This Silicon Valley Prophet Wants AI Shut Down For Good
Plus: Ads and shopping are stalled on AI search, SEO is alive and well, and AI agents gone wild.
👋 Happy Tuesday AI Marketers. Meet the AI doomsday influencer who says we’re all gonna die. Ads and shopping are underwhelming on AI search. And old-school SEO is thriving (for some). Let’s get you caught up…
AI’s Most Vocal Doomsdayer Says We’re Officially Screwed
Eliezer Yudkowsky has spent two decades telling insiders that building advanced AI ends with everyone dead. Now he’s gone public with a new book that argues the only safe path is to shut it all down. Wild? Sure. But he has a following in Silicon Valley, and even Sam Altman credits him with inspiring OpenAI. Kevin Roose digs into why an extreme voice with extreme views still holds sway in circles that matter.
What Happened to Ads and Shopping on Perplexity?
Perplexity has raised a fortune in its quest to take on Google. The money part is real, but the business isn’t there yet. Its fledgling ads program pulled in a measly $20k in ad revenue for Q4 2024. And early excitement over its ecommerce feature is fizzling out as shoppers find it clunky and limited. If AI search is the next big channel, this part is still stuck in beta.
The Real Reason AI Adoption is Failing
Recent MIT research claimed 95 percent of gen AI pilots fail, but HBR wanted to know why the other five percent actually work. Turns out it’s not superstar AI champions in those orgs. It’s “shapers.” Multiple leaders across functions who align AI with business strategy, build trust, and drive adoption. It’s a playbook for marketing departments too. Success won’t come from one AI leader, it will come from many.
If SEO is Dead, Why is it Thriving Here?
Brands everywhere are watching their traffic tank, but SaaStr is bucking the trend by doubling down on deep, founder-led insights. The result: 5x growth in impressions and dominance in B2B SaaS search. Their playbook is simple but powerful. Own your category. Publish research-stage content, not bottom of funnel. And amplify through community. It’s proof that real authority still wins.
The Risk of Deploying AI Agents for Your Brand
Agents are flooding the internet, logging in, acting on behalf of users, even handing tasks off to other agents. For brands deploying them, the risks are real. How will you trace agents’ behavior if they generate harmful outputs, mis-execute, or act with bias? Who’s accountable when a multi-agent system produces unintended consequences? Brands, agencies, vendors? These are just some of the questions keeping marketing execs up at night.
Everyone’s talking about AI adoption but let’s face it, most companies don’t have a clear roadmap. That’s why case studies like this are so valuable. Here, Old Dominion and Jasper team up to show what real progress looks like inside a business. The VP of Marketing calls his department the “key driver” of AI adoption, multiplying speed, quality, and volume of content in ways that wouldn’t be possible without it.
🎙️ My top 3 podcast episodes this week:
THE AI DAILY BRIEF
The AI Slopocalypse
Missed this on AI Marketer last week? An AI startup is pumping out 3,000 podcast episodes a week, costing about $1 each to produce. Nathaniel Whittemore explains why the real threat in the podcast space isn’t all the new competition. It’s discovery.
THE MARKETING MILLENNIALS
Building an AI-First Marketing Mindset with Ryan Gavin
Feeling unprepared for how AI will change your team’s work? Slack CEO Ryan Gavin shares real examples of AI agents reshaping collaboration, cutting costs, and redefining marketing’s role. The agentic era is here. This is your primer.
THIS OLD MARKETING
Is Reddit the Missing Piece in Your Content Marketing?
Reddit is surfacing everywhere in AI answers and shaping the way people discover information online. Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose unpack Reddit’s rise, its role in AEO, and why the platform’s momentum could make it a necessity for marketers.
Have a favorite podcast to recommend? Shoot me the details.
🚨 AI-forward companies are looking for AI-forward marketers:
Head of Marketing
Streaml
Lead growth for an AI-driven outbound platform by building cross-channel content calendars, running creative experiments, launching communities, testing acquisition channels, and driving pipeline conversions across social and paid media.
Senior Digital Marketing Manager
Stampli
Architect Stampli’s AI-powered marketing infrastructure, evolve AI agents, optimize platforms like HubSpot and GPT tools, build integrated workflows, drive automation and personalization, and collaborate across teams to scale growth.
Growth Marketer
Scrunch AI
Design and optimize growth experiments across paid, organic, product and community channels, leverage AI tools to automate and scale campaigns, blend analytics and creativity, and collaborate across product, design and sales.
Marketing & Sales Enablement Manager
HomeCloud
Develop go-to-market content and sales training, build playbooks and workshops, own and optimize marketing automation with AI tools, streamline content creation, and coordinate cross-functional programs to drive revenue.
AI Research Strategist
Vital Findings
Become the firm’s expert on AI qual-at-scale research platforms, lead synthetic data projects, join the internal AI taskforce, explore and experiment with custom GPTs and no-code tools, and advise clients.
📅 Join AI marketers at these industry events:
Content Marketing World
San Diego, CA, September 16–17
AI Conference
San Francisco, CA, September 17–18
HeroConf
San Diego, CA, September 23–24
GAI World
Boston, MA, September 29–30
Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference (MAICON)
Cleveland, OH, October 14-16
TechCrunch Disrupt
San Francisco, CA, October 27-29
Have an event to add? Send me the details.
