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How ChatGPT serves ads

buchodi.com

351–360 of 383 posts

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blocking transparent ads is not a good idea. The consequence is that you will be fed opaque ads. Doesn't history show us you just get both? You pay to get into the movies, then they show you adverts before the film, then the film includes paid product placement of cars, computers, phones, food, etc. You watch youtube ads, to see a video containing a sponsored ad read, where a guy is woodworking using branded tools…

> Doesn't history show us you just get both? No. "Opaque ads" are usually heavily regulated out of existence by government legislation.

Product placement in TV shows / movies is a $30 billion industry.

They're opaque, and not regulated out of existence.

They're so opaque that I'd wager 50%+ of people aren't aware it's happening.

(Not fact checked) My favorite is Apple's "no villain" rule, where protagonists are allowed to use iPhone in movies, while antagonists are not.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question seems to imply that people have to be corralled towards a specific action, which to me comes across as rather cynical. Why is it not possible to lay out your arguments honestly and let people decide on the merits?

I think, part of the issue is that, as a mass of humans, we tend to be rather dumb. And they certainly don't decide on merits, in aggregate. It is somewhat questionable if they decide on merits even as individuals ( unless we expand the definition somewhat ). But it is possible I got too cynical.

It's a paradox: on the one hand, if we were dumb en masse, it's hard to see how we could have developed so far technologically and cultivated such complex societies.

On the other: I have to agree with you, there is too much of a pattern of bewildering behaviour not to.

I think what irks me is this idea that deceiving people to push them towards a specific outcome is a reliable and sound strategy, when we've seen many instances of it having the opposite effect.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#353
post #45
post #10

Since they are served as distinct events then I would think they should be easy to block. Once the ads are injected directly into the main response is when things get interesting.

> Once the ads are injected directly into the main response is when things get interesting. This would be where you post-process the LLM response with a second LLM to remove the ad..

... and replace it with two.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#354
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…

> 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.

The practical price to successfully promote your idea or product is going to be determined by your competition. They can do the same thing, but outspend you.

That's ultimately what drives the huge spending on product marketing. Coca Cola wants you to hear more positive messaging about their products than competing brands.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was either a) a plain lie b) they're actually at their last resort. That's thinking like a normal honest human :-) My point is that it was likely not a statement about reality (true or false) at all, but rather a phrase designed to elicit some response in the listener, such as the idea: 'Sam Altman isn't the kind of CEO who would put ads in his products unless he really had to'. He's not describing how things…

> He's not describing how things are, but how he wants you to think about them. That is what a lie is. The fact that some people think he exists in a different plane of existence from normal humans does not change the meaning of “lie”.

> That is what a lie is.

I don't think that is, because, at the time, he probably haven't decided one way or another. I think about it like the Schrodinger's cat. If Schrodinger's said "I think the cat is dead" and you went ahead and opened the box and found the cat alive, would Schrodinger have lied?

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#356
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…

> 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. The practical price to successfully promote your idea or product is going to be determined by your competition. They can do the same thing, but outspend you. That's ultimately what drives the huge spending on product marketing. Coca Cola wants…

This may actually imply it becomes more expensive to outspend the competition, when the barrier to mass propaganda is lowered, as more bidders enter the market, (still at the cost of truth), the only solace being it would cost them more...

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#357
post #326
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.

What makes it hard to track?

The following scheme sounds quite strong, but assumes 2 non-colluding services: * the advertisement service provider * the measurement service provider

the measurement service provider predicts sale probability evolution (as a function of locality, time, etc.) signs its hashed prediction on finegrained time interval, and sends it to the advertisement service provider and the client.

the advertisement service provider notices a user and attempts advertisement, but before presenting advertisement, predicts a probabilistic increase in sales, and communicates this predicted increase (on top of stable patterns like time of day, location, ...) to both the measurement service provider as well as the client.

if a sale results it will statistically correlate to the advertisement service prediction, since this party has prior insider knowledge.

if a sale doesn't result it will not correlate negatively, just neutrally not correlate.

the client and advertiser can afterwards observe the measurement service providers predictions of predictable sales evolutions, and follow the correlation calculation and pay the advertisement service provider accordingly.

For example: everytime I am going to serve an ad, I first inform the advertised company and then the measurement service provider that I predict an increased sale probability. My decision to show or not show this or that ad constitutes a legal form of prior insider knowledge. Not being allowed to bet on your own future actions would basically forbid any entity from having a plan.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#358
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

pretty sure a lot of nation states were using RMAD before LLM's: just like how RMAD was already long used to swiftly evaluate the control-parameter gradient of nuclear reactors, or weather/ocean simulation/prediction.

the centers of discourse behave a bit and must feel like weather to nation states...

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#359
post #249
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't reply to a bad comment with another bad comment. It just makes things worse.

Oh no. Will you be adjusting my daily allotted posts further down? Yea I know about your shadow ban. Classy.

Please don't sneer. My comment was about as mild an ask as we ever make. We won't be adjusting anything, and indeed we'd happily turn the rate limiter off if you just respect the guidelines. This is only a place where people want to participate because we have guidelines and people make the effort to observe them. There's no reason why you couldn't be one of them. We want this to be a place where the full range of positions and perspectives can be represented and discussed, but snark and contempt just drags the place down, regardless of anyone's ideology.

Re: How ChatGPT serves ads

#360

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The irony is that I only know about this game through memes like this. I've never seen an actual ad for it anywhere.
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