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The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

kaveland.no

271–280 of 346 posts

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#271

The money situation is what gives me pause with LLMs. The amount of money it's burned on this is giant; those companies will need to make so much money to have any possibility of return. The idea is that we will all spend more money on AI that we spend on phones, and we will spend it on those companies only... I don't know, it just doesn't add up. As a user it's a great free ride though. Maybe there IS such a thing a…

> The amount of money it's burned on this is giant It's big, but it's honestly not that big. Most importantly, costs will quickly come down as we realize the limits of the models, the algorithms are optimized and even more-dedicated hardware is built. There's no reason to think it isn't sustainable, it will add up just fine. But yes, it will attract a ton of advertising, the same curve every service goes through, lik…

  > I don't think ads will be built into the main replies, 
  > because people will quickly lose trust in the results. 

The 'best' ads will be those the public doesn't recognize. Surf the internet without an ad blocker and you will die from a heart attack. This is a matter of conditioning users. It will take some time. Case in point: people already give up on privacy because "Google knows about everything already", which reflects a normalization of abuse, as we started from trust and norms ("don't be evil").

So, can they? yes. Will they? yes.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#272
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m constantly confused why Google wants me to use Gemini so much. Why would they want me to use an AI that doesn’t show ads, isn’t their search, and costs them money to generate the responses? The instant we see ads in LLMs we will stop using them, it will be as abrupt and as annoying as the vuvuzela example because using an LLM is a very intimate interaction. It will feel much more jarring when your intimate chat f…

Google has this pesky problem of carrying almost all their eggs in one basket: The moment their ad business doesn’t work anymore, the behemoth that Google is will come down to its knees. But due to the way the company is structured, they need search to drive users to the ads, and it’s all one big mess of entangled revenue streams that can’t be touched for fear of breaking something. Now if AI turns out to be the next…

This was true, and is why Google didn't come out with ChatGPT themselves 5 years earlier. But since OpenAI's come to take their lunch, they understand this predicament and are pivoting.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#273
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is one: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-coal-fired-power-plant-... Here is another: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/trump-coal-executive-order-...

Sorry, but they simply are not.

What about https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/24/elon-musk...

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#274
post #269
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is one: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-coal-fired-power-plant-... Here is another: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/trump-coal-executive-order-...

trump stooge activities cannot be blamed on data centers. The relevant technical authorities did not want this.

What are you talking about? This is literally the only mechanism to allow coal-fired plants to avoid sunsetting on schedule.

Who are the “relevant technical authorities”?

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#275
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is one: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-coal-fired-power-plant-... Here is another: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/trump-coal-executive-order-...

Sorry, but they simply are not.

FTA:

> In another move, DOE on Tuesday said it was offering loan guarantees for coal-fired power plant projects, such as upgrading energy infrastructure to restart operations or operate more efficiently or at a higher output.

Please elaborate.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#276

My dream solution: The EU creates an institution for public knowledge, a kind of library+tech solution. It probably funds classic libraries in member countries, but it also invests in tech. It dovetails nicely into a big push to get science to thrive in the EU etc. The tech part makes a in-the-public-interest search engine and AI. The techies are incentivised to try and whack-a-mole the classic SEO. E.g. they might s…

Sounds like Wikipedia, except for the EU ownership.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#277
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a user it's a great free ride though. Maybe there IS such a thing as a free lunch after all! if you consider the massive environmental harm AI has and continues to cause, the people whose work has been stolen to create it, the impacts on workers and salaries, and the abuses AI enables that free lunch starts looking more expensive.

> the people whose work has been stolen to create it "Stolen" is kind of a loaded word. It implies the content was for sale and was taken without payment. I don't think anyone would accuse a person of stealing if they purchased GRRM's books, studied the prose and then used the knowledge they gained from studying to write a fanfic in the style of GRRM (or better yet, the final 2 books). What was stolen? "the prose sty…

AI has been trained on pirated material and that would be very different from someone buying books and reading them and learning from them. Right now it's still up to the courts what counts as infringing but at this point even Disney is accusing AI of violating their copyrights https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/business/media/disney-uni...

AI outputs copyrighted material: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/25/business/ai-i... and they can even be ranked by the extent to which they do it: https://aibusiness.com/responsible-ai/openai-s-gpt-4-is-the-...

AI is getting better at data laundering and hiding evidence of infringement, but ultimately it's collecting and regurgitating copyrighted content.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#278
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a user it's a great free ride though. Maybe there IS such a thing as a free lunch after all! if you consider the massive environmental harm AI has and continues to cause, the people whose work has been stolen to create it, the impacts on workers and salaries, and the abuses AI enables that free lunch starts looking more expensive.

> the people whose work has been stolen to create it "Stolen" is kind of a loaded word. It implies the content was for sale and was taken without payment. I don't think anyone would accuse a person of stealing if they purchased GRRM's books, studied the prose and then used the knowledge they gained from studying to write a fanfic in the style of GRRM (or better yet, the final 2 books). What was stolen? "the prose sty…

Stolen doesn't imply anything is for sale, does it? Most things that are stolen are not for sale.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#279

The money situation is what gives me pause with LLMs. The amount of money it's burned on this is giant; those companies will need to make so much money to have any possibility of return. The idea is that we will all spend more money on AI that we spend on phones, and we will spend it on those companies only... I don't know, it just doesn't add up. As a user it's a great free ride though. Maybe there IS such a thing a…

> The idea is that we will all spend more money on AI that we spend on phones

AI is not a consumer product.

Businesses will pay for AI. They will use it for whatever they are building. We will buy what those businesses build.

The medium term here is that AI is going to become part of the value chain. It's gonna be like stripe or insurance or labor.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#280

> AIs are much better at responding to my intent, and they rarely attempt to sell me anything Yet. It's only a matter of time before AI becomes ad-riddled and enshittified.

they won’t as long as you are paying $200+/month

How did that work for cable and satellite TV and streaming services and and and
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