I have been inundated with ads featuring Meta/Facebook’s new Muse AI assistant.
“Muse organizes your inbox.”
No. I’m not giving [another] big corporate tech company access to my email inbox. I’ve already heard some horror stories about Meta’s Muse AI bungling things, such as by arranging in-person pickups for sales that aren’t possible.
I guess the new Meta AI explains why Meta has been scraping ToolGuyd data for the past few months – I was wondering what they were trying to train. I blocked their bots at some point.
AI agents are still very much training on the prompts and data you feed it. This is something people don’t realize.
“Let me run that through Claude/Chat GPT/Muse/etc.” Would you be fine with competitors listening in on the conversation? Looking at the presentation over your shoulder?
In many cases, whatever you do with an AI becomes part of it.
Moving on, let’s talk about Google AI Overview, which has been decimating traffic numbers for online publishers.
I was at Home Depot yesterday, doing a store-walk ahead of the holiday deals season to scope things out. I also had a $10 off $75 coupon code that I was using on supplies, but I wasn’t at the threshold yet.
I’m due some time for myself, and will be taking day to really test out the Traeger smoker that arrived a few weeks ago (thanks, Home Depot), and some other food-related things. (It wasn’t a test sample, it was part of Home Depot’s creator event gift package, so there was no rush.)
I need pellets, but didn’t do my research ahead of time. I had planned on researching and buying wood pellets, but happened to be at the store before I could do all that.
Home Depot had a 20 pound bag of Traeger Signature Blend pellets, with a mix of maple, cherry, and hickory. $20.
Next to it was a stack of Traeger Pro Blend wood pellets in 30 pound bags, with a mix of oak, hickory, and cherry. $25.
There were other bags, presumably specific mixes, but they were blocked off.
What’s the difference, aside for $25 for 30 pounds being a better value than $20 for 20 pounds?
Let me Google that.
Traeger does not make a product called “Pro Blend – the comparison is typically between Traeger Signature Blend pellets and other all-purpose blends like Pit Boss Competition Blend or Costco’s Kirkland Signature Blend.
I was staring at a bag or Traeger Pro Blend that Google’s AI Overview insisted didn’t exist.
It’s mid-late October and past the end of grilling season (at least for retailers). Even if this was a new offering, it would have been on the market for at least several months.
Something obviously went wrong. Every query had the same result, with Google AI refusing to acknowledge that this bag of Traeger Pro Blend existed.
Earlier in the day, I kept trying to compare compact LED lights – the Aputure MC which retails between $76 and $90, and the Smallrig RM120 and then the Amaran Ace 25C. No matter how I modified the prompt, even adding “non-pro”, Google’s AI kept referring to the $179-$199 Aputure MC Pro, which is a completely different product with larger form factor.
The AI kept pushing comparisons that I didn’t care for, rather than the ones I wanted it to make.
AI works kind of alright when it does, and completely fails when it doesn’t.
The answers, as with the Traeger pellets, sound confident without necessarily being helpful.
I grabbed the Signature Blend, as a Home Depot worker wanted to shut down the aisle to move some pallets around with heavy machinery, and I didn’t want to keep them waiting. Maybe I’ll try the Pro Blend after I burn through all these pellets. Next, I need a dry container to keep the pellets in.
Let’s talk about AI emails. I’ve been getting a lot of those, but one that I received yesterday was very different.
The phrase “outside-reference question” suggests they want me to link to their site in a post.
I regularly receive a lot of random “can we buy a link” and “can we pay you to publish our guest posts” types of requests from SEO “experts.” The idea is that links tell Google “hey, this stuff is good,” and it boosts the referenced website in search results. I just ignore them.
They referenced my Bosch laser distance measuring tool deal post from Prime Day – My Favorite Bosch Laser Distance Measuring Tool is on Sale for Prime Day. I guess that’s where they wanted a link insertion.
The email has a co-signature naming an individual and Synapse AI. They also say the email was prepared with Codex, another AI service.
I actually think that’s a good way to approach things, acknowledging that an AI was partly or perhaps mostly behind an email.
So, this was an AI-crafted or distributed email.
It referenced an article – a “guide” that the email says was “AI-assisted.”
The entire article was about whether this company’s laser pointer can measure distance, which it cannot.
It talks about Leica laser distance measuring tools, has some unintuitive language about reference points and accuracy, and briefly discusses about how pointing a laser at something doesn’t give you a measurement.
Does a laser pointer company really need AI-generated articles about how “can laser pointers measure distance?”
Just saying “no” would save so many words.
It’s a laser pointer company, and so all of this talk about checking with measurements start, and accuracy specs are moot.
Maybe it’s like how Amazon and other retailers will bid on sponsored shopping keywords for brands and products they don’t sell, just to get you through the digital door?
Or maybe an AI-generated marketing plan was fed into a separate AI that generated the “article”, and that all fed into another AI that crafted and sent the email to an AI-generated and curated list.
The email wasn’t actually clear on what they wanted from me. Did they want a link to the nonsensical “field guide”? Or mention of their laser pointer product?
People are increasingly letting AI make decisions for them. AI services lack feelings, emotions, and thinking. It’s just pattern recognition, aggregation, and recall.
I used AI the other day to check some new coding, and then also to mock-up an image of how a part for an upcoming project could look. It worked great for that, saving me time. But I’m not deferring to AI, I’m using it as a tool.
I’ve been asking questions related to strength-building, to double-check the rationale behind rep and set patterns. Consolidated opinions are helpful, as are pros and counterpoints, and the summaries quickly informed and nudged my decision-making.
Sometimes when I’m researching two products, AI will provide conflicting guidance depending on the prompt.
I have been trying to leverage AI without deferring to its judgement. Meanwhile, I have been hearing about people feeding their entire businesses through AI.
How do you trust decision-making to unfeeling algorithms that get so much wrong?
It’s like using a stud finder without caution. If you see a drywall seam, and an electrical box, there’s likely a stud. If a stud finder tells you there isn’t a stud there, are you going to believe it? Many people might not look for or recognize the drywall seam or the outlet box, and just implicitly listen to the stud finder. It seems that’s the kind of thing happening with AI.
AI services are increasingly being treated not as tools but as substitutes for critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making.
Just… be careful.
