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TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

vincentschmalbach.com

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Re: TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

#51

Post by jraph »

amiga386 wrote: post #27
embedding-shape wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a golden age where lots of websites had WAP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol ) versions available while also running their "normal website", and the WAP version was always like 1/100 of the size of the normal website. Still, "normal websites" were minimal compared to now, but when you were on modem, even those websites loaded slow. For some time, most of my browsing were via the…

There was also AMP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages ), where Google gave a huge reputation boost to your pages provided you served them under a different URL that Google could discover, and you massively stripped down the HTML and CSS to Google's limited subset. It's effectively dead today, and while it was dominant, Google abused it to get people to view and link to their cached copies of AMP…

Google AMP might have enforced stripped down HTML, but I think you were also supposed to embed their JS as well, probably making a page that was lightweight from the start heavier…

Re: TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

#52

Post by shevy-java »

I often get a "verify you are not a bot" these days, which just needlessly wastes my time (because I need to click on something, and this in turn takes away seconds; multiply this like x50 per day and that's a time waster, now I need an extension to disable this crap check). So I am biased here.

Most people will say "yay, it is great you waste the time of AI bots via ads!". Well, I already think ads should not exist in the first place, nor bots, but both exist - but the real issue is when websites now steal my time. That was different in the 1990s. I think mankind made several missteps here.

Re: TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

#53

Post by philistine »

jerf wrote: post #4
WJW wrote: post #2

Is the intention that some type of long-term context would be seeded with "ideas" for the AI to serve up if it is ever asked for bank recommendations? It seems kinda ad-hoc and untargeted, but perhaps for high cost services it might be worth it.

The best way for a politician to lie is to convince someone else of the truth of the lie and then put that someone in front of the cameras. That way, there's no hint of body language or anything else that indicates it's a lie. Both the denotation of the lie and the human context of the lie will be in harmony. This sort of reminds me of that. LLMs are by their nature credulous. They can be trained to not give in easil…

> It's probably a good idea to rather strictly partition your conversations to stick to a single topic.

You assume that UI is sacrosanct and the same everywhere. Those LLM providers are already offering to mingle all your conversations together. Gemini from Google for example defaults to memory from every conversation, and it's safe to assume the option to disable it will be eventually removed.

Re: TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

#55

Post by HPsquared »

skeledrew wrote: post #22

Probably trying to take advantage of the cross session memory feature some LLM providers are increasingly integrating. Enough "suggestions" and it becomes a "fact" in that memory, and one day a user makes a somewhat relevant query and the model will be pushing those accumulated "facts" to said user.

This is one reason LLMs seem so fresh and nice, there are no ads. Agreed it's just a matter of time.

Re: TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

#56

Post by reaperducer »

skeledrew wrote: post #22

Probably trying to take advantage of the cross session memory feature some LLM providers are increasingly integrating. Enough "suggestions" and it becomes a "fact" in that memory, and one day a user makes a somewhat relevant query and the model will be pushing those accumulated "facts" to said user.

Probably trying to take advantage of the cross session memory feature some LLM providers are increasingly integrating. Enough "suggestions" and it becomes a "fact" in that memory, and one day a user makes a somewhat relevant query and the model will be pushing those accumulated "facts" to said user.

Sounds like politics.

"Tell a lie enough times, and it becomes the truth."

Re: TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

#57

Post by xmcp123 »

everdrive wrote: post #32

I wonder if this also means that a normal user with a privacy-focused browser also gets this version. I can't see the point (except for click fraud?) of showing ads to AI, so it feels like this is more for the ad-blocking and privacy crowd.

I think this is less traditional ads, and more "content focused on poisoning the AI with very promotional statements"

Re: TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

#58

Post by Magicrafter13 »

This is great, I think everyone wins here. Normal users like us get a standard, ad-free web experience, while those sending the most annoying web traffic not only get a smaller, simpler response (which should take less processing on the server side I imagine), but they are benefited by the content already being in a minimal simple format for LLM ingestion, PLUS they get to slip ads in that stream without affecting us normal readers.

I'm also completely unbothered by the precedent of drip feeding product ads to someone's LLM chat history, and having that influence future conversations, because if you're going to outsource your buying decisions to an LLM, frankly I don't really care if you buy stupid products at that point - you brought that on yourself.

Re: TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

#59

Post by nilamo »

skeledrew wrote: post #33
pohl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon we'll be coding with agent assistance and it'll suggest we get some Carls Jr. Big Ass Fries.

"We've been going at it for some time now -- why don't we take a break? And you must be hungry -- I can recommend a great place..." Yep, only a matter of time.

"This could take up to 30 minutes for subagents to complete. Alexa reports that your refrigerator is low on milk. Here's a $2 off coupon for Walmart, why don't you restock while I work?"

Why do we choose to live in the worst timeline?

Re: TIME Is Serving AI Bots a Different Website, with Ads Built In

#60

Post by DANmode »

pohl wrote: post #24
skeledrew wrote: post #22

Probably trying to take advantage of the cross session memory feature some LLM providers are increasingly integrating. Enough "suggestions" and it becomes a "fact" in that memory, and one day a user makes a somewhat relevant query and the model will be pushing those accumulated "facts" to said user.

Soon we'll be coding with agent assistance and it'll suggest we get some Carls Jr. Big Ass Fries.

Extra Big-Ass Fries.
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