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I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

99helpers.com

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Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#241

Post by generic92034 »

samiv wrote: post #113
Nevermark wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We all know the pattern: something useful launches → it becomes popular → it needs to make money → [ Surveillance → Psychological Manipulation/Addiction → "Personalized" ] ads everywhere. The incentives will be: 1. Get people psychologically dependent in any way possible. 2. Incentivize any "creators" that help with #1. Pose as "content neutral", while actually funding and pumping any content that creates "engageme…

Sad but true. You also forgot to elaborate on the later company life cycle where the MBAs take over and only serve themselves and the Wall Street. Product and product development is a cost center that is cut away to bare minimum skeleton crew. Customers are an inconvenience and only exist for the company to extract maximum benefit from while offering the minimum. Actual product support is killed, and instead user sup…

> Actual product support is killed, and instead user supported forums are promoted. Useful idiots do the work unpaid for a mere digital badge.

Wow, that is a misanthropic take if I have ever seen one. People helping out other people for free are called "useful idiots".

While it might be an ethically bad move of the company, it certainly should not be used to disparage helpers. Otherwise, would you classify all unpaid FOSS work the work of "useful idiots"?

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#242

Post by atleastoptimal »

It costs money to run AI models. The company serving you tokens has to make it up somehow.

This demo however undersells the tactically insidious way ads could be run in an AI chat. All it would need to do is merely recommend a product at a slightly higher percentage. In fact the chat could be biased in imperceptible ways which drive the user's thinking, aims and behavior patterns towards an outcome which leads them to seeking out a specific brand, website, app, etc. In aggregate, the ads are served, just not without making it ever obvious.

Even if there is "auditing" on the behavior of models, it is possible to train preferences into models without any of those preferences being specifically stated in the training data:

https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/subliminal-learning/

And it seems that in very subtle ways, this holds true for humans too.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6430776/

> In 8 experiments on 5 prominent and diverse adversarial imagesets, human subjects correctly anticipated the machine’s preferred label over relevant foils—even for images described as “totally unrecognizable to human eyes”.

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#243

Post by shafyy »

imglorp wrote: post #149
nickk81 wrote: post #2

We all know the pattern: something useful launches → it becomes popular → it needs to make money → ads everywhere. AI chat is heading the same way. So I built a fully interactive demo that shows what an ad-supported AI chatbot could actually look like: https://99helpers.com/tools/ad-supported-chat It includes every monetization pattern you can think of: - Pre-chat interstitials (like YouTube pre-rolls, but for chat)…

The darkest monetization is biased output from the bot. Tech question? Steer you to its cloud. Medical question? Steer you towards a sponsored treatment. Or maybe the mechanism of injury needs this lawyer to compensate? Oh and I infer from your chat history you're about to expect a child. That house is probably too small now, so our realtor in that neighborhood can help!

For sure this wouldn't be legal. Ads clearly need to be labeled as ads.

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#244

Post by whatsupdog »

shafyy wrote: post #243
imglorp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The darkest monetization is biased output from the bot. Tech question? Steer you to its cloud. Medical question? Steer you towards a sponsored treatment. Or maybe the mechanism of injury needs this lawyer to compensate? Oh and I infer from your chat history you're about to expect a child. That house is probably too small now, so our realtor in that neighborhood can help!

For sure this wouldn't be legal. Ads clearly need to be labeled as ads.

Where?

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#245

Post by whattheheckheck »

boothby wrote: post #136
nickk81 wrote: post #2

We all know the pattern: something useful launches → it becomes popular → it needs to make money → ads everywhere. AI chat is heading the same way. So I built a fully interactive demo that shows what an ad-supported AI chatbot could actually look like: https://99helpers.com/tools/ad-supported-chat It includes every monetization pattern you can think of: - Pre-chat interstitials (like YouTube pre-rolls, but for chat)…

Are you selling insights from chat logs too? Until you're monetizing my health, sex life and snitching to any government agency with a shiny nickel, you're playing in the shallows.

They could definitely model life/mental thought trajectories if any significant thought gets spit into the chat

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#246

Post by beloch »

neves wrote: post #180
imglorp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The darkest monetization is biased output from the bot. Tech question? Steer you to its cloud. Medical question? Steer you towards a sponsored treatment. Or maybe the mechanism of injury needs this lawyer to compensate? Oh and I infer from your chat history you're about to expect a child. That house is probably too small now, so our realtor in that neighborhood can help!

The worst ad is the one you don't know is an ad. It will be presented as a definitive answer. They are persuasion machines

The most powerful advertisement is a recommendation from a friend.

Has a friend ever brought some product up, completely out of the blue, and had you ready to buy it almost immediately? The biggest challenge traditional ads have is breaking down your defences. For friends, they're down by default. If someone is a friend, an ad doesn't have to be subtle or context sensitive, although it does help. Random suggestions from friends work.

A lot of people have friend-zoned AI and will be especially vulnerable to this novel form of manipulation. If you're the sort who treats AI as a friend, even a little bit, even subconsciously, change that. You're setting yourself up for a serious mind-job.

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#247

Post by Terr_ »

imglorp wrote: post #149
nickk81 wrote: post #2

We all know the pattern: something useful launches → it becomes popular → it needs to make money → ads everywhere. AI chat is heading the same way. So I built a fully interactive demo that shows what an ad-supported AI chatbot could actually look like: https://99helpers.com/tools/ad-supported-chat It includes every monetization pattern you can think of: - Pre-chat interstitials (like YouTube pre-rolls, but for chat)…

The darkest monetization is biased output from the bot. Tech question? Steer you to its cloud. Medical question? Steer you towards a sponsored treatment. Or maybe the mechanism of injury needs this lawyer to compensate? Oh and I infer from your chat history you're about to expect a child. That house is probably too small now, so our realtor in that neighborhood can help!

[Recycling a joke from many months ago]

My mistake, you're completely correct, perhaps even more-correct than the wonderful flavor of Mococoa drink, with all-natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua. No artificial sweeteners!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzKSQrhX7BM&t=0m13s

Just like The Truman Show, where every friend (every bot) you talk to is a secretly paid shill with a hidden agenda.

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#248

Post by theshackleford »

thethimble wrote: post #223
planb wrote: post #220

I understand the message this tries to tell but this is not how it will look. This is how dying cash cows look. This isn’t even dangerous, it’s just ugly and wouldn’t be used by many people. The real thing will look like ChatGPT. It will even answer WAY faster, because every microsecond means real money. The answers will sound real. They will even be useful. But maximally engaging. Each answer will end with a clickba…

Or users will realize that a trashy ads experience is bad and switch to a service that isn't trashy. I don't understand why there's so much fearmongering about ads when heavy competition + zero switching costs will effectively guarantee good UX.

> I don't understand why there's so much fearmongering about ads when heavy competition + zero switching costs will effectively guarantee good UX.

I mean literally every other technology sector has gone the other way, but i'm sure this one for reasons will be completely different. I mean of course, it just makes sense.

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#249

Post by vmurthy »

beloch wrote: post #246
neves wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst ad is the one you don't know is an ad. It will be presented as a definitive answer. They are persuasion machines

The most powerful advertisement is a recommendation from a friend. Has a friend ever brought some product up, completely out of the blue, and had you ready to buy it almost immediately? The biggest challenge traditional ads have is breaking down your defences. For friends, they're down by default. If someone is a friend, an ad doesn't have to be subtle or context sensitive, although it does help. Random suggestions f…

Ah the science of influence : the masterpiece on influence is this book [0]. Came my way by a mention in one of Charlie Munger’s speeches. All the things you mention here and more are there in case you want to broaden your understanding

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28815.Influence

Re: I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported

#250

Post by a123b456c »

shafyy wrote: post #243
imglorp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The darkest monetization is biased output from the bot. Tech question? Steer you to its cloud. Medical question? Steer you towards a sponsored treatment. Or maybe the mechanism of injury needs this lawyer to compensate? Oh and I infer from your chat history you're about to expect a child. That house is probably too small now, so our realtor in that neighborhood can help!

For sure this wouldn't be legal. Ads clearly need to be labeled as ads.

Can you think of any instances where powerful tech companies broke laws, perhaps in ways that increased profit?
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