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Which do you think is more important? Putting man on the moon or ecommerce? I reckon you been able to get on a device, see a biscuit ads, order one from foo.co

Which do you think is more important? Putting man on the moon or ecommerce? I reckon you been able to get on a device, see a biscuit ads, order one from foo.com and have it shipped to you. Think of how much tech it takes for that to happen, that is more tech than NASA built to send many to the moon, the internet, packet switching, routing, fiber optic, distributed systems, web servers, web browsers, ads, cryptography, banking online, and so on and so forth. We love to trivialize what is common, but that clicking on an ad is not an easy problem. Clicking on ads has generated enormous wealth in the world which is now bootstrapping AGI. Clicking on ads helped with our goal to AI today. Showing you the right ad and beating those trying to game it is machine learning heavy. When was the first time we started seeing spelling correction and next word suggestions? It was in google search bar. To serve the correct ads and deal with spam? heavy NLP algorithms. If you stop and think of it, we can drop a think line from the current state of LLMs to these ads click you are talking about.

ksynwa 2y ago
They are clearly talking about one aspect of the industry which is the marketing part related to maximising engagement. It is not meant to be conflated with the e-commerce industry as a whole.
batch12 2y ago
Marketing manipulation and spam is less important.
Jgrubb 2y ago
That last line kind of makes the point. Is any of that actually inspiring to a young child?
- thedevilslawyer 2y ago
  It sure as heck is inspiring to a critical thinking adult. There's been enormous value added to all world's citizens.
  - commodoreboxer 2y ago
    Interesting. In my experience, advertisement and the incentives around it have led to the most devastatingly widespread removal of value in human culture and social connections that we've seen in this generation. Huge amounts of effort wasted on harvesting attention, manipulating money away from people, isolating and fostering extremism, building a massive political divide. And centralizing wealth more and more. The amount of human effort wasted on advertisement is staggering and shocking. I don't think your average adult is inspired by the idea of AI generated advertisements. Probably a small bubble of people including timeshare salesmen. If advertisements were opt-in, I expect a single digit percentage of people would ever elect to see them. I don't understand how anybody can consider something like that a net good for the world. How does non-consensually harassing people into spending money on things that don't need add value to all the world's citizens?
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      "Adding value" and "Generating wealth" are always the vague euphemisms that these guys fall back to when they try to justify much of today's economic activity. Adding value for who? Generating whose wealth? The answer is usually "people who are already wealthy." Of course, they'll downplay the massive funneling of wealth to these people, and instead point to the X number of people "lifted out of poverty in the 20th century" as if capitalism and commerce was the sole lifting force. I wish some of these people would think about how they'd explain to their 5 year old in an inspiring way what they do for a living: And not just "I take JSON data from one layer in the API and convert it to protobufs in another layer of the API" but the economic output of their jobs: "Millions of wealthy companies give us money because we can divert 1 billion people's attention from their families and loved ones for about 500 milliseconds, 500 times a day. We take that money and give some of it to other wealthy companies and pocket the rest."
    - mrtranscendence 2y ago
      > If advertisements were opt-in, I expect a single digit percentage of people would ever elect to see them. I mean, you'd see the same thing if paying for your groceries were opt-in. Is that also a net bad for the world? Ads do enable the costless (or cost-reduced) provision of services that people would otherwise have to pay for.
- runlaszlorun 2y ago
  > Is any of that actually inspiring to a young child? I think the answer is pretty clear in the fact that so many of them, bluntly speaking, just don’t give a shit any more. I absolutely don’t blame them.
digdugdirk 2y ago
It took way too long to convince myself this wasn't satire. I still wish it wasn't. It made me realize that I think many computing people need more of a fundamental education in "hard" physics (statics, mechanics, thermodynamics, materials science) in order to better understand the staggering paradigm shift that occurred in our understanding of the world in the early 20th century. Maybe then they would appreciate how much of the world's resources have now been directed by the major capital players towards sucking the collective attention span of humanity into a small rectangular screen, and the potential impact of doing so.
commodoreboxer 2y ago
I keep hearing the phrase "generate wealth" in regards to advertisement and from the mouths of startup founders, but in almost no other context. I'm not familiar with the economic concept of "wealth generation" or its cousin "creating value". Is the idea that any and all movement of money is virtuous? That all economic activity is good, and therefore anything that leads to more economic activity is also good? Or is it what it sounds like, and it just means "making some specific people very wealthy"? Wouldn't the more accurate wording be that it "concentrates wealth"? I don't see a huge difference in the economic output of advertisement from most other scams. A ponzi scheme also uses psychological tricks to move money from a large amount of people to a small amount of people. Something getting people to spend money isn't inherently a good thing.
- runlaszlorun 2y ago
  > Is the idea that any and all movement of money is virtuous? Maybe this was your point, but this is built in to one of the definitions of GDP, isn’t it? Money supply times velocity of money? I’m no economist though I’m sure there are folks on here who are. But this seems like an unfortunate fact that’s built into our system- that as laypeople we tend to assume that ‘economic growth’ means an increase in the material aspects of our life. Which in itself is a debatable goal, but our GDP perspective means even this is questionable. For example, take a family of five living out in a relatively rural area. In scenario one, both parents work good paying remote tech jobs and meals, childcare, maintenance of land and housing, etc. are all outsourced. This scenario contrubutes a lot according to our economic definitions of GDP. And provides many opportunities for government to tax and companies to earn a share of these money flows. Then take scenario 2, you take the same family but they’re living off of the grid as much as possible, raising or growing nearly all their own food, parents are providing whatever education there is, etc. In this scenario, the measurable economic activity is close to zero- even if the material situation could be quite similar. Not to mention quality of life might be rated far higher by many. What rating an economy by the flow of its money does do is, and I’m not sure if this is at all intentional, is it does paint a picture of what money flows are potentially capturable either by government taxation or by companies trying to grab some percentage as revenue. It’s a lot harder to get a share of money that isn’t there and/or not moving around. Perhaps my take on economics is off base but, for me, seeing this made me realize just how far off our system is from what it could and should be.
lukan 2y ago
"Putting man on the moon or ecommerce" The comparison here is between moonlanding and advertisement. So I choose the moon obviously. Ecommerce can work just the same without LLM augmented personalized ads, or no advertisement at all. If a law would ban all commercial advertisement - people still need to buy things. But who would miss the ads?
- sebastiennight 2y ago
  To complement your argument, I once was invited to speak at an event in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and was astonished to learn that outdoors advertising is _banned_ in that city. Yet somehow people have still been buying mattresses, cars, and laundry detergent. I can't say I missed the ads one minute during my trip.
mxkopy 2y ago
In the grand scheme, what you’re talking about is very zero-sum, while stuff like making rockets is not. Uber vs Waymo is a good example of how adtech can only go so far in actually creating wealth.

ksynwa 2y ago

They are clearly talking about one aspect of the industry which is the marketing part related to maximising engagement. It is not meant to be conflated with the e-commerce industry as a whole.

batch12 2y ago

Marketing manipulation and spam is less important.

Jgrubb 2y ago

That last line kind of makes the point. Is any of that actually inspiring to a young child?

thedevilslawyer 2y ago
It sure as heck is inspiring to a critical thinking adult. There's been enormous value added to all world's citizens.
- commodoreboxer 2y ago
  Interesting. In my experience, advertisement and the incentives around it have led to the most devastatingly widespread removal of value in human culture and social connections that we've seen in this generation. Huge amounts of effort wasted on harvesting attention, manipulating money away from people, isolating and fostering extremism, building a massive political divide. And centralizing wealth more and more. The amount of human effort wasted on advertisement is staggering and shocking. I don't think your average adult is inspired by the idea of AI generated advertisements. Probably a small bubble of people including timeshare salesmen. If advertisements were opt-in, I expect a single digit percentage of people would ever elect to see them. I don't understand how anybody can consider something like that a net good for the world. How does non-consensually harassing people into spending money on things that don't need add value to all the world's citizens?
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    "Adding value" and "Generating wealth" are always the vague euphemisms that these guys fall back to when they try to justify much of today's economic activity. Adding value for who? Generating whose wealth? The answer is usually "people who are already wealthy." Of course, they'll downplay the massive funneling of wealth to these people, and instead point to the X number of people "lifted out of poverty in the 20th century" as if capitalism and commerce was the sole lifting force. I wish some of these people would think about how they'd explain to their 5 year old in an inspiring way what they do for a living: And not just "I take JSON data from one layer in the API and convert it to protobufs in another layer of the API" but the economic output of their jobs: "Millions of wealthy companies give us money because we can divert 1 billion people's attention from their families and loved ones for about 500 milliseconds, 500 times a day. We take that money and give some of it to other wealthy companies and pocket the rest."
  - mrtranscendence 2y ago
    > If advertisements were opt-in, I expect a single digit percentage of people would ever elect to see them. I mean, you'd see the same thing if paying for your groceries were opt-in. Is that also a net bad for the world? Ads do enable the costless (or cost-reduced) provision of services that people would otherwise have to pay for.
runlaszlorun 2y ago
> Is any of that actually inspiring to a young child? I think the answer is pretty clear in the fact that so many of them, bluntly speaking, just don’t give a shit any more. I absolutely don’t blame them.

digdugdirk 2y ago

It took way too long to convince myself this wasn't satire. I still wish it wasn't. It made me realize that I think many computing people need more of a fundamental education in "hard" physics (statics, mechanics, thermodynamics, materials science) in order to better understand the staggering paradigm shift that occurred in our understanding of the world in the early 20th century. Maybe then they would appreciate how much of the world's resources have now been directed by the major capital players towards sucking the collective attention span of humanity into a small rectangular screen, and the potential impact of doing so.

commodoreboxer 2y ago

I keep hearing the phrase "generate wealth" in regards to advertisement and from the mouths of startup founders, but in almost no other context. I'm not familiar with the economic concept of "wealth generation" or its cousin "creating value". Is the idea that any and all movement of money is virtuous? That all economic activity is good, and therefore anything that leads to more economic activity is also good? Or is it what it sounds like, and it just means "making some specific people very wealthy"? Wouldn't the more accurate wording be that it "concentrates wealth"? I don't see a huge difference in the economic output of advertisement from most other scams. A ponzi scheme also uses psychological tricks to move money from a large amount of people to a small amount of people. Something getting people to spend money isn't inherently a good thing.

runlaszlorun 2y ago
> Is the idea that any and all movement of money is virtuous? Maybe this was your point, but this is built in to one of the definitions of GDP, isn’t it? Money supply times velocity of money? I’m no economist though I’m sure there are folks on here who are. But this seems like an unfortunate fact that’s built into our system- that as laypeople we tend to assume that ‘economic growth’ means an increase in the material aspects of our life. Which in itself is a debatable goal, but our GDP perspective means even this is questionable. For example, take a family of five living out in a relatively rural area. In scenario one, both parents work good paying remote tech jobs and meals, childcare, maintenance of land and housing, etc. are all outsourced. This scenario contrubutes a lot according to our economic definitions of GDP. And provides many opportunities for government to tax and companies to earn a share of these money flows. Then take scenario 2, you take the same family but they’re living off of the grid as much as possible, raising or growing nearly all their own food, parents are providing whatever education there is, etc. In this scenario, the measurable economic activity is close to zero- even if the material situation could be quite similar. Not to mention quality of life might be rated far higher by many. What rating an economy by the flow of its money does do is, and I’m not sure if this is at all intentional, is it does paint a picture of what money flows are potentially capturable either by government taxation or by companies trying to grab some percentage as revenue. It’s a lot harder to get a share of money that isn’t there and/or not moving around. Perhaps my take on economics is off base but, for me, seeing this made me realize just how far off our system is from what it could and should be.

lukan 2y ago

"Putting man on the moon or ecommerce" The comparison here is between moonlanding and advertisement. So I choose the moon obviously. Ecommerce can work just the same without LLM augmented personalized ads, or no advertisement at all. If a law would ban all commercial advertisement - people still need to buy things. But who would miss the ads?

sebastiennight 2y ago
To complement your argument, I once was invited to speak at an event in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and was astonished to learn that outdoors advertising is _banned_ in that city. Yet somehow people have still been buying mattresses, cars, and laundry detergent. I can't say I missed the ads one minute during my trip.

mxkopy 2y ago

In the grand scheme, what you’re talking about is very zero-sum, while stuff like making rockets is not. Uber vs Waymo is a good example of how adtech can only go so far in actually creating wealth.