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The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

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Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#211

Post by brookst »

jeauxlb wrote: post #198
AstroBen wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lowest cost (either purchase price, or to produce) products don't create a monopoly $30 blenders that break in 3 months haven't bankrupted Vitamix

Search, music streaming, books: heavily consolidated markets where the value-based offering has supremacy (Google vs any paid search; Spotify/Apple Music vs Tidal; Amazon vs anything). It's the market supremacy that generally allows this. If quality were a sufficiently motivating aspect, Google's deteriorating search wouldn't be a constant theme on this site, and people on the street would know where to download and…

Tidal is a great example. They seem do be doing fine with a niche. If more people wanted what they offer instead of Spotify, Tidal would eat market share.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#212

Post by mike_hearn »

dingnuts wrote: post #199
Workaccount2 wrote: post #188

As far as I can tell, the AI-hate is most prominent in tech circles (creativity too, but they don't like media generation, largely embrace text though). It seems here on the ground in non-tech bubble land, people use ChatGPT a ton and lean hard on AI features. When Google judges the success of bolted on AI, they are looking at how Jane and John General Public use it, not how xleet007 uses it(or doesn't). There is als…

Ok but TFA says only 8% of REGULAR PEOPLE want these features so if you're going to directly contradict the source material we all just read (right???) you should bring a citation because otherwise, in light of the data in the article you are ostensibly discussing, I don't know how that's "as far as you can tell."

It doesn't say that. The actual question asked was whether people would pay extra for AI features, which isn't the same thing as asking if they want them.

If you look at the survey results, a few things jump out.

Firstly, there's a strong age skew. The people most likely to benefit from AI features in their software are those who are judged directly on their computing productivity, i.e. the young. Around half of 18-35 year olds say they would pay extra, even . It's only amongst the old that this drops to 20%.

Secondly, when asked directly if they value a range of AI-driven features, they say yes.

The skew opens up because companies like OpenAI give AI services away for free. There's just a really strong expectation established by the tech industry that software is either free or paid for by a low and very price-stable monthly subscription. This is also true in AI: you only pay for ChatGPT if you want more features and smarter models. For the majority of things that people are doing with AI right now, the free version of ChatGPT is good enough. What remains is mostly low value stuff like better autocomplete, where indeed people are probably not that interested in paying more for it.

Unfortunately Ted Gioia tries to use this stat to imply people don't want AI at all, which is not only untrue but trivially untrue; ChatGPT is the fastest growing product in history.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#213

Post by metalman »

the title can be shortened to "force feeding an unwilling public" which is a fairly reasonable description of our current econimic system. we went from "supply and demand", to "we can supply demand"(the heydays of hype and advertising), to "surprise!, like it or lump it"

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#215

Post by AstroBen »

jeauxlb wrote: post #198
AstroBen wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lowest cost (either purchase price, or to produce) products don't create a monopoly $30 blenders that break in 3 months haven't bankrupted Vitamix

Search, music streaming, books: heavily consolidated markets where the value-based offering has supremacy (Google vs any paid search; Spotify/Apple Music vs Tidal; Amazon vs anything). It's the market supremacy that generally allows this. If quality were a sufficiently motivating aspect, Google's deteriorating search wouldn't be a constant theme on this site, and people on the street would know where to download and…

The market supremacy came afterwards, not before. Most people don't want the expensive premium version - they want good enough at a low investment. And that's fine

There's also a segment of the market that wants the FLAC, premium handcrafted experiences at top price. They're not in direct competition and both can co-exist

My initial point was that companies can't just exploit consumers relentlessly because the market won't let them. The good value option can't just box people in and show them only ads. I bet YouTube would love to show you unskippable ads for 75% of the video length. Good luck staying market leader with that

I don't think Google is a good example here. They've been actively trying to fight and failing against SEO and affiliate spam for a decade. No-one else has solved that problem either which is why Google remains at the top. I personally had a hand-crafted content site thrown out of their search results because of them going after spam

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#216

Post by brookst »

babymetal wrote: post #145
brookst wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not spot on. Buying and using all of these products is a choice. The last is especially egregious. I don’t want poorly-written (by my standards) books cluttering up bookstores, but all my life I’ve walked into bookstores and found my favorite genres have lots of books I’m not interested in. Do I have some kind of right to have stores only stock products that I want? The whole thing is just so damn entitled . If…

I'm a bookseller who often uses Ingram to buy books wholesale when I'm not buying direct from publishers. I've used them for their distribution service since opening 5 years ago because they are the only folks in town who can help bootstrap a very small business with coverage of all the major publishers (in the U.S.). They're great at that, for a small cut in revenue. Six-plus months ago they put a chatbot in the bot…

Is it specific to AI or have they made other bad UI choices over the years?

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#217

Post by Eisenstein »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #155
dang wrote: post #115

I also find these features annoying and useless and wish they would go away. But that's not because LLMs are useless, nor because the public isn't using them (as daishi55 pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44479578 ) It's because the integrations with existing products are arbitrary and poorly thought through, the same way that software imposed by executive fiat in BigCo offices for trend-chasing…

> It's because the integrations with existing products are arbitrary and poorly thought through, the same way that software imposed by executive fiat in BigCo offices for trend-chasing reasons has always been. It's just rent-seeking. Nobody wants to actually build products for market anymore; it's a long process with a lot of risk behind it, and there's a chance you won't make shit for actual profit. If however you c…

This is not an AI problem, this is a problem caused by extremely large piles of money. In the past two decades we have been concentrating money in the hands of people who did little more than be in the right place at the right time with a good idea and a set of technical skills, and then told them that they were geniuses who could fix human problems with technological solutions. At the same time we made it impossible to invest money safely by making the interest rate almost zero, and then continued to pass more and more tax breaks. What did we expect was going to happen? There are only so many problems that can be solved by technology that we actually need solving, or that create real value or bolster human society. We are spinning wheels just to spin them, and have given the reins to the people with not only the means and the intent to unravel society in all the worst ways, but who are also convinced that they are smarter than everyone else because they figured out how to arbitrage the temporal gap between the emergence of a capability and the realization of the damage it creates.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#218

Post by p3rls »

miohtama wrote: post #128
kesor wrote: post #127

Companies didn't ask your opinion when they offshore manufacturing to Asia. They didn't ask your opinion when they offshore support to call centers in Asia. Companies don't ask your opinion, they do what they think is best for their financial interest, and that is how capitalism works. Once upon a time, not too long ago, there was someone who would bag your groceries, and someone who would clean your window at the ga…

New Jersey gas stations still do this, and here is napkin cost calculation https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2024/7/12/how-much-do-yo...

Just a bizarre pedantry that isn't even true-- he said clean your windows, not pump your gas.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#219

Post by brookst »

prng2021 wrote: post #126
brookst wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not spot on. Buying and using all of these products is a choice. The last is especially egregious. I don’t want poorly-written (by my standards) books cluttering up bookstores, but all my life I’ve walked into bookstores and found my favorite genres have lots of books I’m not interested in. Do I have some kind of right to have stores only stock products that I want? The whole thing is just so damn entitled . If…

How is this hard to understand? You’re completely missing the point. You’re basically saying if you get a spam text, don’t read it. If you get spam email, don’t read it. If you see an ad modal popup on a website, close it. It’s all still super annoying just like these AI features screaming “use me! click me! type to me!” all over the place in the UI.

There is a huge difference between unwanted messages and a commercial service changing their offering in ways you don’t like. It is literally the definition of entitlement to conflate the two.

Re: The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

#220

Post by marcosdumay »

t0bia_s wrote: post #168
roxolotl wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Onion has a great response to this from 2009: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY Of course you can opt out. People live in the backwoods of Alaska. But if you want to live a semi normal life there is no option. And absolutely people should feel entitled to a normal life.

Normal life means collectivism and conformity behaviour?

Do you have a definition of "normal" that doesn't refer to a collective?
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