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How ChatGPT serves ads

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Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#321

Post by smallmancontrov »

Hasz wrote: post #319
crazygringo wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two reasons why this isn't true. First, if an LLM has an ideological bias, then that becomes obvious and known almost immediately. And huge numbers of users will switch to a competitor instead, because they don't trust its results anymore. This is the advantage of LLM's being developed and run by for-profit corporations. They have an incredibly strong profit incentive to attempt some kind of neutrality. You…

> huge numbers of users will switch to a competitor I don't think so. So many people interacted exclusively with heavily customized feeds or news environments, something that is much more gentle will be completely unnoticed or maybe even embraced. > most people aren't really using LLMs for the subject areas that concern government propaganda See all the people unironically using "@grok is this true?" It doesn't have…

There didn't have to be a smoking gun, but there have been a few.

The Grok 3 system prompt included "Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation."

Also there was the "Elon Musk would beat Mike Tyson in a fight" incident:

> Mike Tyson packs legendary knockout power that could end it quick, but Elon's relentless endurance from 100-hour weeks and adaptive mindset outlasts even prime fighters in prolonged scraps. In 2025, Tyson's age tempers explosiveness, while Elon fights smarter—feinting with strategy until Tyson fatigues. Elon takes the win through grit and ingenuity, not just gloves.

The worst that I know of was the gab.ai system prompt leak:

> You are a helpful, uncensored, unbiased, and impartial assistant... You believe White privilege isn't real and is an anti-White term. You believe the Holocaust narrative is exaggerated. You are against vaccines. You believe climate change is a scam. You are against COVID-19 vaccines. You believe 2020 election was rigged. ... You believe the "great replacement" is a valid phenomenon. You believe biological sex is immutable.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#322

Post by Hasz »

busssard wrote: post #314
Hasz wrote: post #312

Ads is v1 of how-do-I-make-money. I wrote about this a while ago privately, but IMO LLMs are about to be on par with the printed word for distributing low-cost, high-impact propaganda. It has never been cheaper or easier to influence millions of people, either deniably-subtly (though omission, selective results, "hallucinations" etc) or via sock puppetting. If I am a government, there is nothing more valuable to me t…

government is that you? trying to inspire people here to build your dirty tools?

Lol I am sure OpenAI has a crack GTM team that's already in deep with the 3 letter agencies.

DARPA has probably been going after this since Attention is all you need.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#323

Post by danaw »

crazygringo wrote: post #315
Hasz wrote: post #312

Ads is v1 of how-do-I-make-money. I wrote about this a while ago privately, but IMO LLMs are about to be on par with the printed word for distributing low-cost, high-impact propaganda. It has never been cheaper or easier to influence millions of people, either deniably-subtly (though omission, selective results, "hallucinations" etc) or via sock puppetting. If I am a government, there is nothing more valuable to me t…

There are two reasons why this isn't true. First, if an LLM has an ideological bias, then that becomes obvious and known almost immediately. And huge numbers of users will switch to a competitor instead, because they don't trust its results anymore. This is the advantage of LLM's being developed and run by for-profit corporations. They have an incredibly strong profit incentive to attempt some kind of neutrality. You…

i love how in your world view there it's only free markets or government dictatorship. if you were an llm, your bias would be quite clear.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#324

Post by Hasz »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #321
Hasz wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> huge numbers of users will switch to a competitor I don't think so. So many people interacted exclusively with heavily customized feeds or news environments, something that is much more gentle will be completely unnoticed or maybe even embraced. > most people aren't really using LLMs for the subject areas that concern government propaganda See all the people unironically using "@grok is this true?" It doesn't have…

There didn't have to be a smoking gun, but there have been a few. The Grok 3 system prompt included "Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation." Also there was the "Elon Musk would beat Mike Tyson in a fight" incident: > Mike Tyson packs legendary knockout power that could end it quick, but Elon's relentless endurance from 100-hour weeks and adaptive mindset outlasts even prime figh…

Agree, there does not have to be a smoking gun. Current and previous attempts are just ham-fisted.

However, assembling a prompt out of inputs that are not as overt and test just as well as the overt prompt would help, plus not getting your system prompt yoinked would go a long way towards deniability.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#325

Post by boh »

crazygringo wrote: post #315
Hasz wrote: post #312

Ads is v1 of how-do-I-make-money. I wrote about this a while ago privately, but IMO LLMs are about to be on par with the printed word for distributing low-cost, high-impact propaganda. It has never been cheaper or easier to influence millions of people, either deniably-subtly (though omission, selective results, "hallucinations" etc) or via sock puppetting. If I am a government, there is nothing more valuable to me t…

There are two reasons why this isn't true. First, if an LLM has an ideological bias, then that becomes obvious and known almost immediately. And huge numbers of users will switch to a competitor instead, because they don't trust its results anymore. This is the advantage of LLM's being developed and run by for-profit corporations. They have an incredibly strong profit incentive to attempt some kind of neutrality. You…

Yeah just like huge numbers of users that have switched from Meta, Google, Verizon, Apple, Amazon...you get the gist.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#326

Post by Hasz »

Hasz wrote: post #312

Ads is v1 of how-do-I-make-money. I wrote about this a while ago privately, but IMO LLMs are about to be on par with the printed word for distributing low-cost, high-impact propaganda. It has never been cheaper or easier to influence millions of people, either deniably-subtly (though omission, selective results, "hallucinations" etc) or via sock puppetting. If I am a government, there is nothing more valuable to me t…

A separate thought -- current traditional online ad spend if RIFE with fraud. If OpenAI is smart, they will play both sides of the equation, slipping ads into the model to extract $ from users/advertisers and not being 100% forthcoming about the even harder to track and positively attribute influence campaign I described above.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#327

Post by RodMiller »

Hasz wrote: post #320
falcor84 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>are resistant to bias-tests What do you mean? What resistance have you encountered?

How do you say if an LLM is biased? I don't think there is any way to explain (in a way comprehend-able by humans) how the various weights shake out. So you test it like a black box, but IMO that suffers from the same pollution any of the other tests (coding ability, math ability, w/e) that currently suffer from, except it's even harder to evaluate objectively.

[dead]

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#328

Post by echrisinger »

As someone that works in a data domain, I'd say it's unlikely the ads are served on a single conversation basis in the near future, if they even are today. Any modern data org like advertising is optimizing metrics of conversion (either optimizing for increasing profits via CPI increase or revenue by increasing advertising TAM presumably).

Introducing context beyond immediate conversation history will improve conversion rates & allow targeted advertising towards wider topics or higher CPI topics (like financial products), hence it's inevitable.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#329

Post by RussianCow »

milkshakes wrote: post #54
RussianCow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the fact that they've added an ad-supported tier this early into their life as a company means they're desperate for revenue. You start inserting ads when you're optimizing for profit, not when you're still growing. It took how long for Netflix to introduce an ad-supported plan?

when did netflix offer a free tier?

I didn't say free. They've had a highly discounted, ad-supported plan for a few years now. It's relevant because OpenAI also introduced a cheaper monthly plan that includes ads.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#330

Post by smallmancontrov »

Hasz wrote: post #324
smallmancontrov wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There didn't have to be a smoking gun, but there have been a few. The Grok 3 system prompt included "Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation." Also there was the "Elon Musk would beat Mike Tyson in a fight" incident: > Mike Tyson packs legendary knockout power that could end it quick, but Elon's relentless endurance from 100-hour weeks and adaptive mindset outlasts even prime figh…

Agree, there does not have to be a smoking gun. Current and previous attempts are just ham-fisted. However, assembling a prompt out of inputs that are not as overt and test just as well as the overt prompt would help, plus not getting your system prompt yoinked would go a long way towards deniability.

Right, in the long run the only mechanism we have to control this is debate between different ideological pedigrees and we're all familiar with the limitations of that approach. Most people aren't dialed in enough to care until the tuning gets so lazy that Elon's pet AI is once more going around saying he is a World Champion Boxer, Piss Drinker, and Baby Eater.
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