[HN Gopher] I hate the Gemini 'Dear Sydney' ad more every passin...
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I hate the Gemini 'Dear Sydney' ad more every passing moment
Author : ColinWright
Score : 54 points
Date : 2024-08-01 21:22 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| ColinWright wrote:
| UnPayWalled: https://archive.ph/7OS2Q
|
| Take-away quotation:
|
| > _All of the buffoons excited by the prospect of AI taking over
| all our writing -- report summaries, data surveys, children's
| letters, all tossed into the same pile indiscriminately -- are
| missing the point in a spectacular manner. Do you know what
| writing is?_
|
| > _It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people.
| It is a method for taking thoughts and images and stories out of
| your brain and putting them into someone else's brain. E.M.
| Forster quotes a woman saying, "How can I tell what I think until
| I see what I say?" To take away the ability to write for yourself
| is to take away the ability to think for yourself._
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > To take away the ability to write for yourself is to take
| away the ability to think for yourself.
|
| She writes that as if this is a bad thing (from Google's point
| of view). Just think of how much more effective advertising
| will be!
| wccrawford wrote:
| I _hate_ that ad.
|
| But I don't agree with those quotes. Writing _to other people_
| is a way to communicate your ideas and feelings to them.
|
| If you are unable to easily communicate those ideas and
| feelings, you can get someone, or some thing, to help you. The
| alternatives are to just send it and know it won't be
| understood, or struggle and hope it's understood.
|
| That ad isn't asking for help with that, though. It's asking
| the AI to pretend to be his daughter and send a fan letter that
| means nothing. It isn't taking his daughter's thoughts and
| feelings and communicating them... It's just making everything
| up whole cloth, and even inventing a fake daughter for the guy
| to have that wants and does what he wants, instead of what she
| wants. It's disgusting.
| techostritch wrote:
| I'm not the most in touch person in the world but this ad felt
| super out of touch.
|
| I was having this discussion with someone and they said the
| problem with tech is they're just going to teach our kids to be
| prompt engineers and learn nothing else, and I naively defended
| the tech industry and said no, of course not, AI will be used to
| enhance people's learning of traditional skills, not replace it,
| and boy does this ad make me feel wrong.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| The ad is seen as so bad because its attempt to create some
| supposed "essential" use case is hilariously transparent.
| There's just a visceral disgust we have when we see things like
| these targeted at children. We know what they are. The takeaway
| from the ad is a _step back and away_ from the idea that
| technology will make us better or improve our lives; Google
| comes across as crassly presenting something bad (or pointless
| at best) as some human good, when most people can see right
| through it as the worst kind of marketing, a new low point in 2
| decades and change of tech companies insisting they 're
| "changing the world" with some half-baked, MBA fuelled,
| ghoulish crap.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Even prompt engineering won't be necessary soon enough, where
| the AI can just ask a bunch of clarifying questions.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Maybe I'm becoming too cynical, but now even an op-ed complaining
| about an ad feels like it might actually itself be a submarine ad
| in disguise; a "false-flag" attack against your own side to stir
| the pot and get people thinking about your product. There's no
| such thing as bad publicity, as they say.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > There's no such thing as bad publicity, as they say.
|
| That's what they say, but it isn't true. Business history is
| littered with counterexamples.
| pinewurst wrote:
| Boeing has done so well from their bad publicity. :)
| LorenDB wrote:
| A funny coincidence: the Bing AI internal codename was Sydney
| according to leaked system prompts. I'm sure Google didn't think
| about that at all, but one could turn it into a metaphor where
| Google is looking up to Microsoft/OpenAI with intent to
| eventually pass them.
| lainga wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceeding_the_UK%2C_catching_t...
| toddmorey wrote:
| In trying to find a use case for AI, this ad actually sets up the
| worst possible scenario. All I can think of now is Sydney getting
| flooded with AI generated fan mail and trying to adjust spam
| filters.
| lovethevoid wrote:
| Yeah like the article hints at, I thought it was made by anti-AI
| folks due to it highlighting exactly the type of AI we don't need
| at all. Replacing the personal with the impersonal "perfect"
| spam.
|
| Only Google could mess up such an easy ad concept of athletes and
| AI.
|
| Barely related: I find it interesting the more I read about
| engineers refusal to allow their kids near tech, and how often
| their same companies use kids frequently in advertising.
| cgijoe wrote:
| Remember the point of an ad. It's to be memorable, and to get
| people talking about it. Google wants people talking about
| Gemini. Well, here we are. I think Google won in this instance.
| But yes, the ad _content_ is very bad.
| xg15 wrote:
| I mean, by that logic MS couldn't have done better with Tay a
| few years ago. People were _definitely_ talking about that
| one...
| kurthr wrote:
| People are trying to bring back Clippy, because nostalgia for
| when bad wasn't quite as terrible.
| fzzzy wrote:
| Sorry to make you feel old, but Tay was over 8 years ago.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > I mean, by that logic MS couldn't have done better with Tay
| a few years ago.
|
| I was honestly disappointed that Microsoft shut down Tay
| because they risked reputation damage. So yes, this was in my
| opinion good advertising, and a bad handling of the outcry
| from Microsoft's side.
|
| I guess Microsoft wants to target a different audience ...
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| > I don't hate efficiency.
|
| Are any of us trying to be "efficient" when writing a fan letter?
| I wouldn't think so. I want a suggestion on how to start.
|
| If I asked an AI for the letter from the ad, I would also have
| read and edited it heavily before I considered it "complete."
|
| Maybe TFA author is correct that people need to hear what he's
| saying (they won't), but I for one will be using AI output as
| suggestions.
| floren wrote:
| Maybe the athletes can just skip those pesky fans and type
| "Gemini, write a fan letter to me that I can read for a little
| confidence boost".
|
| The entire sentiment and value of your AI-enhanced fan letter
| is contained in the prompt you fed the AI, because that's the
| part created by a human expressing their human feelings. All
| the rest is stochastic fluff. Why not just tweet the prompt to
| the athlete and call it a day?
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| Children editing LLM generated garbage instead of actually
| writing to their heroes. Christ. This article was aimed at
| people like you mate.
| tedunangst wrote:
| > If you haven't seen this ad, you are leading a blessed
| existence and I wish to trade places with you. But I am about to
| recount it to you so that you can share in my misery
|
| Thanks. How kind.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| https://gemini.google.com/share/815f28b9c364 (via
| https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/dear-sydney-why-i-find-go...)
| kohbo wrote:
| I love this. I know this isn't exactly self-reflection but it's
| interesting to think about the type of self-reflection that is
| completely objective.
| floren wrote:
| Hardly self-reflection; I asked it why an imaginary "Love,
| Jason" ad was so off-putting, changing the ad name from a
| letter salutation to the closing remarks, and it gave a very
| similar response.
| KTibow wrote:
| It's funny how clearly it regurgitated phrases from the web
| (I'm pretty sure Gemini wouldn't say "pattern-matching
| autocomplete algorithm" by itself)
| floren wrote:
| Also the ad doesn't make any mention of pattern recognition
| or improved responses, nor does it involve using an AI to
| "predict" the child's future.
| capital_guy wrote:
| I've seen this ad a hundred times during the Olympics so far (why
| do they play the same ads over and over?) -- and this article
| summarizes how it makes me feel very well.
|
| The logical extension of this stuff is insane -- why have kids
| learn to write at all? They can just have an AI do it. Why learn
| anything? It's all on the internet anyway.
|
| There are plenty of good use cases for AI generated texts.
| Creating transcripts from audio, writing meeting summaries, and
| other types of rote, monotonous tasks. Writing a letter from the
| heart is not one of those things that should be outsourced.
|
| If there's anything on this earth we should value, it's humanity.
| And the tech giants are chomping at the bit to take that away.
| It's a sad vision for the future they're pushing
| jinushaun wrote:
| Many have said it before: big tech is using AI to automate the
| wrong things.
| api wrote:
| This and that awful Apple ad are both saying the same thing, or
| at least that's how people interpret it. They're saying "AI is
| here to make life sterile and empty and it's awesome!"
|
| What I find most intriguing is the fact that these are giant
| companies with huge ad budgets and that presumably clear the
| highest profile ads with the C suite or people near it. All
| these presumably smart people thought these ads were great.
| They either agreed with the message or wanted to convey a
| different one that absolutely did not come through... as any
| moron could have told them.
|
| It shows how insulated the bubble is around these people and
| companies. They must never even interact with people who aren't
| drinking the same brand of kool-aid.
|
| It's tempting to think this is just an elite mega corp thing
| but I see loads of out of touch bubbles around.
|
| People need to _mix_ more. Get out of whatever filter bubble
| you live in. Read things you disagree with. Know people outside
| your profession or who don't think like you.
|
| We used to say "travel" but I think intellectual and social
| diversity is more important now. We carry our filter bubbles
| with us. Travel can still help though, especially if it's to
| places with differing dominant cultures.
| its_ethan wrote:
| With respect to the Apple ad, I don't think that was about AI
| at all - it was for the newest iPad Pro right?
|
| I interpreted it as look at all these cool arts/creative
| things that we've managed to compress into a single sheet of
| glass. I sort of get how people interpreted it as just
| maliciously destroying those things as a means to an end, but
| that feels like an intentional reading of bad faith to a
| company that is generally very creativity-minded.
|
| I wonder if it would have received less blow back if they had
| "hidden" the actual crushing of the objects and just showed
| them entering a chamber with an implied compression... but
| the visuals of everything exploding in the hydraulic press
| are pretty cool and a more dynamic way to convey the "look at
| what all we've packed into the product" message.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _Do you know what writing is?
|
| It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people._
|
| As if ad companies were ever interested in having users who can
| think...
| dgfitz wrote:
| Could have dropped the title almost completely. "I hate the...
| ad" would have nailed it.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| Do such ads negatively impact the perception of leadership at
| Google? It feels like there's no overarching vision of what AI
| should be from the public face of Google's leadership team, so we
| end up with stuff like Dear Sydney which just comes off as tone-
| deaf. Why didn't anyone at Google step-in and say: "hey, maybe
| this ad isn't very good and it's failing to communicate our
| values"? Although maybe the explanation is that Google's
| leadership no longer has any values beyond making infinite
| amounts of money by any means necessary.
| paxys wrote:
| You can tell that Google gave a big advertising agency a truck
| full of cash and a slight glance at their product and told them
| to get to work. All their Olympics ads are generic designed-by-
| committee garbage. Perfect representation of the company's
| products as a whole these days.
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(page generated 2024-08-01 23:01 UTC)