5 ms·

Serving unwanted ads has what cost-benefit-ratio vs serving LLM:s that are wanted by the user?

by victorbjorklund 10mo ago

PunchyHamster 10mo ago
Every content generated by LLM was served to me against my will and without accounting for preferences.
- doug_durham 10mo ago
  What an odd way of framing this. Every bit of human generated content was served to you "against your will". You are making no sense.
  - joquarky 10mo ago
    Sounds like a gold star ego purity thing to me. I.e., they are proud to have never intentionally used AI and now they feel like they have to maintain that reputation in order to remain respected among their close peers.
- victorbjorklund 10mo ago
  The generation of the content was done intentionally though. If they saved the output and you visited their site it wasn’t really generated for you (rather just static content served to you).
lokar 10mo ago
Ads are extremely computationally cheap
- cvwright 10mo ago
  But mining all the tracking data in order to show profitable targeted ads is extremely intensive. That’s what kicked off the era of “big data” 15-20 years ago.
  - giantrobot 10mo ago
    Mining tracking data is a megaFLOP and gigaFLOP scale problem while just a simple LLM response is a teraFLOP scale problem. It also tends towards embarrassingly parallel because tracks of multiple users aren't usually interdependent. The tracking data processing also doesn't need to be calculated fresh for every single user with every interaction. LLMs need to burn significant amounts of power for every inference. They're exponentially more power hungry than searches, database lookups, or even loads from disk.
- DonHopkins 10mo ago
  But making good people work on ads instead of something useful has an enormous cost to society.
- victorbjorklund 10mo ago
  But what is the benefit? And I’m pretty sure there is more than 1 single CPU in the world dedicated to running ads.
Imustaskforhelp 10mo ago
> LLM:s that are wanted by the user If they want LLM, you probably don't have to advertise them as much No the reality of the matter is that people are being shoved LLM's. They become the talk of the town and algorithms share any development related to LLM or similar. The ads are shoved down to users. Trust me, the average person isn't as much enthusiastic about LLM's and for good reasons when people who have billions of dollars say that yes its a bubble but its all worth it or similar and the instances where the workforce themselves are being replaced/actively talked about being replaced by AI We live in an hackernews bubble sometimes of like-minded people or communities but even on hackernews we see disagreements (I am usually Anti AI mostly because of the negative financial impact the bubble is gonna have on the whole world) So your point becomes a bit moot in the end but that being said, Google (not sure how it was in the past) and big tech can sometimes actively promote/ close their eyes if the ad sponsors are scammy so ad-blockers are generally really good in that sense.
- victorbjorklund 10mo ago
  Guess that means you don’t need food since food is heavily advertised?
vkou 10mo ago
Asking about the value of ads is like asking what value I derive from buying gasoline at the petrol station. None. I derive no value from it, I just spend money there. If given the option between having to buy gas and not having to buy gas, all else being equal, I would never take the first option. But I do derive value from owning a car. (Whether a better world exists where my and everyone else's life would be better if I didn't is a definitely a valid conversation to have.) The user doesn't derive value from ads, the user derives value from the content on which the ads are served next to.
- antonvs 10mo ago
  > what value I derive from buying gasoline at the petrol station. None. I derive no value from it, I just spend money there. The value you derive is the ability to make your car move. If you derived no value from gas, why would you spend money on it?
  - vkou 10mo ago
    And likewise, presumably the users are getting something they want in exchange for having ads blasted at them. If they just wanted ads blasted at them, and nothing else, they'd be doing something else, like, say, watching cable TV.

Serving unwanted ads has what cost-benefit-ratio vs serving LLM:s that are wanted by the user?

PunchyHamster 10mo ago

Every content generated by LLM was served to me against my will and without accounting for preferences.

doug_durham 10mo ago
What an odd way of framing this. Every bit of human generated content was served to you "against your will". You are making no sense.
- joquarky 10mo ago
  Sounds like a gold star ego purity thing to me. I.e., they are proud to have never intentionally used AI and now they feel like they have to maintain that reputation in order to remain respected among their close peers.
victorbjorklund 10mo ago
The generation of the content was done intentionally though. If they saved the output and you visited their site it wasn’t really generated for you (rather just static content served to you).

lokar 10mo ago

Ads are extremely computationally cheap

cvwright 10mo ago
But mining all the tracking data in order to show profitable targeted ads is extremely intensive. That’s what kicked off the era of “big data” 15-20 years ago.
- giantrobot 10mo ago
  Mining tracking data is a megaFLOP and gigaFLOP scale problem while just a simple LLM response is a teraFLOP scale problem. It also tends towards embarrassingly parallel because tracks of multiple users aren't usually interdependent. The tracking data processing also doesn't need to be calculated fresh for every single user with every interaction. LLMs need to burn significant amounts of power for every inference. They're exponentially more power hungry than searches, database lookups, or even loads from disk.
DonHopkins 10mo ago
But making good people work on ads instead of something useful has an enormous cost to society.
victorbjorklund 10mo ago
But what is the benefit? And I’m pretty sure there is more than 1 single CPU in the world dedicated to running ads.

Imustaskforhelp 10mo ago

> LLM:s that are wanted by the user If they want LLM, you probably don't have to advertise them as much No the reality of the matter is that people are being shoved LLM's. They become the talk of the town and algorithms share any development related to LLM or similar. The ads are shoved down to users. Trust me, the average person isn't as much enthusiastic about LLM's and for good reasons when people who have billions of dollars say that yes its a bubble but its all worth it or similar and the instances where the workforce themselves are being replaced/actively talked about being replaced by AI We live in an hackernews bubble sometimes of like-minded people or communities but even on hackernews we see disagreements (I am usually Anti AI mostly because of the negative financial impact the bubble is gonna have on the whole world) So your point becomes a bit moot in the end but that being said, Google (not sure how it was in the past) and big tech can sometimes actively promote/ close their eyes if the ad sponsors are scammy so ad-blockers are generally really good in that sense.

victorbjorklund 10mo ago
Guess that means you don’t need food since food is heavily advertised?

vkou 10mo ago

Asking about the value of ads is like asking what value I derive from buying gasoline at the petrol station. None. I derive no value from it, I just spend money there. If given the option between having to buy gas and not having to buy gas, all else being equal, I would never take the first option. But I do derive value from owning a car. (Whether a better world exists where my and everyone else's life would be better if I didn't is a definitely a valid conversation to have.) The user doesn't derive value from ads, the user derives value from the content on which the ads are served next to.

antonvs 10mo ago
> what value I derive from buying gasoline at the petrol station. None. I derive no value from it, I just spend money there. The value you derive is the ability to make your car move. If you derived no value from gas, why would you spend money on it?
- vkou 10mo ago
  And likewise, presumably the users are getting something they want in exchange for having ads blasted at them. If they just wanted ads blasted at them, and nothing else, they'd be doing something else, like, say, watching cable TV.