Comment by dvngnt_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvngnt_ | Hacker News Reader

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I can't wait for the major llm to place ads in the responses to extract more money

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You know this is coming with Uber: you book an Uber to a fancy restaurant and get Macdonald’s ads in the app, and then the driver’s app picks a route that drives past Macdonald’s and tells them to offer you a $5 off coupon on any order in the next 10 minutes.

Who chooses to stop at McDonald's instead of a fancy restaurant, just to save $5?

I suspect a more sophisticated chatbot will upsell the restaurant's offerings. "Would you like a bottle of champagne chilled and waiting for you? The Mushroom Bruschetta with Brie, Sage and Truffle Oil appetizer is the special of the day" that sort of thing.

Then you get there and find out it hallucinated and ordered you the cheesesteak eggrolls. But this is okay because you love cheesesteak eggrolls and come on... truffle oil? Really?

I assume that contrast is to point out how completely off the mark ads often are.

Sometimes you just want nuggets

It’s a segmentation issue. The ad buy was for “people going to restaurants” but it might have been “people going to {type} restaurants.”

Thought it’s probably not that simple. A naive ad buy might not care to target, or targeting is too expensive and you’re ok wasting some impressions because it might be all-in cheaper, or {brand} has the media budget to pay to be in front of your eyeballs all the time.

Yes it is a bit backwards. The McDonalds stop afterwards makes more sense.

That’s the rub right?

If they are taking an Uber to of the fancy restaurant and passing a McDonald’s chances are highly likely they will take a very similar route on the way home. They will still want to stop at McDonald’s for a $4 Large fry or an ice cream cone but no coupon this time. The line is now longer which increases the ride time and the drivers perceived profit.

Doesn't matter, we're all talking about McDonalds now.

Hardly anyone. The same few who also click on web ads. If the ad is cheap to place, and if you don't pay for annoying people...

If McDonalds still has the dollar menu, I'll spend the $5 off coupon on that!

In my area they got rid of the the dollar menu this year.

So basically the same experience one gets in some countries, where the taxi driver or tourist guide, bring people into some friends shop, and one only gets out after buying half of the store, unless they are good at standing by their opinion no matter what.

How to make easy money with your brain chip.

Hahaha this is so spot on that I would take a bet against anyone who thinks this will NOT happen. Of course it will. I see no reason to believe AI will change the fundamental power structures, incentives and disrespect for human beings. New tech often has a little honeymoon phase where you get a few breadcrumbs more in order to try the new thing.

Anyway, it’s not like the different actors desperately trying to steal your attention today will go away because the UI is different. So if the issue with todays tech is ads, upselling, cookie forms etc then hoping that it will “go away” with LLMs is hilariously hopeful.

The people who think AI will distribute power rather than concentrate it are naive and optimistic at best. I prefer to call them delusional and insane. They keep repeating the same thing (developing technologies only entrenched giants can use at scale) and expecting different results (equitable society? where's the profit in that?).

I fear an LLM that is trained to provide ad-based responses in ways that don’t clearly disclose to users that the answer is an ad. YouTube review video culture already has a huge problem with this and it’s not even AI-driven.

Once companies start training models to respond based on advertising inputs (and you know they will eventually), it’s gonna be even harder to trust anything it says.

There is a simple solution to this with even the most basic regulation. Which means Europe will block this behavior, but America won’t.

The simple solution is to run your own LLM.

For the average person that is not a simple solution.

And hope the ads aren't trained into the models on huggingface.

This is a certainty. The chatbot will be constantly upselling. "Would you like fries with that?" or "Extra cheese on your pizza is only 50 cents, add it?", only more sophisticated. And like some ordering systems today, you won't be able to bypass it. The "yes, please add more things to my cart" answer will be the default and easy answer, declining the offer will take more effort.

… I think of how annoying the kiosks at McDonalds have gotten.

Or even worse, giving answers that sound objective but are actually paid for.

It keeps asking until you say yes then it will always add the extra cheese just like last time. You have to specifically ask for no extra cheese. Then it will always ask for it again.

People will learn creative prompts like telling it you have a potato allergy to make it stop asking if you want fries. But then it will add "hold the fries" to every order all the time and ask: Is there potato in that?

One will have to pretend the food is not for you and order take out/eat in your car.

You see someone else eating in their car, could it be... yes, he is eating fries! You raise your hand and say "potato allergy?" he responds, haha yeah... puts his finger in front of his mouth and goes "ssst!"

Not just upselling, flat-out ignoring.

https://wtop.com/national/2023/06/ai-drive-thrus-may-be-good...

I'm not sure if it's the same story since it's from June, but a few days ago WTOP played some audio from one of their reporters trying to order from a drive-thru...

AI: "Would you like to add a peach pie for $1.50?"

Reporter: "No."

AI: "Would you like to add a peach pie for $1.50?"

Reporter: "No."

AI: "Would you like to add a peach pie for $1.50?"

Reporter: "No peach pie."

AI: "And one peach pie."

Reporter: "NO PEACH PIE."

"Welcome to Uber, I love you."

Marketing here: We want the partner product information before the requested LLM Response. You have your priorities upside down. Also, no one reads entire paragraphs anymore. So, if you could do that that would be nice.

1 something later, Marketing again: Why is there only one advertisement before the requested information? Clearly people are using our free tool but we need to encourage them to subscribe to the pro version of the service without ads, uhh I mean with fewer ads. So, if you could do that that would be nice.

2 something later: The free version is to fast. We want people to watch the video ads while their answer is generated, one 15 second ad seems fine? No wait, make it 3 x 30 minutes. So, if you could do that that would be nice.

3 something later: We've had an important meeting and we've decided that 27 text ads before the content is the best approach for now. We will let you know if we want more... ehh I mean when. So, if you could do that that would be nice.

Bard already does that. It shows products from Google Shopping when giving recommendations.

Bing too.

Its already happening. If you look up certain things on bing chat you might see a little blue ad link

That’s exactly what bing chat does.

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