alt Hacker NewsPeople are reacting negatively to the ads, but there's a bigger point. This is bearish as heck for AGI. If OpenAI were recursively improving their general-computer-using agent, who was going to be superhuman at every job, they wouldn't need to be messing around with things like this.
ChatGPT is a useful product, which they're monetising in a well-travelled internet company way. The bad news is you're going to have ads in your ChatGPT in 2030. The good news is you're still going to have a job in 2030.
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Yes, it means they don't expect fast takeoff in the next year, but we already knew that.
Having revenue from their free users might can just be a way to make it more sustainable. And/Or make fundraising easier from investors (which has immediate benefit).
Seeing the message "you're reached your limit..." makes free users switch to other AI providers, and ads are a way to fund higher limits. Their prime competitor, Google, has ad income from users so has an advantage.
$20/month product with ads, you would have to be an exec to think thats a good idea. Can they even push enough ads to ever make profit? Like the best care scenario for openAi at this point is to declare bankruptcy.
It's almost like LLMs represents a fairly useful but modest step forward, instead of a complete and utter paradigm shift that will up end society and put everyone out of a job.
They don't need AGI to fire you or not make jobs you would have taken. All these pro ai devs on here talking about 10x productivity gains in their own work like management isn't looking at those claims and thinking about a 10x reduction in headcount.