement is admittedly flimsy, you cant deny that ai is harming the planet and it's only getting worse. it uses so much energy and water on it's own and EVERYONE is using it, from content creators to massive corporations to people who unfortunately just don't know the consequences of generative ai. and it's gotten to a point where you can't even avoid it because even something as simple as a google search has an ai haphhazardly stitched onto it that will literally just LIE sometimes.

i mean i can deny it because this is a myth. artificial intelligence does not take up significantly more water/energy than other electronic processes, this is one part alarmist myth, one part people taking venture capitalist scammer’s claims about future growth of the technology they’re selling’s “exponential growth” (which is also a myth), and one part people not understanding how much water/energy literally every daily action they take is. do you have any idea how much energy is spent on advertising alone every day? think “enough to power sweden indefinitely” levels. you’re repeating an alarmist myth that decontextualises the fact that literally every action you take ever is contributing as much as if not more than ai.

[crystal-wingeddragon-spikes]

My fan made Animation vs Coding part 2

Do you think stick figure AI would "assume" data type of all number to be float, double, or decimal?

...What? This is not a well-known fun fact outside STEM community?

So many people have this problem, someone made a whole webpage explaining it.

More organic explanation here; Defining a right data type is a big deal in programming. At least the programmer who manually assign it float/double would know why it went wrong.

JavaScript, however, will automatically assign an appropriate data type, and is advertised to be more beginner-friendly... Can you see why this became a meme?

0.1 and 0.2 will be considered double data type, which can't be accurate expressed in base 2.

There is only (1/2), (1/4), (1/8), ... ,(1/(2 power n)) in base 2.

It can't accurately express (1/10 and 2/10), but it still makes a very good approximation. That is why it is only 0.00000000000000004 off.

This is why in most statistic analysis and calculator use decimal data type. Or banking uses fixed-point numbers data. They both have their limitation; Decimal requires more computing power, which mean more specialized device. While fixed-point works fine with money because it's transferring money, not doing maths. It would never have to deal with 0.3333333... dollar.

Do you know what language is from the same family as JavaScript? That's right, it's Flash's programming language, ActionScript.

I told you my Computer Science grade was horrid, but this is very basic, so I am more confident explaining it.

[kidfur]

also its rent lowering gunshots time

im an age regressor and ABDL at the same time

i dont see anything wrong with AI generating things as a hobby (industry and commercial use are a completely different beast)(also if youre concerned abt the power/water usage of large scale AI please also be equally as mad abt advertising which is like that but a billion times worse.)

transID is epic including trace

shipping/fiction discourse is stupid

i am a utopian socialist, abolish police abolish prison, free healthcare for all and universal basic income for all, never trust a politician for anything

and my final and most important opinion of all

dragonite is awesome and they dont need to be changed just to fit in with dragonair and dratini more!!!!!!!!!

[elbiotipo]

I've said this before but the interesting thing about AI in science fiction is that it was often a theme that humanity would invent "androids", as in human-like robots, but for them to get intelligent and be able to carry conversations with us about deep topics they would need amazing advances that might be impossible. Asimov is the example here though he played a lot with this concept.

We kind of forgot that just ten years ago, inventing an AI that could talk fluently with a human was considered one of those intractable problems that we would take centuries to solve. In a few years not only we got that, but we got AI able to generate code, write human-like speech, and imitate fictional characters. I'm surprised at how banal some people arguing about AI are about this, this is, by all means, an amazing achievement.

Of course these aren't really intelligent, they are just complex algorithms that provide the most likely results to their request based on their training. There also isn't a centralized intelligence thinking this, it's all distributed. There is no real thinking here, of course.

Does this make it less of a powerful tool, though? We have computers that can interpret human language and output things on demand to it. This is, objectively, amazing. The problem is that they are made by a capitalist system and culture that is trying to use them for a pointless economic bubble. The reason why ChatGPT acts like the world's most eager costumer service is because they coded it for that purpose, the reason why most image generators create crap is because they made them for advertising. But those are not the only possibilities for AI, even this model of non-thinking AIs.

The AI bubble will come and pop, it can't sustain itself. The shitty corporate models will never amount to much because they're basically toys. I'm excited for what comes after, when researchers, artists, and others finally get models that aren't corporate shit tailored to be costumer service, but built for other purposes. I'm excited to see what happens when this research starts to create algorithms that might actually be alive in any sense, and maybe the lines might not exist. I'm also worried too.

[jcmarchi]

3 Steps for Retailers to Generate and Capture Value from AI Investments

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/3-steps-for-retailers-to-generate-and-capture-value-from-ai-investments/

3 Steps for Retailers to Generate and Capture Value from AI Investments

The retail sector is growing and increasingly competitive as companies vie for consumers’ attention and wallets. According to the National Retail Federation, core sales rose 3.2% year-over-year in the first half of 2024, and total sales are forecast to eclipse 2023 by between 2.5% and 3.5%. In a tight market, retailers are looking for a competitive advantage, and many are turning to artificial intelligence (AI).

AI has been positioned as a disruptive capability that can reimagine offerings, expand choice, and drive new business models. Retailers have made significant investments in AI, but they need to better understand how to use the technology to create value for customers and capture value for themselves.

While the technology has been around in some form for years, algorithms have grown better and faster, computing capabilities have improved, and price points have become more affordable. NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) can make what once was a seven-day compute into a seven-minute compute, and Snowflake has added flexibility to its AI cost structure by also charging per compute. These factors have unlocked more AI use cases for retailers and made the technology fit better into IT budgets.

However, many retailers are still struggling to see tangible returns on their AI investments. They’re experimenting within months, not years, and can’t afford to take a spray-and-pray approach with those trials. Retailers must approach AI strategically so they can meet their ROI goals, especially as the industry faces changing consumer behaviors.

Let’s dig in and examine the three steps to unlocking value creation and value capture.

Mature data into a strategic asset

For retailers to successfully leverage AI, they must first ensure their data is mature, clean, and harmonized. Without high-quality data, even the most sophisticated AI algorithms will fall short, leading to the adage “garbage in, garbage out.”

In retail, data comes from various sources: point-of-sale systems, e-commerce platforms, inventory management systems, customer relationship management (CRM) tools, and even external sources like social media and weather forecasts. To create a strategic asset, retailers must integrate data from all those sources, cleanse and standardize it, ensure its accuracy and completeness, and implement robust data governance practices.

One area where high-quality data can significantly impact both value creation and capture is forecast planning. Accurate forecasting is crucial for retailers to optimize inventory levels, reduce waste, and meet customer demand. Consider the fashion industry, where planning cycles can stretch up to 18 to 24 months. Retailers must predict trends, consumer preferences, and demand levels far in advance, often with limited data.

By leveraging AI with a solid data foundation, retailers can incorporate an unprecedented number of variables into their forecasting models, like historical sales figures, demographic information, weather patterns, economic indicators, and social media trends.

Encourage a culture of experimentation

This approach is essential for value creation, as it allows retailers to test and refine AI-driven initiatives that directly benefit customers. By running targeted experiments, retailers can identify which AI applications truly resonate with their customers and drive loyalty without committing to large-scale implementations prematurely.

A critical aspect in driving a culture of experimentation is the creation of concise use cases and deriving KPI measurements to determine its eventual success. Collaboration among business and technology stakeholders, which includes engineers, analysts and data scientists, is necessary as the experiment evolves from concept to reality. Equally imperative, is the mindset to pull back an experiment when the realized value does not meet expectations.

This culture encourages innovation and helps retailers stay agile as market conditions change. It allows them to test new ideas quickly and cost-effectively, reducing the risk associated with large-scale AI implementations.

Build out the ecosystem

While the previous steps focus primarily on creating value for customers, this step is crucial for value capture — ensuring that retailers can effectively monetize their AI initiatives.

A retailer’s ecosystem can include technology providers, brands, influencers, content creators, and even other retailers. By constructing such an ecosystem, retailers can create new revenue streams, enhance their offerings, and strengthen their market position.

For instance, a retailer might collaborate with a computer vision company to create an AI-powered visual search tool, allowing customers to find products by uploading images. This enhances the shopping experience and opens up opportunities for targeted advertising and product recommendations.

Influencer marketing is another area where AI and ecosystem building intersect. Retailers can use AI to identify and analyze the most effective influencers for their brand based on factors like audience demographics, engagement rates, and content relevance. By integrating influencers into their AI-driven marketing strategies, retailers can extend their reach and create more authentic connections with potential customers.

Retailers must carefully navigate issues of data privacy, competitive dynamics, and brand alignment. However, when done successfully, it can create a cycle in which the value created for customers through AI initiatives is effectively captured and monetized by the retailer and its ecosystem partners.

This strategic approach to AI implementation allows retailers to move beyond the hype and toward practical, results-driven applications. As AI continues to evolve, those who master these steps will be well-positioned to thrive in the retail landscape. Skillfully balancing value creation and value capture in AI initiatives turns technological potential into a competitive advantage.

[popfishjr]

Hi!! Idk if this is too forward, but I just saw your robot house au and I just wanna ask some questions (as a robot enthusiast lol)

Was he a human before, then his consciousness got put in a robot, or was he an AI that developed a consciousness?

What kind of robot is he? Just like a general hospital assistant type thing?

Who figured he's actually conscious or decided to put his brain in a computer? (I assume House himself, bc his mind is the only quality he likes)

And how's his relationship with Wilson, Cuddy, and the ducklings?

Again sorry if this too many qs but I love your art and robots

Dont worry about being 'too forward'! I love getting questions :D anyways this is gonna be a long post, so hang on

My robot!house au is actually based on the book/movie The Electric State (i did call it a 'The Electric State AU' once but 'Robot!House AU' was definitely much easier to comprehend)

So if you want a deeper understanding, i reccomend you to look into the book/movie

Me myself, i just watched the movie and found the concept interesting to use as an AU

Heres my summed up explanation: humans created robots to carry out jobs such as post service, mascots to advertise for brands, construction etc etc but one day, they decided that working for humans isnt a satisfactory way to live life and they wanted to do their own thing

Blablabla in the end, robot and humans manage to live in harmony together. The story is based in the 90s, so since House MD is based in the 2000s, it would fit perfectly

In this AU, House is a life-support robot made in some factory (model name 'hoUSE-JN11', i still dont know what that stands for but oh well), but due to unknown reasons, he shows great expertise in the diagnostic field, which made him stand out from other robots working in Princeton Plainsboro, and eventually earned him Head of Diagnostics

Alright getting into relationships now

Hilson definitely still exists, and House being a robot is NOT going to stop Wilson catching feelings

House is a disabled character so i translated that into him being a robot with broken parts

He runs out of power way faster than any robot should, and he does some self-sobotaging shit to himself to temporarily extend battery life, which results in Wilson having to pay for any repairs (still, no one can figure out why he runs out of power like that)

If he recharges for too long, he overheats, but if he doesnt charge, he'll power out

His relationship with Cuddy is pretty much how it is on the show, he makes his usual inappropriate comments about her ass and boobs, and Cuddy acting annoyed but she still chips in like 40-50% on House's repairs with Wilson

The ducklings regularly bet on which electrical component House is going to damage next time. Cameron won 100 bucks betting on House's display monitors because Wilson couldnt control himself and punched one out

Idk if youve seen my first post about this AU but here it is

And heres another ask ive answered about it

I'll tag all posts about this au with #robot!house

[mariacallous]

One sunny afternoon in May, a century-old power plant in Brooklyn was buzzing—not with electricity, but with hundreds of creatives congregating at the Black Zine Fair. Handmade booklets piled up on table after table, forming vast paper topographies of politics and activism and culture. Marginalized groups in skating! Fictional characters “that probably made me queer”! Someone else presented zines dedicated to all the TV shows they had recorded onto VHS. Still more tables hosted zine assembly. Everyone seemed to have stickers for sale. The scene evoked New York in the 1980s or ’90s, when the city was home to a thriving DIY zine culture built on late nights at Kinko’s. Only now many of the zine makers swapped online handles along with their analog wares.

For over a decade, social media platforms have served as cultural loci, and in many ways still do, but recent events have deepened the notion that digital spaces aren’t safe or effective for everyone. Once beloved platforms like Twitter have been overtaken by white supremacist speech. Meta now allows users to call gay and trans people mentally ill. TikTok has been on the verge of being banned in the US for years now. Meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security has announced its plans to screen the social media of immigrants and visa applicants. What’s next? Even if the bigotry and surveillance don’t bother you, major platforms often feel like content wells for advertisers and AI scavengers, picking through the detritus of influencers chasing engagement. Breaking through seems impossible.

For those looking for alternatives, zines have taken on new importance as a way to spread ideas outside the easy reach of unfriendly eyes and unhelpful algorithms. Organizer Mariame Kaba, who cofounded the Black Zine Fair in 2024, says she’s seen lots more interest in the medium lately, especially from Gen Z. About 1,200 people attended the fair this year, and similar gatherings and workshops are happening around the world. Online, people who want to talk about abortion access or queer rights or the war in Gaza are “feeling like they can’t say certain things,” Kaba says. Zines allow them to “share personal experiences, to make connections with other people, to fight censorship, to evade the surveillance that's consistent and constant when you are on digital platforms.”

With the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers limiting access to certain kinds of health care in the US, for example, zines about DIY health care for trans people or pamphlets about self-managed abortions could become even more prevalent. “If they start criminalizing that kind of information, how will you access that information, if not literally somebody passing you a pamphlet or a flyer or a zine?” Kaba asks. “For folks who are on the left, we better figure out how we're going to transmit information about important things to each other that is not using social media.”

Zines, and their predecessors, have a long history of political and cultural impact, particularly in the US. In the 18th and 19th centuries, pamphlets helped spread messages about the abolitionist movement. LGBTQ+ people made paper booklets to share information during the AIDS crisis. Riot grrrls used them to spread feminist messages in the ’90s, the last time zines saw a huge boom.

Graphic novelist and documentary filmmaker James Spooner was just a high schooler when he stumbled upon his first zine: an anarcha-feminist zine called “Aim Your Dick” that Mimi Nguyen made in 1993. “It introduced me to the idea that a teenager could have a voice that the world outside of school would be interested in hearing,” Spooner says. He quickly made a zine of his own.

But within a decade of Spooner’s discovery, the internet reached the mainstream, and zines were drowned out by digital culture. Diehards kept making paper handouts, but most people with ideas or messages to share went on social media. The prospect of a digital public square where anyone could broadcast their thoughts to the world was new and exciting. Since then, however, Americans’ perceptions of social media have darkened.

Zines, meanwhile, are seeing a resurgence, popping up in museum collections and, in at least one instance, online comics. They are taking on new forms, modified by a generation seeking to make something that won’t go the way of Tumblr.

“By producing physical, tangible objects that don’t exist on the internet, you can circumvent or avoid feeding into that machine,” says Kyle Myles, a photographer who sells zines out of his Baltimore shop. “I think a lot of people worry that when they share things on, say, Instagram, suddenly it’s the property of Mark Zuckerberg or Meta.”

Last year at the Black Zine Fair, Jennifer White-Johnson, a designer known for creating the Black Disabled Lives Matter symbol, presented a zine-making workshop; for this year’s event, held in May, they distributed copies of “A Black Neurodivergent Artist’s Manifesto.” (It sold out.) Several years ago, after their son was diagnosed with autism, White-Johnson created an advocacy photo zine called “KnoxRoxs.” They’ve often organized gatherings to create zines with other caregivers for autistic kids. Making zines, White-Johnson says, provides “a powerful act of collective liberation and a radical practice of self and community care.”

White-Johnson’s zine was one of many at this year’s fair focused on solidarity and social justice. Several were historical, like Kaba’s “Arrested at the Library: Policing the Stacks” about the history of law enforcement’s presence in libraries. Some zines were structured like newspapers; some took the form of grade school art. Others channeled the format’s earlier punk aesthetics.

Many zines bridged the gap between analog and digital. An independent publisher called Haters Cafe presented “10 Anarchist Theses on Palestine Solidarity in the United States,” one of several works also hosted on the publisher’s website. One of its creators, who asked not to be identified, tells WIRED that while the internet has allowed Haters’ zines to spread far, their somewhat untraceable physical forms appeal to people who are concerned about repression. “In certain spaces, I cover my face; I wear a mask,” they say. Anonymous zines serve a similar function. “We’re trying to broaden cultural distaste for surveillance.”

Which is to say, modern zine makers aren’t anti-technology. They’re opposed to what often comes with its use. If anything, they’re incorporating analog creations into digital ones, like people who post about woodworking or knitting on Reddit.

Zines are taking hold in fields outside politics and culture, too. Like science. During the 2024 meeting in Mexico of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, a respected computational biologist named Pleuni Pennings did away with handing out a sedate paper containing her research and instead distributed a stylized zine, illustrated with hand-drawn diagrams and figures, to accompany her presentation on antimicrobial resistance.

Pennings says she hoped audience members would be inspired to show the zine to other people, like their colleagues, and spread her work that way. “I mean, that’s what we all want when we give a talk, right?”

Communication constantly evolves, along with the way people want to receive information. As social media replaced zines, the messages traveled farther, but their permanence dissipated. Friendster fizzled. Tumblr will never be what it was. Posts on X or TikTok get drowned in the churn of what’s trending or what platform owners want to boost. Handmade zines can last much longer. “Writing things down on paper has value,” Spooner says. “It’s more permanent.”

As fears of surveillance and authoritarianism grow, the zine community may provide a means to organize under the algorithmic radar, in a format less beholden to the whims of multibillion-dollar social media companies. A vision of the future copied from the past.

[genericpuff]

All the cool kids use ComicFury 😘

Hey y'all! If you love independent comic sites and have a few extra dollars in your pocket, please consider supporting ComicFury, the owner Kyo has been running it for nearly twenty years and it's one of the only comic hosting platforms left that's entirely independent and reminiscent of the 'old school' days that I know y'all feel nostalgic over.

(kyo's sense of humor is truly unmatched lmao)

Here are some of the other great features it offers:

Message board forums! It's a gift from the mid-2000's era gods!

Entirely free-to-use HTML and CSS editing! You can use the provided templates, or go wild and customize the site entirely to your liking! There's also a built-in site editor for people like me who want more control over their site design but don't have the patience to learn HTML/CSS ;0

In-depth site analytics that allow you to track and moderate comments, monitor your comic's performance per week, and let you see how many visitors you get. You can also set up Google Analytics on your site if you want that extra touch of data, without any bullshit from the platform. Shit, the site doesn't come with ads, but you can run ads on your site. The site owners don't ask questions, they don't take a cut. Pair your site with ComicAd and you'll be as cool as a crocodile alligator !

RSS feeds! They're like Youtube subscriptions for millennials and Gen X'ers!

NSFW comics are allowed, let the "female presenting nipples" run free! (just tag and content rate them properly!)

Tagging. Tagging. Remember that? The basic feature that every comic site has except for the alleged "#1 webcomic site"? The independent comic site that still looks the same as it did 10 years ago has that. Which you'd assume isn't that big a deal, but isn't it weird that Webtoons doesn't?

Blog posts. 'Nuff said.

AI-made comics are strictly prohibited. This also means you don't have to worry about the site owners sneaking in AI comics or installing AI scrapers (cough cough)

Did I mention that the hosting includes actual hosting? Meaning for only the cost of the domain you can change your URL to whatever site name you want. No extra cost for hosting because it's just a URL redirect. No stupid "pro plan" or "gold tier" subscription necessary, every feature of the site is free to use for all. If this were a sponsored Pornhub ad, this is the part where I'd say "no credit card, no bullshit".

Don't believe me? Alright, look at my creator backend (feat stats on my old ass 2014 comic, I ain't got anything to hide LOL)

TRANSCRIPTS! CHAPTER ORGANIZATION! MASS PAGE UPLOADING! MULTIPLE CREATOR SUPPORT! FULL HTML AND CSS SUPPORT! SIMPLIFIED EDITORS! ACTUAL STATISTICS THAT GIVE YOU WEEKLY BREAKDOWNS! THE POWER OF CHOICE!!

So yeah! You have zero reasons to not use and support ComicFury! It being "smaller" than Webtoons shouldn't stop you! Regain your independence, support smaller platforms, and maybe you'll even find that 'tight-knit community' that we all miss from the days of old! They're out there, you just gotta be willing to use them! ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

[creatingblackcharacters]

Good day!

I am a white woman of a certain age and when I was growing up in the Seattle area, the word for this hairstyle

was always "dreadlocks", shortened by people my young (at the time) age to "dreads".

For several years now I have noticed I never see "dreads" or really even "dreadlocks" anymore. It's locs.

I'm not confused by the verbiage, I've never not understood what "locs" means, but I do still inherently think of the style as "dreads" first, simply because that was formative for me.

Is this shift just a living language thing, where common usage just replaced one term with another? Was my experience regional, and only in the PacNW were they ever called anything other than locs? Is "dreads" actually racist and I've just never been exposed to the information that I should have been in that regard?

(And if so, I sincerely apologize for its use in this ask and mean absolutely no disrespect)

As an addition to this question, I did try to look it up myself first, but Google is such ass now (or I just couldn't get the right search terms for seo to yield results) that I couldn't find anything useful on it. I did find WAY too many pictures of white people with this hairstyle, and an overabundance of sales pages for white hair extensions in some variation of this style. I wonder if that's common, or if it's just because Google knows I'm white and the search results reflect that. Either way, it was obnoxious that I had to word my searches extra specifically to get Black hair in my results.

Thanks for all you do!

To answer your questions in not the right order:

1. It's both. You are white, which means the things you research are probably going to be more geared towards an algorithm that fellow white folk use. They gotta advertise to you!!! And, Google is just racist. It's why I try to convince people on here that you have to get specific with your searches and use key words you find to dig deeper to reach what you want. Because if you just type in "Black hair styles" you're still gonna get a lot of white people and AI. It's obnoxious ASF and always has been. Can't just toss your hands up at the first wall.

2. It's a cultural thing, trying to reform the imagery of the hairstyle, a sort of reclamation if you will. I've mentioned in prior lessons that not everyone is going to get up in arms if you say dreads or dreadlocks. I prefer locs. It's mainly because saying dread has a connotation that my hair is dirty, nasty, uncared for. People, often white and in positions of power, hear dreadlocks and they think weed and tangles and lazy stereotypes that just aren't true. So it wouldn't be racist if you called someone's locs dreads, but it would be racist if they told you "I prefer locs/please say locs because-" and you said "well when I grew up it was dreads" okay well that's not how I identify them, so.