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andy99 4 hours ago

I just saw a sibling post about Kagi, maybe this is how the industry will end up, with a main provider like OpenAI and niche wrappers on top (I know Kagi is not just a google wrapper but at least they used to return google search results that they paid for).

nothrabannosir 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I thought you were going to say “that comment recommending Kagi is exactly what those ads would look like: native responses making product recommendations as if they’re natural responses in the conversation”

MontyCarloHall 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Ding ding ding. Look at all the brands mentioned in just this thread. From a cursory look, I see:

* WSJ

* Bloomberg

* Financial Times

* Cartier

* Kagi

* Protonmail

* Coca-Cola

* HBO

* Windex

* Netflix

* Azure

* AWS

We are all ourselves advertisers, we just don't realize it. It is inevitable that chatbots will be RLHF-trained in our footsteps.

fph 3 hours ago | parent [-]

That is a weird definition of advertising. It's not an ad if I mention (or even recommend) a product in a post, without going off-topic and without getting any financial benefit.

MontyCarloHall 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The New American Oxford Dictionary defines "advertisement" as "a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event." By that definition, anything that mentions a product in a neutral light (thereby building brand awareness) or positive light (explicitly promotional) is an ad. The fact that it may not be paid for is irrelevant.

A chatbot tuned to casually drop product references like in this thread would build a huge amount of brand awareness and be worth an incredible amount. A chatbot tuned to be insidiously promotional in a surgically targeted way would be worth even more.

I took a quick look at your comment history. If OpenAI/Anthropic/etc. were paid by JuliaHub/Dan Simmons' publisher/Humble Bundle to make these comments in their chatbots, we would unambiguously call them ads:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46279782:

   Precisely; today Julia already solves many of those problems.

   It also removes many of Matlab's footguns like `[1,2,3] + [4;5;6]`, or also `diag(rand(m,n))` doing two different things depending on whether m or n are 1.
(for the sake of argument, pretend Julia is commercial software like Matlab.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46067423:

   I wasn't expecting to read a Hyperion reference in this thread, such a great book.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45921788:

   > Name a game distribution platform that respects its customers
   Humble Bundle.
You seem like a pretty smart, levelheaded person, and I would be much more likely to check out Julia, read Hyperion, or download a Humble Bundle based on your comments than I would be from out-of-context advertisements. The very best advertising is organic word-of-mouth, and chatbots will do their damndest to emulate it.