[HN Gopher] Leaked deck reveals how OpenAI is pitching publisher...
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Leaked deck reveals how OpenAI is pitching publisher partnerships
Author : rntn
Score : 259 points
Date : 2024-05-09 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.adweek.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.adweek.com)
| BlackJack wrote:
| Guaranteed value is a licensing payment that compensates the
| publisher for allowing OpenAI to access its backlog of data,
| while variable value is contingent on display success, a metric
| based on the number of users engaging with linked or displayed
| content.
|
| ...
|
| "The PPP program is more about scraping than training," said one
| executive. "OpenAI has presumably already ingested and trained on
| these publishers' archival data, but it needs access to
| contemporary content to answer contemporary queries."
|
| This also makes sense if they're trying to get into the search
| space.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| > OpenAI has presumably already ingested and trained on these
| publishers' archival data
|
| So they're admitting to copyright violations and theft?
| mdavidn wrote:
| Whether training a model on text constitutes copyright
| infringement is an unresolved legal question. The closest
| precedent would be search engines using automated processes
| to build an index and links, which is generally not seen as
| infringing (in the US).
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| https://www.rvo.nl/onderwerpen/octrooien-ofwel-
| patenten/vorm...
| stale2002 wrote:
| No, they have not done that. Presumably they believe that the
| model training was done in fair use and no court has said
| otherwise yet.
|
| It will take years for that stuff to settle out in court, and
| by that time none of that will matter, and the winners of the
| AI race will be those who didn't wait for this question to be
| settled.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| They believe a lot of things, I'm sure.
|
| > and the winners of the AI race will be those who didn't
| wait for this question to be settled.
|
| Hopefully they'll be in jail.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Its not just the big companies you have to think about,
| lol.
|
| Sure you can sue OpenAI.
|
| But will you be able to sue every single AI startup that
| happens to be working on Open Source AI tech, that was
| all trained this way? Absolutely not. Its simply not
| feasible. The cat is out of the bag.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| The US government has worked hard to make the lives of
| copyright infringers miserable for years, even driving
| them to suicide.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > The US government has worked hard to make the lives of
| copyright infringers miserable for years
|
| They really have not. The fact that I can download any
| movie in the world right now, and use all of the open
| source models on my home PC proves that.
|
| I am sure there are some random one off cases of
| infringers being punished, but it mostly doesn't happen.
|
| Especially if we are talking about the entire tech
| industry.
|
| The government isn't going to shutdown every single tech
| startup in the US. Because they are all using these open
| source AI models.
|
| The government isn't going to be able to confiscate
| everyone's gamer PCs. The weights can already be run
| locally.
| eddywebs wrote:
| Link to deck Please?
| lelandfe wrote:
| Risky due to steganography; the leaker might be compromised.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| Blur, summarize, anonymize, convert to bitmap/PNG, release.
|
| edit: i am aware it is literally impossible to release
| information without the remote chance of whistle-sniping.
|
| the then only logical conclusion reached from such a
| defeatist extreme attitude threat model is to then assume
| that all stories and information are false flags distributed
| to find moles.
|
| the decks themselves are surely water-marked in ways cleverer
| than even the smartest here. that doesn't innately negate the
| benefit of having some iota of the raw data versus the risk
| of the mole being wacked.
|
| I didn't mean to infantilize the most powerful companies
| abilities; after all, they encoded the serial number of
| internal xbox's devkits into the 360 dashboard's passive
| background animation, which wasn't discovered until a decade
| later.
|
| But the responses' tilt here are a lil....glowing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Blur, summarize, anonymize, convert to bitmap /PNG_
|
| The article is a summary. Everything else is defeated by
| moving subtle decorative elements around the page between
| copies.
| fwip wrote:
| Going further: Even summaries can be dangerous, as the
| inclusion/exclusion of facts can itself be part of a
| watermark.
| nwsm wrote:
| Literally anything in the document could out them. Color,
| font, word choice, numbers, etc. OpenAI fired two
| researchers this year for leaking information, likely
| watermarked resources. OpenAI takes this seriously
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Sounds like the actions of a truly open ai company
| jedberg wrote:
| Run it through Claude and ask Claude to summarize :)
| fooker wrote:
| I'm pleasantly surprised they are even bothering with this!
|
| On the flip side, giving publishers and the copyright mafia even
| more power could backfire.
| ronsor wrote:
| Could? It will
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Ah so it's open as in open for commercial partnership, got
| confused there for a while.
| scruple wrote:
| The open-ness of the AI comes from the size of your marketing
| budget!
| samfriedman wrote:
| >Additionally, members of the program receive priority placement
| and "richer brand expression" in chat conversations, and their
| content benefits from more prominent link treatments. Finally,
| through PPP, OpenAI also offers licensed financial terms to
| publishers.
|
| This is what a lot of people pushing for open models fear -
| responses of commercial models will be biased based on marketing
| spend.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| A llm is biased by design, the "open models" are no different
| here. OpenAI will, like any other model designer, pick and
| chose whatever data they want in their model and strike deals
| to that end.
|
| The only question is in how far this is can be viewed as ads.
| Here I would find a strong backslash slightly ironic, since a
| lot of people have called the non-consensual incorporation of
| openly available data problematic; this is an obvious
| alternative option, that lures with the added benefit of deep
| integration over simply paying. A "true partnership", at face
| value. Smart.
|
| If however this actually qualifies as ads (as in: unfair
| prioritisation that has nothing to do with the quality of the
| data and simply people paying money for priority placement)
| there is transparency laws in most jurisdictions for that
| already and I don't see why OpenAI would not honor them, like
| any other corp does.
| Havoc wrote:
| > A llm is biased by design
|
| I don't think some bias is inherently in models is in any way
| comparable to a pay to play marketing angle
| jstummbillig wrote:
| I reject the framing.
|
| We can't have it both ways. If we want model makers to
| license content they will pick and chose a) the licensing
| model and b) their partners, in a way, that they think
| makes a superior model. This will always be an exclusive
| process.
| PeterisP wrote:
| We don't want it both ways - if that's the price we'd
| have to pay, at least I definitely don't want model
| makers to license content.
| swader999 wrote:
| I think we need to separate licensing and promotion. They
| have wildly different outcomes. Licensing is cool, it's
| part of the recipe. Promoting something above its
| legitimate weight is akin to collusion or buying up
| amazon reviews without earning them.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| That's just pushes up the cost of licensing.
| swader999 wrote:
| Not if the pie grows bigger.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| It's a question of axioms. LLMs are by definition "biased"
| in their weights; training is biasing. Now the stated goal
| of biasing these models is towards "truth", but we all know
| that's really biasing towards "looking like the training
| set" (tl;dr, no not verbatim). And who's to say the
| advertising industry-blessed training material is not the
| highest standard of truth? :)
| nyokodo wrote:
| > And who's to say the advertising industry-blessed
| training material is not the highest standard of truth?
| :)
|
| Anyone who understands what perverse incentives are,
| that's who. Or are you just playing the relativism card?
| nyokodo wrote:
| > A llm is biased by design
|
| Everything is biased. The problem is when that bias is hidden
| and likely to be material to your use case. These leaked
| deals definitely qualify as both hidden and likely to be
| material to most use cases whereas more random human biases
| or biases inherent in accessible data may not.
|
| > non-consensual incorporation of openly available data
| problematic; this is an obvious alternative option
|
| A problematic alternative to an alleged injustice just moves
| the problem, it's not a true resolution.
|
| > there is transparency laws in most jurisdictions for that
| already and I don't see why OpenAI would not honour them
|
| Hostile compliance is unfortunately a reality so this ought
| to give little comfort.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > These leaked deals definitely qualify as both hidden and
| likely to be material to most use cases whereas more random
| human biases or biases inherent in accessible data may not.
|
| a) Yes, leaked information definitely qualifies as hidden,
| that is, prior to the most likely illegal leak (which we
| apparently do not find objectionable, because, hey, it's
| the good type of breach of contract?)
|
| b) Anyone who strikes deals understands there is a
| situation where things are being discussed, that would
| probably not okay to be implemented in that way. Hence, the
| pre-sign discussion phase of the deal. Somewhat like one
| could have some weird ideas about a piece of code, that
| will not be implemented. Ah-HA!-ing everything that was at
| some point on the table is a bit silly.
|
| > A problematic alternative to an alleged injustice just
| moves the problem, it's not a true resolution.
|
| The one characteristic I found that sets the people that
| are good to work with apart is understanding the need for a
| better solution, over those who (correctly but
| inconsequentially) declare everything to be problematic and
| think that to be some kind of interesting insight. It's
| not. Everything is really bad.
|
| Offer something slightly less bad, and we are on our way.
|
| > Hostile compliance is unfortunately a reality so this
| ought to give little comfort.
|
| Yes, people will break the law. They are found out,
| eventually, or the law is found out to be bad and will be
| improved. No, not in 100% of the cases. But doubting this
| general concept that our societies rely upon whenever it
| serves an argument is so very lame.
| seydor wrote:
| and then they use the output of chatGPT to train their open
| models
| 123yawaworht456 wrote:
| which is a pity, because the models and finetunes tainted
| with even a minuscule amount of GPT slop are affected very
| badly. you can easily tell the difference between llama
| finetunes with or without synthetic datasets.
| 39896880 wrote:
| It's amazing how fast OpenAI succumbed to the siren's song of
| surveillance capitalism.
| glitchc wrote:
| One could argue that was by design. After all, Sam's other
| company is built around a form of global surveillance.
| __loam wrote:
| They took a billion dollar investment from Microsoft lol. You
| don't get to just to whatever you want if people are giving
| you that kind of cash.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Altman should have taken equity if this is the route.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Sam is just altruistically anti privacy and personal
| autonomy
| willcipriano wrote:
| "I'm feeling sad thinking about ending it all"
|
| "You should Snap into a Slim Jim!"
| swader999 wrote:
| In Canada, the LLM will mention our MAID program promoted
| through provincial government cost control programs to reduce
| health care expenses.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Only if the health care program paid more than Slim Jim is
| the problem.
| boringg wrote:
| Was anyone expecting anything else? AI is going to follow a
| similar path to the internet -- embedded ads since it will need
| to fund itself and revenue path is very far from clearcut.
|
| Brands that get it on the earliest training in large volume
| will have benefits accrued over the long term.
| shoggouth wrote:
| So you see the marketing point of ChatGPT to be
| conversational ads?
| elorant wrote:
| The ads don't need to be conversational, they could be just
| references at the end of the answer.
| freeplay wrote:
| Which is arguably even more insidious.
| elorant wrote:
| So an ad at the end of text is worse than one embedded in
| the answer? Care to explain why?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| You'll probably end up with both.
|
| But with an ending advert, you can finish up with a
| reference leading to a sponsored source linking to
| sponsored content which leads to another ending advert.
|
| If the advert text is in embedded, you cannot do such.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Woman on ChatGPT: Come on! My kids are starvin'!
|
| ChatGPT: Microsoft believes no child should go hungry.
| You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in
| the custody of Microsoft.
| itishappy wrote:
| They're offering an expensive service for free. Could it go
| any other way?
| apwell23 wrote:
| i pay for it
| ericskiff wrote:
| Counterpoint - I pay for my whole team to have access,
| shared tools, etc. we also spend a decent amount on their
| APIs across a number of client projects.
|
| OpenAI has a strong revenue model based on paid use
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| If the capitalism mindset applied to the web has taught
| me anything is that if they can get more money they will.
|
| They'll charge you money for the service and ALSO get
| money from advertisers. Because why shouldn't they.
|
| The famous "if you don't pay you're the product" is
| losing its meaning.
| boringg wrote:
| Not compared to the training costs it doesn't and it's
| competition is fierce especially with llama open-
| sourcing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The second one costs $0.01. The first one cost $100^x
| where X is some large number. It's common in pretty much
| every form of business
| itishappy wrote:
| I don't. I hope you're not paying for my use too.
|
| Ideally they keep us siloed, but I've lost confidence.
| I've paid for Windows, Amazon Prime, YouTube Premium, my
| phone, food, you name it, but that hasn't kept the
| sponsorships at bay.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Was anyone expecting anything else?_
|
| It's the logical thing but no everyone is going to be
| thinking that far ahead.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Brands that get it on the earliest training in large volume
| will have benefits accrued over the long term.
|
| That's the sales pitch - the truth is if a competitor pays
| more down the line - they can be fine-tuned in to replace
| earlier deals
| Y_Y wrote:
| Or better, if you stop paying they'll user the fancy new
| "forgetting" techniques on your material.
| devbent wrote:
| OpenAI's problem is demonstrating how much value their tools
| add to a worker's productivity.
|
| However calculating how much value a worker has in an
| organization is already a mostly unsolved problem for
| humanity, so it is no surprise that even if a tool 5xs human
| productivity, the makers of the tool will have serious
| problems demonstrating the tool's value.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| It's even worse than that now: they need to demonstrate how
| much value they bring compared to llama in terms of worker
| productivity.
|
| While I've no doubt GPT-4 is a more capable model then
| llama3, I don't get any benefit using it compared to llama3
| 70B, from the real use benchmark I ran in a personal
| project last week: they both give solid response the
| majority of times, and make stupid mistakes often enough so
| I can't trust them blindly, with no flagrant difference in
| accuracy between those two.
|
| And if I want to use hosted service, groq makes Llama70 run
| much faster than GPT-4 so there's less frustration of
| waiting for the answer (I don't think it matters to much in
| terms of productivity though, as this time is pretty
| negligible in reality, but it does affect the UX quite a
| bit).
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| Since 1987, labour productivity has doubled[1]. A 5x
| increase would be immediately obvious. If a tool were able
| to increase productivity on that scale, it would lift every
| human out of poverty. It'd probably move humanity into a
| post-scarcity species. 5x is "by Monday afternoon, staff
| have each done 40 pre-ai-equivalent-hours worth of work".
|
| [1] https://usafacts.org/articles/what-is-labor-
| productivity-and...
| ENGNR wrote:
| But how do you measure labour productivity.
| jpadkins wrote:
| macro scale: GDP / labor hours worked.
|
| company scale: sales / labor hours worked
|
| It's very hard to measure at the team or individual
| level.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| this was the inspiration behind my medieval content farm:
| https://tidings.potato.horse/about
| treyd wrote:
| It's also illegal in any jurisdictions that require
| advertisements to be clearly labelled.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This chat will continue after a word from our sponsors.
| chrstphrknwtn wrote:
| Yes, you're correct. Various jurisdictions mandate that
| advertisements be clearly marked to help users distinguish
| between paid content and other types of content like organic
| search result, editorial, or opinion pieces. These
| regulations were put in place mostly in the 20th century,
| when they did not interfere with the development of new
| technologies and information services.
|
| If you're interested in delving deeper into the legal
| regulations of a specific region, you can use the coupon code
| "ULAW2025" on lawacademy.com. Law Academy is the go-to place
| for learning more about law, more often.
|
| /s
| mattlondon wrote:
| It doesn't have to be this way I feel. You don't have to
| distort the answer.
|
| You use LLM to get super-powered intent signals, then show ads
| based on those intents.
|
| Fucking around with the actual _product function_ for financial
| reasons is a road to ruin.
|
| In the Google model, the first few things you see are ads, but
| everything after that is "organic" and not influenced by who is
| directly paying for it. People trust it as a result - the
| majority of the results are "real". If the results are just
| whoever is paying, the utility rapidly drops off and people
| will vote with their feet/clicks/eyeballs.
|
| But hey, what do I know.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| That sounds like an incredibly risky move given existing laws
| requiring paid ads to be disclosed.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| ugh, sometimes i think that i should've finished making the ai
| bot for my partner to help her boring media job at dotdash
| meredith, then cashed out. but working on it made me miserable,
| and it's not a valuable tool to society.
|
| here is an etl where i was attempting to train it on southern
| living and food & wine articles so it could output text for those
| dumb little content videos that you see at the top of every
| lifestyle brand article: https://github.com/smcalilly/zobot-
| trainer
| mempko wrote:
| So wait, there will be ads in your ChatGPT conversation, you just
| won't know they are ads?
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I don't think there was much reason to believe the endgame was
| ever going to be anything but this.
| mempko wrote:
| I mean for a split second I thought "Wow, they were charging
| for their service, this is nice". I guess that isn't enough
| anymore. You pay them and then they also get paid by selling
| you. What a world we live in.
| whatevaa wrote:
| At the cost of running those models, they are probably
| loosing money on you.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| There are likely several ways of going about this.
|
| - Listing Sources + Sponsonsed Sources
|
| - Sponsored short answer following the primary one
|
| - Sponsored embedded statements/links within the answer
|
| - Trailing or opening sponsorships
|
| The cognitive intent bridge between the user and brands that is
| possible with this technology will blow Google out of the water
| IMO.
| flir wrote:
| Sounds a bit illegal.
|
| I have to assume they'd notify the end-user, at a bare minimum.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Sounds a bit illegal.
|
| Can be fixed by an EULA update that adds a clause stating
| "Response may contain paid product placement" to be im
| compliance with laws written for television 20 years ago.
| Legislation is consistently behind technological advances
| btown wrote:
| Is there any recent research on training LLMs that can trace the
| contribution of sources of training data to any given generated
| token? Meta-nodes that look at how much a certain training
| document, or set thereof, caused a node to be updated?
|
| I fear that OpenAI is incentivized, financially and legally,
| _not_ to delve too deeply into this kind of research. But IMO
| attribution, even if imperfect, is a key part of aligning AI with
| the interests of society at large.
| chollida1 wrote:
| Bloomberg's upcoming LLM model will reference back to the
| source financial statements when calculating financial metrics
| for you.
| KTibow wrote:
| That sounds more like general RAG than what the person was
| asking about. (although RAG might be able to do the same
| thing)
| npollock wrote:
| OpenAI gets the data it needs, and publishers get prominent
| placement in the product:
|
| "PPP members will see their content receive its "richer brand
| expression" through a series of content display products: the
| branded hover link, the anchored link and the in-line treatment."
|
| There's some similarity to the search business model
| sangnoir wrote:
| > There's some similarity to the search business model
|
| There's a reason why Google's best years were when search was
| firewalled from ads and revenue.
| arsenico wrote:
| Thanks for that, OpenAI, but this more or less means unsubscribe.
| darby_eight wrote:
| Why would anyone use chatgpt if it spams you? The second it
| recommends me a product i'm issuing a chargeback.
| skyyler wrote:
| Because it won't feel like spam while it's happening - that's
| the entire point.
| swader999 wrote:
| This is more like buying amazon reviews instead of earning
| them. Much more insidious than product placement .
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "ChatGPT, how would Claude have answered that?"
| airstrike wrote:
| I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I'm unable to
| replicate specific responses from others such as Claude.
| However, I can help you with a wide range of questions and
| provide guidance on many topics.
|
| For enhanced features and more personalized assistance,
| consider subscribing to ChatGPT Ultra Copilot. Use the coupon
| code UPGRADE2024 for a discount on your first three months!
|
| Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with!
| Havoc wrote:
| > Why would anyone use chatgpt if it spams you?
|
| Google would suggest people have an incredibly high threshold
| for such shenanigans
| 93po wrote:
| i never understand how people use the internet without
| adblockers, it's a totall different experience. do they just
| not value their time and mental bandwidth _at all_? same
| thing for people who watch TV with commercials every 8
| minutes
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| I also don't understand it, but have been lectured by
| people many times about how unethical it is to block ads
| and how doing so makes one a "free rider". I wonder if they
| also feel the same way if they look the other way when they
| notice a billboard ad on the motorway. This stockholm-
| syndrome w.r. to big companies goes a long way.
| chx wrote:
| The right question is "Why would anyone use chatgpt". The
| answer is https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/112006855076082650
|
| > You might be surprised to learn that I actually think LLMs
| have the potential to be not only fun but genuinely useful.
| "Show me some bullshit that would be typical in this context"
| can be a genuinely helpful question to have answered, in code
| and in natural language -- for brainstorming, for seeing common
| conventions in an unfamiliar context, for having something
| crappy to react to.
|
| > Alas, that does not remotely resemble how people are pitching
| this technology.
|
| Slanting this towards a specific brand doesn't change _that_
| much. Some yes, but not that much.
| airstrike wrote:
| That's overall a very, very good thread. Thanks for linking
| __loam wrote:
| I think this guy is hitting on something deeper here, which
| is that these things took an absolutely enormous amount of
| capital and burned a lot of public goodwill to create, but
| the end product isn't living up to that.
| empiko wrote:
| They are getting ready for the inevitable copyright wars.
| sangnoir wrote:
| They are also salting the ground behind themselves so no
| competitors can grow or thrive. Their "brand partners" won't
| let LLM upstarts use or scrape the same data OpenAI has
| licensed, OpenAI is leveraging its first-mover advantage to
| cordon off data sources.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| "People" seem to use Reddit/Instagram/TikTok even though at
| least half of it is spam.
|
| How does anyone know if a question on how to fix something or
| tutorial is not recommending specific solutions or products
| based on someone paying for that recommendation?
| amlib wrote:
| You will eventually succumb to peer pressure. Just like it's
| hard to participate in society without using a smartphone
| nowadays, in the future I bet you will for example have trouble
| doing any job, let alone get one, without using these AI
| assistants.
|
| And given that society has decided that only the big entities
| get to win, the only viable AI assistants to use will
| eventually be the ones from big tech corpos like google and
| microsoft... in the same way you can't use a smartphone unless
| you enslave yourself to google or apple.
|
| I really wish society in general figured out how bad it is to
| bet everything on big corporations, but alas here we are, ever
| encroaching on the cyberpunk dystopia we've fictionalized many
| decades ago :(
| Nicholas_C wrote:
| The majority of internet users still use Google and these days
| it's just a page full of sponsored links and products that are
| (purposely) hard to discern from the actual results. The
| content in the carousels for the sponsored products is richer
| than the content in the actual results.
|
| Given that, I don't think people would change their ChatGPT
| usage habits much if ads were introduced.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| So soon enough we'll get stuff like:
|
| > Me: Give me a small sample code in Ruby that takes two
| parameters and returns the Levenshtein distance between them.
|
| > ChatGPT: DID YOU HEAR ABOUT C#? It's even faster that light,
| now with better performance than Ruby!!! Get started here:
| https://ms.com/cs
|
| I can generate the code in Ruby or I can give you 20% discount on
| Microsoft publishing on any C# book!!!
| _boffin_ wrote:
| i became more and more repulsed as i read your comment. I felt
| myself twitch towards the end of it.
| wmichelin wrote:
| next we're going to have ads in our dreams!
| drawkward wrote:
| Neuralink has entered the...dream?
| phatfish wrote:
| I can see running a local less resource intensive LLM trained
| to strip out marketing spiel from the text delivered by the
| more powerful cloud service LLM being a possibility.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| "Are you repulsed by this ChatGPT answer? Try AntiRepulsorXL
| medication, shown to help with all your gag-inducing tech
| uses."
| tivert wrote:
| I can only hope we're so lucky that the enshittification
| happens that quickly and thoroughly.
|
| It would be _yet another_ clear demonstration that technology
| won 't save us from our social system. It will just get us even
| more of it, good and hard. The utopian hype is a lie.
| Voultapher wrote:
| Technology by and large accelerates and concentrates.
|
| I like the framing that technology is obligate. It doesn't
| matter whether you've built a machine that will transform the
| world into paperclips, sowing misery on its path and
| decimating the community of life. Even if you refuse to use
| it, someone will, because it gives short term benefits.
|
| As you say, the root issue lies in the framework of co-
| habitation that we are currently practicing. I think one
| important step has to be decoupling the concept of wealth
| from growth.
| tivert wrote:
| > I like the framing that technology is obligate. It
| doesn't matter whether you've built a machine that will
| transform the world into paperclips, sowing misery on its
| path and decimating the community of life. Even if you
| refuse to use it, someone will, because it gives short term
| benefits.
|
| Is that some idea you got from Daniel Schmachtenberger?
| Literally the old reference I can find on the web to
| "technology is obligate" is
| https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-07-05/the-ride-of-
| ou..., which attributes it to him?
|
| Anyway, I'm skeptical. For one, that seems to assume an
| anarchic social order, where anyone can make any choice
| they like (externalities be damned) and no one can stop
| them. That doesn't describe our world except maybe,
| sometimes, at the nation-state level between great powers.
|
| Secondly, I think embracing that idea would mainly serve to
| create a permission structure for "techbros" (for lack of a
| better term), to pursue whatever harmful technology they
| have the impulse to and reject any personal responsibility
| for their actions or the harm they cause (e.g. exactly
| "It's ok for me to hurt you, because if I don't someone
| else will, so it's inevitable and quit complaining").
| titzer wrote:
| Indeed. How much more evidence do we need that in the end,
| technology _always_ is at the service of the power structure;
| the structure stutters briefly at the onset of innovation
| until it manages to adapt and harness technology to reinforce
| the positions of the powerful. Progress happens in that brief
| period before the enshittification takes root. The FAANGS
| exist now solely to devour innovators and either stamp them
| out or assimilate them, digesting them into their gluttonous,
| gelatinous ooze.
|
| OpenAI's only plan is to grow fast enough to be a new type of
| slime.
| tivert wrote:
| > [I]n the end, technology always is at the service of the
| power structure...Progress happens in that brief period
| before the enshittification takes root.
|
| Personally, I'd deny there's _ever_ any progress against
| the power structure due to technology itself. Anything that
| seems like "progress" is ephemeral or illusionary.
|
| And that truth needs to be constantly compared to the
| incessant false promises of a utopia just around the corner
| that tech's hype-men make.
| neonsunset wrote:
| If only msft was actually promoting it like that. Do they even
| sell books still?
| bombcar wrote:
| Apparently it's now a division of Pearson:
| https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/browse/coming-soon
| neonsunset wrote:
| (unrelated but if you _do_ want to buy a book on C#, get
| Pro .NET Memory Management, Konrad Kokosa is really good,
| also works as a systems programming primer on memory in
| general, do not get the books from microsoft press)
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| What about that 20% tho'...
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Yeah, they do. Microsoft Press.
| torpfactory wrote:
| It's worse than that:
|
| > Me: Give me a small sample code in Ruby that takes two
| parameters and returns the Levenshtein distance between them.
|
| > ChatGPT: <<Submits working Ruby code that is slow>> But here
| is some C# code that is faster. For tasks like this a lot of
| programmers are using C#, you wouldn't want to get left behind.
| neonsunset wrote:
| For now it's more likely to do the opposite. Communities like
| HN do seem to like fringe and questionable languages like
| Ruby a lot to their own detriment. And that is, naturally, a
| part of dataset.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yeah, but then even open source models optimize for popular
| languages; I recall one explicitly mentioning being trained
| for ~top 16 or so languages in Stack Overflow developer
| survey. Good for my C++ dayjob, if I could use one of them;
| bad for my occasional after-work Lisping.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I want the robot to write C++ for me, but I won't let it
| take my lisp.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > you wouldn't want to get left behind.
|
| I realise more and more lately that actually, yes, I _do_
| want to be left behind. Please, _please_ , leave me behind.
| gosub100 wrote:
| That's the not so subtle hint. The underhanded way would be
| "since you asked for a _suboptimal_ form, this is the best I
| can do ", thereby prompting you to ask what the "best" way is.
| epolanski wrote:
| Or you will pay a monthly subscription and get no ads.
| itishappy wrote:
| Or you pay a monthly subscription and get ads regardless.
| drawkward wrote:
| Like my paid ad-free subscriptions to:
|
| -Cable TV -Netflix -Hulu -Amazon Prime Video
|
| ...oh wait, they all introduced ads.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > "its purpose is to help ChatGPT users more easily discover and
| engage with publishers' brands and content."
|
| What end user actually wants this? I've never in my life woke up
| and said, "You know what, I'd love to 'engage' with a corporate
| brand today!" or "I would love help to easily discover Burger
| King's content, that would be great!" The euphemisms they use for
| 'spam' are just breathtaking.
| pgwhalen wrote:
| With _publishers '_ brands. This is not about getting Burger
| King ads in your ChatGPT responses, it's about getting NYT and
| Ars Technica's content into (and linked from) ChatGPT
| responses.
| krupan wrote:
| That's a very fine distinction you are making.
|
| What happens when we get to the point where we are asking
| ChatGPT where to get a quick burger? Or even how to make a
| hamburger?
| pgwhalen wrote:
| I disagree, I think the distinction is quite clear.
| swader999 wrote:
| Into your head.
| sorokod wrote:
| That is just corporate jargon for transferring money from
| customers to businesses.
| jachee wrote:
| And--more important and scarce for some of us-- _attention_.
| mvkel wrote:
| Gotta pay for all that compute somehow.
|
| It's not what users want, it's what users will accept. Many
| precedents have been set here, unfortunately.
| nolongerthere wrote:
| They literally charge a LOT for their services
| mvkel wrote:
| $20 ARPU averages out to about $1 in profit in typical
| SaaS. Gotta generate more than that to make investors
| whole, unfortunately
| happypumpkin wrote:
| ML inference should cost a lot more to run than typical
| SaaS too... that said, I'd pay more than $20/mo for
| access to GPT4 or Claude 3. It is worth at least $75/mo
| to me. I pay for both right now just in case one is
| better than the other for a certain task (though I might
| drop GPT soon).
| kadushka wrote:
| I'd prefer to pay for no-ad version.
| sorokod wrote:
| Why would you be offered this option?
| sunaookami wrote:
| You will instead need to pay and see ads at the same time!
| nicce wrote:
| It is already norm in too many places to get that maximum
| revenue...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The end user that refuses to pay for services they use under
| some misplaced guise of "anything on the internet I am entitled
| to for free".
| swader999 wrote:
| If I can multiselect my favorite programming authors and adjust
| their influence on my team's work I'm all in. If they do it for
| me or because someone pays them too, I'll gippity right off
| this train.
| icepat wrote:
| I only ever see this speak from people on the sending end of
| marketing campaigns. I can't think of the last time I saw
| someone say anything positive about corporate content.
| Personally, I go out of my way to not buy anything that I see
| marketed towards me.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I love when people say stuff like this. When people read
| "interact with brand" they automatically assume it is some
| dumb, low value garbage like chatting with Burger King.
|
| You "interact with brands" all of the time. You are literally
| posting this on YC's public forum, an asset which YC uses to
| foster a community of the consumers of its investment
| portfolio's products. You are interacting with the brand.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| There's no way this doesn't backfire. OpenAI has no moat, so
| making the bot/api a shill just means people are going to use
| something else.
|
| GPT5 would have to be an order of magnitude better on the
| price/performance scale for me to even get close to this.
| yborg wrote:
| Everything else is going to be a shill, too. 'People' will
| eventually have to pay for these valuations.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| That's exactly what Yann LeCunn @ Meta is fighting against,
| and it seems Mark Zuckerberg has his back.
| MrDarcy wrote:
| Let me test this hypothesis. I run a small business that pays
| for Google workspace. I pay for a ChatGPT subscription and use
| it daily as a coding copilot. Is there any reason I shouldn't
| switch to Gemini and cancel ChatGPT? If no reason, I'll try it
| this afternoon.
| fwlr wrote:
| No financial incentive or relationships to disclose, just a
| satisfied user: I found that SuperMaven was a better "coding
| copilot". If you happen to use VSCode I'd check that one out
| this afternoon.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Llama3 and Claude also work well, they're good at different
| types of code and problem solving. The only thing ChatGPT
| does clearly better than the rest is infer meaning from
| poorly worded/written prompts.
| int_19h wrote:
| The main reason is that GPT-4 is still significantly better
| than everything else.
|
| Time will tell if OpenAI will be able to retain the lead in
| the race, though. While there's no public competing model
| with equal power yet, competitors are definitely much closer
| than they were before, and keep advancing. But, of course,
| GPT-5 might be another major leap.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| That's not true really. With well written prompts GPT4 is
| better at some things and worse at others than
| Claude/Llama3. GPT4 only appears to be the best by a wide
| margin if your benchmark suite is vague, poorly specified
| prompts and your metric for evaluation is "did it guess
| what I wanted accurately"
| int_19h wrote:
| My benchmark is giving it novel (i.e. guaranteed to not
| be in the training set) logical puzzles that require
| actual reasoning ability, and seeing how it performs.
|
| By that benchmark, GPT-4 significantly outperforms both
| LLaMA 3 and Claude in my personal experience.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| That's occurring because you're giving it weak prompts,
| like I said. GPT4 has been trained to do things like
| chain of thought by default, where as you have to tell
| Llama/Claude to do some of that stuff. If you update your
| prompts to suggest reasoning strategies and tell it to
| perform some chain of thought before hand the difference
| between models should disappear.
| int_19h wrote:
| You are assuming a great deal of things. No, you can
| absolutely come up with puzzles where no amount of forced
| CoT will make the others perform on GPT-4 level.
|
| Hell, there are puzzles where you can literally point out
| where the answer is wrong and ask the model to correct
| itself, and it will just keep walking in circles making
| the same mistakes over and over again.
| MrDarcy wrote:
| Confirmed. I asked both Gemini and GPT4 to assist with a
| proto3 rpc service I'm working on. The initial prompt was
| well specified. Both provided nearly exactly the same proto
| file, which was correct and idiomatic.
|
| However, I then asked both, "Update the resource.spec.model
| field to represent any valid JSON object."
|
| Gemini told me to use a google.protobuf.Any type.
|
| GPT4 told me to use a google.protobuf.Struct type.
|
| Both are valid, but the Struct is more correct and avoids a
| ton of issues with middle boxes.
|
| Anyway, sample size of 1 but it does seem like GPT4 is
| better, even for as well-specified prompts as I can muster.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| You need to specify a perspective to write code from
| (e.g. software architect who values maintainability and
| extensibility over performance or code terseness), and
| prompt models to use the most idiomatic or correct
| technique. GPT4 is tuned to avoid some of this but it
| will improve answers there as well.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| It will drive up the value of the "un-tainted" API.
| titzer wrote:
| > Additionally, members of the program receive priority placement
| and "richer brand expression" in chat conversations, and their
| content benefits from more prominent link treatments.
|
| Hi, the future called and it's been enshittified.
|
| Hey, OpenAI! You could harness AI to give every child a
| superhuman intelligence as a tutor, you could harness AI to cut
| through endless reams of SEO'd bullshit that is the old
| enshittified internet, you could offer any one of a hundred other
| benefits to humanity...
|
| ...but NO, you will instead 100% stuff AI-generated content,
| responses to questions, and "helpful suggestions" full of
| sponsored garbage in the most insidious of ways, just like every
| other braindead ad-based business strategy over the past 25
| years.
|
| If this is your play, then in no uncertain terms I hope you all
| fail and go bankrupt for such a craven fumbling of an incredible
| breakthrough.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > AI to give every child a superhuman intelligence as a tutor
|
| How much would you pay for that?
|
| > AI to cut through endless reams of SEO'd bullshit that is the
| old enshittified internet
|
| How much would you pay for that?
|
| Is it more or less than what a company would pay OpenAI to
| boost their brand?
| titzer wrote:
| > How much would you pay for that?
|
| I would pay $TAXES for that. The United States collectively
| pays over $800 billion a year for public education
| (https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-
| statisti...).
| BeetleB wrote:
| So with that much tax money collected, why are you
| expecting OpenAI to tutor students? Let the government
| build the product you would like to see.
| benreesman wrote:
| I have a mountain of links that I've posted before and at need
| can link to again.
|
| These are bad people. I've known about Altman's crimes for over a
| decade and I've failed to persuade Fidji (who I've known for 12
| years) of them at any weight of evidence.
| fwip wrote:
| Could you link to these links?
| __loam wrote:
| I'm creepin: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39935200
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| This reeks of the "manic charlie smoking a cig in front of
| a pinboard" meme
| Y_Y wrote:
| I'd gladly appoint Pepe Silvia to the board of OpenAI.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nTpsv9PNqo
| benreesman wrote:
| Were you referring to the first or second time Altman was
| _fired for self dealing_.
|
| Calm down dude, we've already been fired.
| benreesman wrote:
| It would be cool if you took issue with any of my primary
| and secondary sources rather than throw a Sunny in
| Philadelphia meme.
|
| Which of those do you take issue with as germane and
| credible?
| benreesman wrote:
| That's a pretty solid subset.
|
| I post under my real name, and I link to credible sources.
|
| Thank you for sparing me the trouble of rustling up, for
| the trillionth time, the damning documentary evidence.
| gojri wrote:
| Can you share more?
| benreesman wrote:
| Most of the YC/adjacent hearsay is inadmissible even here.
| What's public is ugly enough.
|
| A sibling has linked to the credible journalism I was
| alluding to.
| krupan wrote:
| This sort of advertising feels a bit like the original AdWords
| from Google. They were text-only and unobtrusive and pitched as
| basically just some search results related to the content you
| were viewing, so they were sure to be relevant to you. And they
| pretty much were, for a little while. Then they morphed into full
| on annoying ads
| NegativeK wrote:
| They were also very clearly labeled, unlike other search
| engines of the time.
|
| I have no expectation that OpenAI will make it clear what
| content is part of a placement deal and what content isn't.
| superbyte wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket
| d_burfoot wrote:
| Another angle here is: it is going to be very valuable to some
| companies to ensure that their datasets go into the LLM training
| process. For example, if you are AWS, you really want to make
| sure that the next version of GPT has all of the AWS
| documentation in the training corpus, because that ensures GPT
| can answer questions about how to work with AWS tools. I expect
| OpenAI and others will start to charge for this kind of
| guarantees.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| "Identify a true statement about 'Twinkies' to prove you are not
| a bot."
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en
| bilsbie wrote:
| I'm ready for open source AI
| dandanua wrote:
| AdsGPT 6.0 by GreedAI. Soon.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Well on the bright side, if the AI is busy being a salesman
| trying to make their quota then it may not have time to destroy
| humanity.
| foxyv wrote:
| Unless it's trying to sell paperclips!
| idle_zealot wrote:
| That's _how_ it destroys humanity. Consider the impact of, say,
| oil and gas salesmen.
| clessg wrote:
| Indeed, destroying humanity might even adversely affect
| profits. That can't be good. Perhaps the way to prevent AI-
| induced human extinction, nanobots, paperclips, and gray goo
| has been solved: avoid anything that might harm the profit
| margins and stock price.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| While it took Google 25 years to enshitify, this cycle will
| probably last 10 times less than that.
| _hl_ wrote:
| People here seem to treat this like advertising, because it kinda
| sounds familiar to advertising. I'm as critical of ClosedAI as
| the next guy, but let's think that idea through: OpenAI are the
| ones paying the content provider for exposure, not the other way
| around. In return they get training data.
|
| The only reason for OpenAI to do this is if it makes their models
| better in some way so that they can monetize that performance
| lift. So I think incentives here are still aligned for OpenAI to
| not just shill whatever content but actually use it to improve
| their product.
| causal wrote:
| I am in favor of AI companies trying to source material
| responsibly, and if I'm reading this right OpenAI will actually
| be compensating the publishes to use their content. So this
| isn't adspace yet.
|
| That said, giving publishers "richer brand expression"
| certainly injects financial incentives into the outputs people
| trust coming from ChatGPT.
| hwbunny wrote:
| They are paying to the bigheaded ones, what about the rest?
| Will they get money for people consuming their content through
| ChatGPT or, since you are too small, thanks for your data, now
| F off? LLMs already only show you just a selected few sites'
| content when doing search on the web. It's a gargantuan bubble.
| d3w3y wrote:
| That's an interesting thought. I think a lot of people who are
| upset about this are not truly upset at the type of partnership
| being described in the article, but rather adjacent programs
| that might be developed further down the line. Personally, I
| don't think they're wrong to predict something closer to true
| advertising being incorporated into LLMs; I wouldn't be
| surprised if the industry does take that sort of turn.
|
| For the time being, though, I think you're right that this
| seems to be something a little more innocuous.
| jjulius wrote:
| > People here seem to treat this like advertising, because it
| kinda sounds familiar to advertising.
|
| Because it is.
|
| Whether or not OpenAI pays the publisher or the publisher pays
| OpenAI, it's still an agreement to "help ChatGPT users more
| easily discover and engage with publishers' brands and
| content". In this case, the publisher "pays" in the form of
| giving OpenAI their data in return for OpenAI putting product
| placement into their responses.
|
| That's advertising, no matter how you slice it.
| drgoodvibe wrote:
| Just a matter of time before anyone can buy ad placements like
| Google Adsense and a walled app garden allows a customer to price
| match their car insurance when they type in "how do I get cheap
| car insurance?" into ChatGPT and openAI takes 30%. The future is
| here! I guess?
| pashsoft wrote:
| So partnerships are available only to "select, high-quality
| editorial partners" - is that a polite way of saying "rich"? I
| expect chatGPT will be very effective at delivering targeted
| advertising and shilling products, because truth and accuracy are
| not required for the job. Writing convincing bullshit about
| $product is basically a perfect use-case for it. And since it's
| just a computer program you can't sue it for false advertising,
| right?
| throwaway4233 wrote:
| > Additionally, members of the program receive priority placement
| and "richer brand expression" in chat conversations, and their
| content benefits from more prominent link treatments. Finally,
| through PPP, OpenAI also offers licensed financial terms to
| publishers.
|
| > A recent model from The Atlantic found that if a search engine
| like Google were to integrate AI into search, it would answer a
| user's query 75% of the time without requiring a clickthrough to
| its website.
|
| If the user searching for the information finds what they want in
| ChatGPT's response (now that they have direct access to the
| publisher data), why would they visit the publisher website ? I
| expect the quality of responses to degrade to the point where GPT
| behaves more like a search engine than a transformer, so that the
| publishers also get the clicks they want.
| hwbunny wrote:
| Average user will NOT CLICK on those links. Anyone who ever had
| a news site and did some research how people interact with the
| content knows this. You show the source, but only a tiny amount
| of users click on those links.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| I think this is true. Even now with Google's summaries at the
| top of the page, people usually just take what that says as
| fact and move on.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Ah so this is that oft-touted "progress" I hear AI sycophants
| talk about breathlessly, ways for companies to shove more ads
| down our throats!
| hotsauceror wrote:
| I am honestly surprised that anyone, particularly here in
| startup / VC land, thought this was going to go any
| differently. Is the Chief Inspector really shocked to learn
| that gambling happens at this establishment?
| hotsauceror wrote:
| Also, profiteering is just piker stuff. Imagine what major
| intelligence agencies will do once they set up front companies
| to prioritize placing their own 'content' as a training set.
| gsuuon wrote:
| Is this limited to the ChatGPT UI? Hopefully this preferential
| treatment doesn't make it into the API.
| yread wrote:
| It's similar to what google would have done (paying for placement
| in search results) if they didn't have the whole dont be evil
| thing.
|
| OpenAI doesn't realize that while it brings in revenue it opens
| door for a competitor who returns the results users asked for
| instead of what you get paid for.
| mvkel wrote:
| Folks who are reacting with
|
| > ugh I hate ads. Bye ChatGPT subscription!
|
| I would recommend reading the article in full.
|
| The gist is all of these efforts are in exchange for realtime
| browsing. In other words: if you ask it "who won this weekend's
| f1 race?" It can browse ESPN for the answer, then tell you
| "here's what ESPN says."
|
| Exactly like you'd see on Google. Or, you know, ESPN.com.
|
| Certainly a better experience than "I'm sorry, as of my knowledge
| cutoff date..."
|
| To conflate that experience with heavy product placement and non-
| useful assistant answers, it just tells me that you didn't read
| the article.
| drawkward wrote:
| The people who are reacting with
|
| > ugh I hate ads. Bye ChatGPT subscription!
|
| are merely two years ahead of you in the product lifecycle. All
| advertising is spam. It is a cancer that gobbles up all host
| environments until nothing but ad content is left.
| mucle6 wrote:
| I hope they keep a subscription to let me pay for non ad results.
| I'm assuming the non ad google results are still somehow
| influenced by how much money they make google so I wish google
| offered something similar
| xyst wrote:
| I remember being naive. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu were paid
| subscriptions.
|
| Later, ads were introduced despite already paying for service.
| In which the added a new tier for "no ads" but pay an extra fee
| for the privilege.
| gonzaloalvarez wrote:
| I love seeing this. This is where the pudding is made. Invention,
| development, training and inference is all very expensive. Past
| generation AI assistants (Alexa, GHome) failed to find a way to
| monetize, and the balance between utility and privacy was simply
| not there, which meant that they didn't make for a decent long
| term business, so they all had to downsize like crazy. Right now
| only Infrastructure folks have a sustainable business here, and
| the fact that OpenAI is pitching to publishers this early (still
| beginning of the 'S curve') means that they are serious about
| making this a sustainable long term business. As 'early adopters'
| move into something new (look ma, a new toy!), it will be
| fascinating to see how OpenAI (and others?) keep a balance
| between paid customers, top of funnel (free + ads?) and opex.
| r0s wrote:
| Ah yes the Alexa model. They should ask Amazon how that's working
| out.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| it seems like a lot of people retain an obligate negative
| reaction to any business decision OpenAI makes. If they avoid
| partnerships they're criticized for scraping the web and
| "stealing" people's content. If they secure partnerships, they're
| criticized for prioritizing the viewpoints of their partners,
| over what is implied as an unbiased "web corpus" that is
| invariably a composite of the "stolen" data they were held to the
| fire for scraping in the first place.
| ur-whale wrote:
| At least, Google followed some vague moral principles when they
| started.
|
| Allowed them to kind of try to sort of do the right thing for
| their users for 10+ years before they finally gave in and
| switched to being run by the standard team of psychopaths for
| whom only the next quarter bottom line matters.
|
| OTOH, OpenAI seems to be rotten to the core on day one, this is
| going to be loads of fun!
| cdme wrote:
| Everything gets reduced to ads. None of this provides any values
| to end users.
| junto wrote:
| Sounds like product placement.
|
| "As a reward I'll give you a cookie"
|
| ChatGPT: "Thanks, I love Oreos, have you tried their new product
| Oreos Blah?"
| zoltrix303 wrote:
| I wonder how much of this will be leaking i to the API or maybe
| you'll have a price point which includes certain "data sources"
| and another where these are filtered out?
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