6 ms·
This is depressing. We are already meat in the google ad-serving machine that tracks us, profiles us, gives us "free" stuff (gmail, anyone?) in order to feed us
by jwr 1y ago
This is depressing. We are already meat in the google ad-serving machine that tracks us, profiles us, gives us "free" stuff (gmail, anyone?) in order to feed us advertising.
Now even that advertising will be AI-generated. The human is reduced to the ultimate consumption machine, to be fed stuff paid for by advertisers and generated by machines.
- Culonavirus 1y ago> The human is reduced to the ultimate consumption machine. Question is, if the AI bros are right about a "new industrial revolution", will there be consumers to consume if all the wealth is concentrated in the top 1-2% of the population? (the owners of AI hardware and software)
- ddalex 1y agoI keep seeing this worry about "who will consume?!!?" This is entirely unfounded - the AI will develop its own marketplace and AI will consume. The question is, will be there anything left for humans to consume ? will we survive ?
- vbezhenar 1y agoBuy acre of land, plant potatoes, raise chicken, pay your tithe to your landlord. People will survive, for sure. Not all of them, but enough.
- jeremyjh 1y agoThere won’t be any such leases if machines can make more productive use of the land than a potato farmer.
- Thorrez 1y agoCurrently AI isn't allowed to own assets AFAIK.
- ddalex 1y agoOf course they are allowed, they're called "corporations" because they have a "body" and legal rights. The datacenter is held by a corporation, and the corporation does what the resident AI wants it to do.
- Thorrez 1y agoWho owns the corporation though? It has to be humans. And corporations need to have a board of directors composed of humans.
- impossiblefork 1y agoIf that happens it won't be the AI people who benefit. The wealth will be concentrated among the present capital owners. Even many top AI experts who contributed critical research won't become rich. You'll see the wealth concentration you talk of, but it'll be completely different people who get this wealth, maybe even people who own businesses where wages are a large outlay.
- reaperducer 1y agoQuestion is, if the AI bros are right about a "new industrial revolution", will there be consumers to consume if all the wealth is concentrated in the top 1-2% of the population? Who cares? That's two quarters away. What matters is that I got my Lambo and my speedboat today. Let the poors worry about the future.
- simianwords 1y agoThe answer is already in your question. The original Industrial Revolution concentrated wealth and yet increased the baseline wealth for everyone else. There is no reason to believe otherwise in this revolution.
- rogerrogerr 1y agoThough for those of us above the current baseline (e.g. basically everyone reading this), it’s not guaranteed that the new baseline will be above our current lifestyle.
- simianwords 1y agoWhy? Industrial Revolution increased everyone’s baseline
- rogerrogerr 1y agoIf you’re a software bro making $300k today, and lose your job to AI, it’s very unlikely that the new baseline for everyone is going to be that of a $300k income. At least not anytime soon.
- simianwords 1y agosure but whatever mechanism allowed for jobs to exist a few years/decades after industrial revolution will apply here as well. with some jobs lost and chaos in the middle that is un-avoidable.
- rogerrogerr 1y agoI dunno… what differentiates human labor in a few decades? You don’t see ~anyone being paid because they are stronger than the next guy; hydraulics are stronger than all of us. What happens when you don’t get paid for being smarter than the next guy, because AI is smarter than all of us? And then next up is being paid for being more dexterous than the robots - basically all trade work. I think there’s a longer runway for those jobs, but it’s coming.
- overfeed 1y agoThis is why they are looking at government coffers with a hunger in their eyes. They don't care for the long term societal stability; the richest of them fantasize riding it out in their island bunkers.
- nkrisc 1y agoPeople can choose to not consume crap they don’t need. They won’t, but they can. Advertising is now just worthless noise to me because I generally don’t buy stuff anymore but what I need. I can’t imagine why anyone would buy most of the crap I see advertised, but they do. Halloween was a recent example: how many tons of plastic shit for costumes was shipped from China only to be thrown away the next day? How much candy was bought? Even when I was 12 I started to see what a disgusting consumerist affair the whole thing was and it lost its appeal. And yet we have adults participating. The ad machine exists because people let it be successful.
- nashashmi 1y ago> They won’t, but they can. That is the problem with this advice. “Can choose not to” is code to stop someone complaining. “Just don’t use it then”. It sounds equivalent to the “love it or leave it” slogan used in the 70s in America. We don’t leave. We fight. We don’t stop using. We openly and publicly criticize
- lrvick 1y agoLeaving it is the right choice though. The corpos will never care about you. I consume no ads, or Google software, and still do anything I want in the tech world.
- macintux 1y agoI left Facebook, but its algorithm continues to actively encourage the divisiveness and misinformation that’s poisoning the world I live in. Sometimes “you don’t have to participate” isn’t strong enough advice, not that I know what the answer actually is.
- lrvick 1y agoGet yourself off the toxic platforms first, then immediate family and friends. It is a bit like denormalizing smoking. It is a long game and a lot of education work but it is working.
- realusername 1y agoPersonally I'm okay with that as it weakens the argument that ads are content, a dubious argument often used by ad companies.
- mcny 1y agoI wonder if these ads will still be called "creatives".
- realusername 1y agoI'm sure they will, this industry is completely delusional and out of touch with reality
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoOne of the best arguments in favor of ads is that high-quality ads act as an honest/credible signal that a firm is a serious business offering a serious product. Through making the production of high-quality ads cheap, people who are truly passionate about their small business will be "disrupted", and scammers/fly-by-night operations will be "supercharged".
- bko 1y agoI don't know, I feel like it will help smaller businesses without a budget for a designer or even design taste compete with larger companies. Maybe that's good and maybe not. But big brands always had this splashy advertising, so this evens the field
- Retr0id 1y agoIs this really aimed at the smaller businesses, or is it aimed at the big businesses who want to cut down their marketing department?
- rafaelmn 1y agoThing is at that scale cutting down on marketing with slop has huge implications. It's not like this thing blew he ceiling, it just lifted the floor.
- bko 1y agoObviously both parties will have access to the tech, but I don't see giant brands just using something like this to hack an ad campaign. Either way it doesn't really matter. It just levels the playing field
- Retr0id 1y agoThe first time I saw an AI-generated ad was Coca Cola's 2024 xmas ad.
- mbreese 1y agoThat’s where I stay to see some benefits. Will AI ads (or media) be better than an expert human made ad campaign? Not at the moment. But can a small business use AI tools to make a better ad for their smaller budget? Probably. I was thinking about this in the context of some videos posted here a few weeks back. They were AI generated video shorts. They weren’t fabulous, but they were funny and entertaining. There was a small writing team behind it that was able to produce solid video content that would have been way out of their budget just a few years ago. But with AI tools they were able to get their ideas made and content available. That’s where I start to struggle… I’m not a fan of pure AI content, but if it helps smaller teams on smaller budgets compete a little more, or helps individual creators get to tell their story when they otherwise couldn’t, is AI content completely wrong?
- ErroneousBosh 1y agoA Modest Proposal: We set all our servers to listen on port 4443, and walk away from the whole sorry mess. Make it all again from scratch. Block whole swathes of IP ranges known to belong to FAANG.