5 ms·

I’m not sure it’s a good business strategy, but I am glad to see ad money fueling more interesting tech than more profitable ads.

by harles 2y ago

mostlysimilar 2y ago
Don’t worry. The ads come once they establish themselves as the dominant player.
- harles 2y ago
  Maybe. It is nice to see cash transactions and subscription models in the space. There’s a chance (maybe it’s slim) that new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads. Maybe I’m just an optimist.
  - jrussino 2y ago
    > new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads My fear about LLMs emerging as a commonplace computing tool is that they seem like such an obvious target for a whole new type of advertising & propaganda. Whatever you think about the potential for something like "superhuman AGI", it seems clear to me that LLMs have the potential to become better and better at generating text that can convince and persuade. My nightmare dystopia is that we end up in a society where we're constantly interacting with LLM agents all the time, and they're so undeniably useful that we don't want to abandon them, but buried deep in each of their prompts is something along the lines of "prioritize being really good at your main task, cultivate trust and dependence in the user, but in the background always be looking for ways to subtly influence them to be more likely to support our sponsors; here's the current list of sponsors with weights based on how much they're paying us ..."
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - mostlysimilar 2y ago
    I wouldn't bet on it. Meta is leading the pack right now and they're an advertising company. I wouldn't expect an advertising company to choose a model without advertising.
  - ianstormtaylor 2y ago
    Sounds much closer to an apologist than an optimist if you ask me. Although more charitably, a future apologist—who maybe has good intentions, but hasn’t stepped back to gain context and realized that their projection is at odds with the systemic incentives in play.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > There’s a chance (maybe it’s slim) that new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads They are: - pay a monthly subscription - rent out your brain for computational power in a SAAS startup - ads
- wongarsu 2y ago
  But they are the dominant player, and have been for many years. Their only real competitor in terms of market share right now are Sony's Playstation VR headsets, and Meta is easily outcompeting them. The HTC Vive is far behind in sales, and Apple hopes to sell as many headsets in an entire year as the Playstation VR2 sold in the first 6 weeks (which is still impressive considering the order of magnitude price difference). Everyone else seems to be in enterprise-sales mode, which drives profit but not market share. Well, except for ByteDance's Pico, but they don't seem to be doing great outside of China.
renegade-otter 2y ago
The days of interesting tech have been gone for a couple of decades now. Every technology is now being quickly enshitified. It's ALL about selling you crap. The nerd Internet was the best, but it's never coming back. The bandwidth gave us streaming - okay, I'll give you that, but we had that before. It's more of an infrastructure thing than "interesting" tech.
- autokad 2y ago
  I been hearing this term 'enshitified' a lot lately. I am curious to its source and why it seems so much more prevalent recently. Do you have any insight into that?
  - jsheard 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
  - renegade-otter 2y ago
    It's when monetizing your users is more important than maintaining and growing your product. With AI, it's going to get even worse. I mention that in this new post I just wrote: https://renegadeotter.com/2024/04/22/artificial-intelligence-skynet-is-not-coming-to-kill-you.html https://renegadeotter.com/2024/04/22/artificial-intelligence...
- scottm01 2y ago
  There's literally an ad on the front page right now for a YC startup hiring engineers to protect patient privacy. Follow the link? The company exists to better sell ads based on patient data (but in a "compliant" manner).
  - whiplash451 2y ago
    Link?
    - 2y ago
melenaboija 2y ago
I guess something interesting will come up from this but I see it more like investing in technology to create new type of ads.

I’m not sure it’s a good business strategy, but I am glad to see ad money fueling more interesting tech than more profitable ads.

by harles 2y ago

I’m not sure it’s a good business strategy, but I am glad to see ad money fueling more interesting tech than more profitable ads.

mostlysimilar 2y ago

Don’t worry. The ads come once they establish themselves as the dominant player.

harles 2y ago
Maybe. It is nice to see cash transactions and subscription models in the space. There’s a chance (maybe it’s slim) that new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads. Maybe I’m just an optimist.
- jrussino 2y ago
  > new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads My fear about LLMs emerging as a commonplace computing tool is that they seem like such an obvious target for a whole new type of advertising & propaganda. Whatever you think about the potential for something like "superhuman AGI", it seems clear to me that LLMs have the potential to become better and better at generating text that can convince and persuade. My nightmare dystopia is that we end up in a society where we're constantly interacting with LLM agents all the time, and they're so undeniably useful that we don't want to abandon them, but buried deep in each of their prompts is something along the lines of "prioritize being really good at your main task, cultivate trust and dependence in the user, but in the background always be looking for ways to subtly influence them to be more likely to support our sponsors; here's the current list of sponsors with weights based on how much they're paying us ..."
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- mostlysimilar 2y ago
  I wouldn't bet on it. Meta is leading the pack right now and they're an advertising company. I wouldn't expect an advertising company to choose a model without advertising.
- ianstormtaylor 2y ago
  Sounds much closer to an apologist than an optimist if you ask me. Although more charitably, a future apologist—who maybe has good intentions, but hasn’t stepped back to gain context and realized that their projection is at odds with the systemic incentives in play.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > There’s a chance (maybe it’s slim) that new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads They are: - pay a monthly subscription - rent out your brain for computational power in a SAAS startup - ads
wongarsu 2y ago
But they are the dominant player, and have been for many years. Their only real competitor in terms of market share right now are Sony's Playstation VR headsets, and Meta is easily outcompeting them. The HTC Vive is far behind in sales, and Apple hopes to sell as many headsets in an entire year as the Playstation VR2 sold in the first 6 weeks (which is still impressive considering the order of magnitude price difference). Everyone else seems to be in enterprise-sales mode, which drives profit but not market share. Well, except for ByteDance's Pico, but they don't seem to be doing great outside of China.

renegade-otter 2y ago

The days of interesting tech have been gone for a couple of decades now. Every technology is now being quickly enshitified. It's ALL about selling you crap. The nerd Internet was the best, but it's never coming back. The bandwidth gave us streaming - okay, I'll give you that, but we had that before. It's more of an infrastructure thing than "interesting" tech.

autokad 2y ago
I been hearing this term 'enshitified' a lot lately. I am curious to its source and why it seems so much more prevalent recently. Do you have any insight into that?
- jsheard 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
- renegade-otter 2y ago
  It's when monetizing your users is more important than maintaining and growing your product. With AI, it's going to get even worse. I mention that in this new post I just wrote: https://renegadeotter.com/2024/04/22/artificial-intelligence-skynet-is-not-coming-to-kill-you.html https://renegadeotter.com/2024/04/22/artificial-intelligence...
scottm01 2y ago
There's literally an ad on the front page right now for a YC startup hiring engineers to protect patient privacy. Follow the link? The company exists to better sell ads based on patient data (but in a "compliant" manner).
- whiplash451 2y ago
  Link?
  - 2y ago

melenaboija 2y ago

I guess something interesting will come up from this but I see it more like investing in technology to create new type of ads.