>Doesn’t anyone think this is really, really bad idea?

I mean I do. And you do. Probably a lot of people in this thread. I felt that way about Netflix doing it, but they did and the world just moved on.

I think you're right that these ads will be, in a sense, worse, but not by the metrics that matter to OpenAI.

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anonymouskimmer 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Netflix has proprietary content among the licensed content.

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raw_anon_1111 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Netflix never introduced ads in the ad free service. They introduced a new lower tier price with ads that if you were an existing customer, you were none the wiser.

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glenstein 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> They introduced a new lower tier price with ads that if you were an existing customer, you were none the wiser.

You're right that I didn't experience them myself, but my data here are (1) Netflix evidently getting a lot of takers and making a lot of money from people using this new with ads tier, and (2) the lack of any sustained negative outcry against Netflix after the first news cycle or two.

So I'm intending to rely on that rather than my own experience. OpenAI has any number of permutations of ways to include ads, including a Netflix style cheaper paid tier, so I don't necessarily think a distinction holds on that basis, though you may be right in the end: it's more intuitive to think OpenAI would put them in the free version. Though it's possible the Netflix example is teachable in this case regardless.

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marcosdumay 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And then increased prices so that the ad-based one is close to what the ad-free one was 2 years earlier.

But yeah, they didn't migrate existing customers and kept the no-ads option. Those are relevant.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Unlike Amazon Prime Video…

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isodev 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> about Netflix doing it, but they did and the world just moved on

I think the main challenge here is that Netflix works around one of many ways to access entertainment. So if one service starts to show recommendations in that limited context of user data they collect - it's still has negative potentials but it's easier to regulate and there are alternatives.

In the case of LLMs, we have service that are aiming to replace both the browser and the search engine. This means ending up in a situation where your entire access to knowledge and the world takes place via "AI". And the result is: ad-infused, tweaked to align with investor priorities, censored by the current politics of wherever the company is based service machinery that's constantly extracting personal information so it can learn better ways to refocus its priorities. I've read and seen a lot of sci-fi and dystopian history novels (actually read, not LLM-summarized for me) to know this is a very end-game kind of situation.

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resfirestar 3 hours ago | parent [-]

>In the case of LLMs, we have service that are aiming to replace both the browser and the search engine

Most people already experience the internet as an integrated browser+search engine (and often, OS) experience from a single advertising company, Google, and it has been this way for over a decade.

>And the result is: ad-infused, tweaked to align with investor priorities, censored by the current politics of wherever the company is based service machinery that's constantly extracting personal information so it can learn better ways to refocus its priorities.

Exactly.

This is not to say I like this outcome, but how is it not massive hyperbole to invoke apocalyptic sci-fi? I expect we'll plod along much as before: some people fiercely guarding their personal info, some people taking a "privacy is dead anyway" approach, most people seeing personal computers as a means to some particular ends (scrolling social feeds and watching Netflix) that are incompatible with thinking too hard about the privacy and information environment implications.

	▲	anonymouskimmer 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Apocalyptic scifi isn't the same as dystopian scifi. Some of the billionaires backing AI literally have dystopian scifi as a goal, they just intend to do it better so that it doesn't seem so bad. I only connect my smartphone to data about three or four times a year, and then only to update some apps or check on an internet outage. It is becoming more difficult to do this as the alternatives to a connected smartphone disappear. The same will become true with the rest of personal info (such as biometrics). More and more the only alternatives will be your latter two.