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The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

kaveland.no

81–90 of 346 posts

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#81

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…

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…

> 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.

I think with the last sub-clause (that I emphasized), you answered your question: because the conversation is more intimate, Google learns more about your "true interests", be it to make advertising to you more targeted, or for more sinister purposes.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#82

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, and we will spend it on those companies only... I don't know, it just doesn't add up.

My companies currently spend more on AI than phones - hardware and subscriptions. It's now the second highest expense to salaries and director's remuneration.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how long until advertisers get their grubby meathooks into the training data You're so right. it's not an if anymore, but when. and when it does, you wouldn't know what's an ad and what isn't. In recent years i started noticing a correlation between alcohol consumption and movies. I couldn't help but notice how many of the movies I've seen in the past few years promote alcohol and try to correlate it with the good…

I think that your negative view of alcohol is making you a bit conspiratorial. It's an extremely deeply ingrained thing in western culture, you don't need to resort to product placement to explain why filmmakers depict it. People genuinely do have a good time drinking.

> People genuinely do have a good time drinking.

This depends a lot on the person. I, for example, would much more associate "reading scientific textbooks/papers" with having a good time. :-D

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#84

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…

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 thinks it is going to charge a monthly fee for Gemini so they are basically correcting their model to be user paid in the switch from search to LLM.

They are also trying to reduce workers in search, etc, somewhat through the trained LLMs so the other idea is that they have lower costs per user.

I don't think many people will pay monthly fees or will want to pay them for each platform they use which is why they all tend to do so many questionable integration attempts to try to get users to not want to use a separate LLM of their choice in a browser instead.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that your negative view of alcohol is making you a bit conspiratorial. It's an extremely deeply ingrained thing in western culture, you don't need to resort to product placement to explain why filmmakers depict it. People genuinely do have a good time drinking.

> People genuinely do have a good time drinking. This depends a lot on the person. I, for example, would much more associate "reading scientific textbooks/papers" with having a good time. :-D

Sure, I was using a generic sentence [1] not universal quantification!

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/generics/

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#86

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…

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…

If you're going to use an LLM instead of their search better to keep you on their estate. Presumably they're using responses to tune a personalisation layer, or in some way, they can use to modify their advertising algos?

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#87

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, and we will spend it on those companies only... I don't know, it just doesn't add up. My companies currently spend more on AI than phones - hardware and subscriptions. It's now the second highest expense to salaries and director's remuneration.

What are you doing with it?

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#88

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…

More hopeful explanation: they'll never make their money back and this is either part of the great rebalancing or great collapse of the economic forces that be.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#89
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be worse. Money tends to ruin collaborative communities.

They should offer more money. Wikipedia invited some professor writing. thye take responsibility for their whole life on job.

Professors don't necessarily want to waste their time fighting with Wikipedia admins.

Re: The librarian immediately attempts to sell you a vuvuzela

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how long until advertisers get their grubby meathooks into the training data You're so right. it's not an if anymore, but when. and when it does, you wouldn't know what's an ad and what isn't. In recent years i started noticing a correlation between alcohol consumption and movies. I couldn't help but notice how many of the movies I've seen in the past few years promote alcohol and try to correlate it with the good…

I think that your negative view of alcohol is making you a bit conspiratorial. It's an extremely deeply ingrained thing in western culture, you don't need to resort to product placement to explain why filmmakers depict it. People genuinely do have a good time drinking.

It's that way because of successful marketing - just like smoking, or cars, or fast food.
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