AI detectors simply don’t work

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Even though they’re widely known not to work, AI detecting software is still on the rise. Even those that work a little bit are getting worse every day as AI continues to improve. I saw a quote on Reddit that summed it up nicely, where a user said:

If AI could ever be used to distinguish between AI text and human text, that same AI would be able to generate human text. It’s a paradox.

Related is this podcast episode from Christopher Penn, appropriately titled “AI Detectors are a Joke”. I’ve done similar tests, running historical documents through some of them, and the results are about the same — most historical documents, like the US Constitution, are shown by these systems as being largely AI-written.

There are still huge challenges for how to handle the rise of AI, particularly when it comes to education, but using any kind of AI detection tool is a fool’s errand, and as Penn says, could lead to “potentially damaging results”.

I don’t have the answer, but these tools certainly aren’t are it.

Using cash is expensive

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I recently listened a the long episode about Visa on the Acquired podcast, and it was fantastic. Visa is one of those companies that we all think we know, but it’s really quite confusing. From the show:

Visa does not extend credit. They do not issue cards. They do not work directly with merchants. They do not work directly with consumers. They are not a bank or a financial institution. They don’t ever bear any risk.

So what do they do? It’s a long answer, which the show answers well, but they essentially just connect banks to other banks and they make billions of dollars every year from doing it.

As they unpacked the episode, they spent a while talking about how “rewards” cards work. Specifically, how can companies afford to give away cash back, airline miles, and other perks while also paying the fees for running the cards? You guessed it — they raise the prices of the items that they sell.

And they don’t just raise the prices for users with a certain card, they raise the prices for everyone. This means that if you’re not earning rewards on your purchases, you’re losing money. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston put it in perspective.

  • If you pay with cash, it costs you an additional $149 per household over the course of a year.
  • If you use a card, you gain $1,133 in extra rewards over the course of a year.

That’s a huge difference! Also, that study was from back in 2010, so the gulf has almost certainly widened since then.

Rewards-based cards can be very beneficial, but those benefits are baked into the prices. If you’re not getting rewards, you’re literally losing money.

You couldn’t tell who the bosses were

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Tom Murphy is one of those guys that not enough people know about it. He ran Capital Cities Communications (which you also likely haven’t heard of) for years back in the 1960’s until it eventually acquired the ABC network in 1985, which was later purchased by Disney in 1986.

His story is fascinating, and a recent episode of the Founders podcast dug deep into it. While there were a lot of great stories in that show, and perhaps more posts to come, this one stood out the most. It’s a story of a bartender that purchased stock in Capital Cities in the 1970’s (which undoubtedly earned a massive return on investment) and why he did it:

He told me a story about a bartender at one of the management retreats who made a handsome return by buying capital city stock in the early 1970s.

When the bartender was later asked why he made the investment, he replied, “I’ve worked a lot of corporate events over the years, but capital cities was the only company where you couldn’t tell who the bosses were.”

The idea of “you couldn’t tell who the bosses were” is an interesting one. On the one hand, as the bartender shares, it can be a great thing. The bosses get along with their team, and everyone pushes forward.

On the other hand, we’ve all seen organizations where the leadership becomes great friends with the team and then is unable to make tough decisions. It’s a fine line, for sure.

Given all that Murphy and Capital Cities accomplished, not to mention the love that Warren Buffett had for Murphy’s style, I tend to think he did things the right way. Not being able to tell who the bosses were can indeed be a very good thing.

97% of web pages get zero traffic from Google

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Things are changing quickly when it comes to getting your site to rank well on Google. A big one, as I shared a few months ago, is that 64% of visitors that use Google never end up visiting a traditional website, instead getting the answer from Google itself or from a related Google product (Maps, YouTube, etc). It’s a huge number.

In a recent video, Rand Fishkin shared another staggering statistic (via Tim Soulo from Ahrefs) — nearly 97% of web pages on the internet get literally zero traffic from Google. Here is the chart from Tim:

I’m not suggesting that you give up trying to rank on Google, as there is still huge value there, but we need to recognize the increasing inability to do so. The key to remember is that while things are shifting with Google, people are still spending more and more time online. The users are there, and the tactics through which to reach them are simply changing.

This is kind of the idea behind Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Day Trading Attention” — just go where the users are. Have a solid website as a home base, and then spend time wherever people are spending time. In Rand’s video he says:

“The big platforms, you’re gonna take all of our traffic and that is okay because I can still have influence by being present in the places where people pay attention.”

Don’t give up on Google and SEO, but if that’s your primary source of traffic it’s time to start diversifying immediately. If you need help doing that, let’s chat.

The Sunday Summary: Outcome bias, stewardship, pictures of slides, and Chesterton’s Fence

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In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, October 7: Outcome bias
Using an outcome to justify whether a decision is good or bad is something behavioral scientists call “outcome bias”, and it’s a bad way to shape future decisions.

Tue, October 8: Stewardship, not ownership
“Stewards take care of things for other people; owners look out for their own interests. When we look at companies through this lens, we see that some owners act more like stewards because they use their resources for the benefit of their employees and customers.”

Wed, October 9: Chesterton’s Fence
“Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.”

Thu, October 10: What do you do with those pictures of slides?
Taking a photo of a slide is a good first step, but it doesn’t help much if it never leaves your phone.

Fri, October 11: A free market means the customer is always right
“In a free market the customer is always right. If customers don’t want it, it means that the car is no good. It doesn’t matter if all the university professors and all the priests and mullahs cry out from every lectern and pulpit that this is a wonderful car – if the customers reject it, it’s a bad car.”

Sat, October 12: Self-education beats formal education
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Self-education beats formal education

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Formal education is essential. Without understanding the basics (with “the basics” meaning “years of schooling”), you have no foundation on which to grow further. However, the further growth is where the real value lies.

In his book “Selling in a Post-Trust World“, author Larry Levine shares a simple quote from Jim Rohn that says:

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”

A solid formal education will add security and value to any life. However, almost everyone that has become wildly successful has done it with a huge focus on self-education. It’s like I shared a few months ago:

I recently decided to dig in to understand the reading habits of some of the most successful people in recent decades, and quickly found one common thread: they all love to read. All of them. I have no doubt that there are exceptions, but my initial digging didn’t find any.

Take your formal education as far as you possibly can, as there are increasing benefits as you go along. However, when that time comes to an end, you have the chance to go even further and surpass almost everyone around you. Take it.

A free market means the customer is always right

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I’ve always been a fan of the phrase “the customer is always right” as long as you put the caveat “…in matters of taste” at the end of it. I certainly give no credit to rude or forceful people that use “the customer is always right” to try to get their way, but people can vote with their wallets and those votes are never wrong.

In his classic book “Homo Deus“, author Yuval Noah Harari shares this:

“In a free market the customer is always right. If customers don’t want it, it means that the car is no good. It doesn’t matter if all the university professors and all the priests and mullahs cry out from every lectern and pulpit that this is a wonderful car – if the customers reject it, it’s a bad car. Nobody has the authority to tell customers that they are wrong, and heaven forbid that a government would try to force its citizens to buy a particular car against their will.”

I’ve shared before about how I want the web to be. I’ll fight for that, but I shouldn’t expect everyone to follow along. This is why people like Gary Vaynerchuk are so popular, because they go where the people are going and they worry less about what people “should” be doing.

A prime example of this was Google Stadia. Pretty much everyone who tried it found it to be amazing, myself included. It was clearly the best of the streaming video game services, but “best” is subjective. To paraphrase Harari, the customers rejected it so therefore it was a bad platform. No amount of pushing and sharing and fact-sharing from me could make a difference. I thought it was a great product, but the customer is always right and Google killed it.

I love that we have a free market to choose any good or service that we want. We might make bad choices from time to time, but we’ll always be right.

What do you do with those pictures of slides?

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Part of our team just spent a few days at the Digital Summit conference here in Atlanta, and it was excellent. We picked up some great tips and ideas that we’ve already started to use, and I’m sure more will come out as we unpack further.

My thought for today is “what does unpacking really mean?”

More specifically, I saw a number of folks taking photos of slides that had solid content on them. I agree with them taking photos of those, but I’m curious what they did with the photo after the conference was over. In most cases, I think the answer is “not much”.

I think that’s the problem with a lot of note-taking in general. There are noteworthy benefits to simply taking notes when it comes to understanding and memorization, but the real value comes in processing your notes afterward.

I took most of my notes at Digital Summit directly on my laptop into Tana and I’ve spent time working through them, trying out new apps that were suggested, adding some pieces to Anki, and simply making sure that I will remember and utilize the parts that stood out to me.

In a similar vein, I watched Robert take many pages of notes by hand, but he’s since gone back through them and summarized them in a post you can find here. I suspect in the coming days he’ll dissect them further and have some ideas for things we can implement at GreenMellen.

I try to be good about taking solid notes, thought sometimes I fail to do so. When I’m able to get solid notes, though, I always try to take the time to work through them and make sure the gems don’t get forgotten. If I don’t, why did I bother to take the notes in the first place?

Taking a photo of a slide is a good first step, but it doesn’t help much if it never leaves your phone.

Chesterton’s Fence

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Whenever someone is starting a new job, I always advise them to take it slow at the beginning. Understand the current setup, see how things work, and then later begin to make suggestions.

With our newest hire at GreenMellen, I told her exactly that. She’s coming from another agency, and we’re very excited to learn from her, but I’ve asked to wait a bit before diving into that stuff. The more she understands about how we do things, the better equipped she’ll be to offer meaningful suggestions.

I first saw this explained in the book “Unreasonable Hospitality“, where they said:

Some of the best advice I ever got about starting in a new organization is: Don’t cannonball. Ease into the pool. I’ve passed this advice on to those joining my own: no matter how talented you are, or how much you have to add, give yourself time to understand the organization before you try to impact it.

It turns out that this idea has a name: Chesterton’s Fence. It was coined by G.K. Chesterton and here is how he explains it:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

Or put more succinctly, as shared on the Farnam Street blog:

“Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.”

I love the last part of Chesterton’s full description: “When you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” It reminds me of Charlie Munger discussing opinions, where he said:

“It’s bad to have an opinion you’re proud of if you can’t state the arguments for the other side better than your opponents.”

Understanding is the key. The fence you encountered may indeed be meaningless and should be torn down, but it also might be solving a problem that you’re not yet aware of. Learn first, act second.

Stewardship, not ownership

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Kevin Paul Scott has a fantastic description of the idea of “stewardship” versus that of “ownership”. In his book “Return on Inspiration“, he says:

“Stewards take care of things for other people; owners look out for their own interests. When we look at companies through this lens, we see that some owners act more like stewards because they use their resources for the benefit of their employees and customers. Everything we are and everything we have comes from the hand of God. He has entrusted goods, people, and opportunities to us. When we have that perspective, we treat employees, customers, and vendors with respect.”

Are you taking care of things for other people, or just looking out for your own interests? I’d argue that the best way to look out for your own interests is to take care of things for other people, so it should be an easy decision.

It’s similar to the idea of training people well enough so they can leave. You’re giving up some “ownership” by giving your employees more power, but it’s likely to be of benefit to everyone in the long run.

I’ve found that in most areas of life “ownership” will improve your short-term gains, but “stewardship” will lead to wildly better results down the road.