6 ms·

<AIs are much better at responding to my intent, and they rarely attempt to sell me anything> YET.

jiveturkey 1y ago
I would wager that the most prevalent use of AI today is to sell you ads. Whether through market analysis, campaign analysis, content optimization, and content generation.
pcthrowaway 1y ago
Remember, Google also didn't have ads interspersed with their search results for over 1̶2̶ 2 years
- kristianc 1y ago
  That wasn’t out of benevolence, that’s because they hadn’t discovered the ads business model yet. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle now.
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    They're on record as talking about how Google has better results because it doesn't have ads.
    - passwordoops 1y ago
      At that time and it's what got them the market share. Once they achieved monopoly status "Don't be Evil" was quietly replaced by "You call that an acceptable margin?!"
  - schmidtleonard 1y ago
    They always knew. > The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
- jkaptur 1y ago
  Google was founded in 1998 and you could buy ads on the search results page in 2000. https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-self-service.html?m=1 https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-sel...
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    Ads on the page aren't the same thing as ads interspersed with the results. The ads used to be in a sidebar, or in an inset with a different background color that appeared above all results. Read your own link: > For example, entering the query "buy domain" into the search box on Google’s home page produces search results and an AdWords text advertisement that appears to the right of Google’s search results > Google’s quick-loading AdWords text ads appear to the right of the Google search results and are highlighted as sponsored links, clearly separate from the search results. Google’s premium sponsorship ads will continue to appear at the top of the search results page.
  - JohnMakin 1y ago
    It’s crazy on the web when you point out that google or google products used to be much better in the past someone will come out of nowhere to tell you it’s always been that way what is this instinct? anyone that’s over the age of 25 would know
    - h2zizzle 1y ago
      Many people who post here are, were, or would like to be Googlers. Maybe not so much astroturfing ao much as a kind of corporate hasbara (though maybe both).
      - thaumasiotes 1y ago
        > Maybe not so much astroturfing as much as a kind of corporate hasbara What's the difference? In astroturfing, someone pays people to form an organization, claim to have no external support, and do some kind of activism. In hasbara, the government of Israel pays people to not form an organization, claim to have no external support, and do various kinds of pro-Israel and pro-Jew activism. This looks like astroturfing with the major vulnerability of the no-external-support claim shored up.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  And they were actually praised when they did start doing ads because they weren't as obtrusive as the existing heavy duty in-your-face Flash animations and they were relevant to a user. It quickly turned Google into the biggest / most valuable internet company of all time ever, and it still wasn't enough for them. I've had adblockers running for as long as I can remember so I'm blisfully unaware of how bad it is now... mostly, I don't have adblockers on my phone and some pages are unusable.
  - throwaway290 1y ago
    When ads are too many blame website owners, as far as I know Google does not hijack websites to put more ads. Ads done right is the least bad way of supporting free stuff for people who don't want to pay the cost. But people with ubo punish all sites regardless of whether they do ads nicely or not. You are right now writing in a thread about upcming future where promotion is embedded in the content so that content itself is one big ad disguised as whatever. Do you really think it's a better alternative to clearly delimited and unmistakeable ads?
d_phase 1y ago
You obviously haven't been A/B tested yet. I got very obvious advertisements in a super simple question I asked last week to ChatGPT. The question was "When was the last year it was really smokey in Canada" it answered in one paragraph, then gave me about 6 paragraphs of ads for air purifiers, masks etc. I'd guess we're only 6-12 months out from a full advertisement takeover.
- sheiyei 1y ago
  It was a quote, which I failed to format in this app I use.
- Marazan 1y ago
  The simpler explanation is that ChatGPT is trained on webpages that have been SEO'd to death. So you are just getting SEO'd pages (i.e ads) regurgitated to you.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    This is of course, absolutely, master sahib boss man. Have you considered buying a ChatGPT filter/scrubber to clean your results? Only $9.99 a month! Not available in all areas, not legal in most of the world. ;) and </s>
- bandoti 1y ago
  I think it’s time folks dust off their library cards :) Or support an open source AI model. I stopped using ChatGPT when it started littering my conversation with emojis. It acts like one of those overzealous kids on Barney.
Llamamoe 1y ago
It's very possible that they never will, that instead the advertising will be so subtle nobody will be able to detect it. Including phrases similar to what products, brands, and their actual ads use in positive contexts, sentences that don't mention but make you think of products, being just slightly likely to bring a brand up than its competitor, and a tiny bit more critical of it, etc. The goal isn't to have an ad->purchase, the goal is to make sure the purchase is more likely in the long term.
- Lu2025 1y ago
  This gave me creeps. Modern tech is good an opening up new dimensions of dystopian hell.
  - manosyja 1y ago
    Don’t worry, Doomguy will seal the inter-dimensional portal and kill the icon of sin
    - Melonai 1y ago
      I don't think Sam Altman enjoys being called that. :)
- joegibbs 1y ago
  I think subliminal advertising is banned in quite a few countries - not sure about the US - so it might be a problem internationally. I know that here in Australia there was a big scare about it in the mid 2000s, some station was cutting 100ms ads into shows. Not sure about the efficacy of it though, I’m sure it would be better if you watched a whole ad.
  - JambalayaJimbo 1y ago
    TV shows and movies often have subliminal ads. A character will use a specific type of phone for example.
conception 1y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kan9c1/the_enshittification_has_arrived/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kan9c1/the_enshit... Too late!
reverendsteveii 1y ago
thank you. the idea that this will be the one thing that doesn't get enshittified when it's being so heavily pushed by the people who enshittified everything else is frankly absurd
jameshart 1y ago
The race right now is to get your product embedded as highly recommendable in the training data sets the AIs are learning from.

I would wager that the most prevalent use of AI today is to sell you ads. Whether through market analysis, campaign analysis, content optimization, and content generation.

pcthrowaway 1y ago

Remember, Google also didn't have ads interspersed with their search results for over 1̶2̶ 2 years

kristianc 1y ago
That wasn’t out of benevolence, that’s because they hadn’t discovered the ads business model yet. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle now.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  They're on record as talking about how Google has better results because it doesn't have ads.
  - passwordoops 1y ago
    At that time and it's what got them the market share. Once they achieved monopoly status "Don't be Evil" was quietly replaced by "You call that an acceptable margin?!"
- schmidtleonard 1y ago
  They always knew. > The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
jkaptur 1y ago
Google was founded in 1998 and you could buy ads on the search results page in 2000. https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-self-service.html?m=1 https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-sel...
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  Ads on the page aren't the same thing as ads interspersed with the results. The ads used to be in a sidebar, or in an inset with a different background color that appeared above all results. Read your own link: > For example, entering the query "buy domain" into the search box on Google’s home page produces search results and an AdWords text advertisement that appears to the right of Google’s search results > Google’s quick-loading AdWords text ads appear to the right of the Google search results and are highlighted as sponsored links, clearly separate from the search results. Google’s premium sponsorship ads will continue to appear at the top of the search results page.
- JohnMakin 1y ago
  It’s crazy on the web when you point out that google or google products used to be much better in the past someone will come out of nowhere to tell you it’s always been that way what is this instinct? anyone that’s over the age of 25 would know
  - h2zizzle 1y ago
    Many people who post here are, were, or would like to be Googlers. Maybe not so much astroturfing ao much as a kind of corporate hasbara (though maybe both).
    - thaumasiotes 1y ago
      > Maybe not so much astroturfing as much as a kind of corporate hasbara What's the difference? In astroturfing, someone pays people to form an organization, claim to have no external support, and do some kind of activism. In hasbara, the government of Israel pays people to not form an organization, claim to have no external support, and do various kinds of pro-Israel and pro-Jew activism. This looks like astroturfing with the major vulnerability of the no-external-support claim shored up.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
And they were actually praised when they did start doing ads because they weren't as obtrusive as the existing heavy duty in-your-face Flash animations and they were relevant to a user. It quickly turned Google into the biggest / most valuable internet company of all time ever, and it still wasn't enough for them. I've had adblockers running for as long as I can remember so I'm blisfully unaware of how bad it is now... mostly, I don't have adblockers on my phone and some pages are unusable.
- throwaway290 1y ago
  When ads are too many blame website owners, as far as I know Google does not hijack websites to put more ads. Ads done right is the least bad way of supporting free stuff for people who don't want to pay the cost. But people with ubo punish all sites regardless of whether they do ads nicely or not. You are right now writing in a thread about upcming future where promotion is embedded in the content so that content itself is one big ad disguised as whatever. Do you really think it's a better alternative to clearly delimited and unmistakeable ads?

d_phase 1y ago

You obviously haven't been A/B tested yet. I got very obvious advertisements in a super simple question I asked last week to ChatGPT. The question was "When was the last year it was really smokey in Canada" it answered in one paragraph, then gave me about 6 paragraphs of ads for air purifiers, masks etc. I'd guess we're only 6-12 months out from a full advertisement takeover.

sheiyei 1y ago
It was a quote, which I failed to format in this app I use.
Marazan 1y ago
The simpler explanation is that ChatGPT is trained on webpages that have been SEO'd to death. So you are just getting SEO'd pages (i.e ads) regurgitated to you.
- bombcar 1y ago
  This is of course, absolutely, master sahib boss man. Have you considered buying a ChatGPT filter/scrubber to clean your results? Only $9.99 a month! Not available in all areas, not legal in most of the world. ;) and </s>
bandoti 1y ago
I think it’s time folks dust off their library cards :) Or support an open source AI model. I stopped using ChatGPT when it started littering my conversation with emojis. It acts like one of those overzealous kids on Barney.

Llamamoe 1y ago

It's very possible that they never will, that instead the advertising will be so subtle nobody will be able to detect it. Including phrases similar to what products, brands, and their actual ads use in positive contexts, sentences that don't mention but make you think of products, being just slightly likely to bring a brand up than its competitor, and a tiny bit more critical of it, etc. The goal isn't to have an ad->purchase, the goal is to make sure the purchase is more likely in the long term.

Lu2025 1y ago
This gave me creeps. Modern tech is good an opening up new dimensions of dystopian hell.
- manosyja 1y ago
  Don’t worry, Doomguy will seal the inter-dimensional portal and kill the icon of sin
  - Melonai 1y ago
    I don't think Sam Altman enjoys being called that. :)
joegibbs 1y ago
I think subliminal advertising is banned in quite a few countries - not sure about the US - so it might be a problem internationally. I know that here in Australia there was a big scare about it in the mid 2000s, some station was cutting 100ms ads into shows. Not sure about the efficacy of it though, I’m sure it would be better if you watched a whole ad.
- JambalayaJimbo 1y ago
  TV shows and movies often have subliminal ads. A character will use a specific type of phone for example.

conception 1y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kan9c1/the_enshittification_has_arrived/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1kan9c1/the_enshit... Too late!

reverendsteveii 1y ago

thank you. the idea that this will be the one thing that doesn't get enshittified when it's being so heavily pushed by the people who enshittified everything else is frankly absurd

jameshart 1y ago

The race right now is to get your product embedded as highly recommendable in the training data sets the AIs are learning from.