4 ms·

I dread the day I see an ad from an LLM, but I am unsure how this is different than Google being an intermediary between myself and reaching the rest of the int

I dread the day I see an ad from an LLM, but I am unsure how this is different than Google being an intermediary between myself and reaching the rest of the internet. Specifically, this statement... ``` adding an untrusted middleman to your information diet and all of your personal communications will eventually become a disaster that will be obvious in hindsight ``` ...seems like it could be said for Google right now.

mingus88 1y ago
Right, this is business as usual on the internet. And I guarantee we all have seen ads generated by an LLM already. The front page of Reddit is filled with LLM posts whose comments are similarly rich with bots. One common one is an image post of a snarky t-shirt where a high rated comment gives you a link to the storefront. The bots no longer need to recycle old posts and comments which can be easily detected as duplicates when an LLM can freshen it up.
ksenzee 1y ago
There’s trust and trust. I have historically trusted Google to act in normal capitalist ways. For example, I trust them not to do things that would immediately lose them huge numbers of corporate customers as soon as the news broke, or get them shut down immediately by regulators in multiple nations. That doesn’t sound like it would cover much, but it does include things like “sell my company’s Google Sheets data to the highest bidder.” I don’t trust LLMs even that far. Is it possible for “agentic AI” to send an email to my competitor with confidential company data attached? Absolutely it’s possible. So no, that statement doesn’t apply to Google as a company nearly as aptly as it applies to an agentic LLM.
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  At this point big tech companies have abused people's trust more and more times, they have a fine from the eu for anti competition behavior every, Idk, 2 month? My only pet peeve have been fines from eu being too gentle
  - ksenzee 1y ago
    I agree fines aren’t much of a deterrent, especially in the amounts they usually come in. I don’t count on them keeping any company from doing anything.
scsh 1y ago
I don't disagree and think that that is something people should be more concerned about than they already are/have been. I think the difference is how opaque the influence of the middleman is. It's like the difference of someone handing out printed tour guides vs an in-person tour guide. It's typically can be easier to tell which are the ads, the extent of the curation, etc. with the printed guide(but not always!). While with the in-person guide you just have to just have to take everything they say at face value since there's no other surrounding information to judge.
skywhopper 1y ago
Yes, what Google has become is exactly the lesson we should all be looking at. It used to be a great way to find resources online. Then ads crept in, then it started extracting the answers it claimed to think you wanted, now it jams AI in there too. So, how will that go with LLM tools which start with you already entirely separated from the sources, with no real way to get to them?
BrenBarn 1y ago
It's not that different, and Google already sucks in the same way. So this is just a new way for things to get even worse.

mingus88 1y ago

Right, this is business as usual on the internet. And I guarantee we all have seen ads generated by an LLM already. The front page of Reddit is filled with LLM posts whose comments are similarly rich with bots. One common one is an image post of a snarky t-shirt where a high rated comment gives you a link to the storefront. The bots no longer need to recycle old posts and comments which can be easily detected as duplicates when an LLM can freshen it up.

ksenzee 1y ago

There’s trust and trust. I have historically trusted Google to act in normal capitalist ways. For example, I trust them not to do things that would immediately lose them huge numbers of corporate customers as soon as the news broke, or get them shut down immediately by regulators in multiple nations. That doesn’t sound like it would cover much, but it does include things like “sell my company’s Google Sheets data to the highest bidder.” I don’t trust LLMs even that far. Is it possible for “agentic AI” to send an email to my competitor with confidential company data attached? Absolutely it’s possible. So no, that statement doesn’t apply to Google as a company nearly as aptly as it applies to an agentic LLM.

amarcheschi 1y ago
At this point big tech companies have abused people's trust more and more times, they have a fine from the eu for anti competition behavior every, Idk, 2 month? My only pet peeve have been fines from eu being too gentle
- ksenzee 1y ago
  I agree fines aren’t much of a deterrent, especially in the amounts they usually come in. I don’t count on them keeping any company from doing anything.

scsh 1y ago

I don't disagree and think that that is something people should be more concerned about than they already are/have been. I think the difference is how opaque the influence of the middleman is. It's like the difference of someone handing out printed tour guides vs an in-person tour guide. It's typically can be easier to tell which are the ads, the extent of the curation, etc. with the printed guide(but not always!). While with the in-person guide you just have to just have to take everything they say at face value since there's no other surrounding information to judge.

skywhopper 1y ago

Yes, what Google has become is exactly the lesson we should all be looking at. It used to be a great way to find resources online. Then ads crept in, then it started extracting the answers it claimed to think you wanted, now it jams AI in there too. So, how will that go with LLM tools which start with you already entirely separated from the sources, with no real way to get to them?

BrenBarn 1y ago

It's not that different, and Google already sucks in the same way. So this is just a new way for things to get even worse.