I don't know, I feel like llms are the even worse replacement for social networks and maximized ad impressions. Now you don't even need a network or users to produce the addictive content and inject narrative that is so impactful on our brains and lives

I think those people are the ones in charge now and will be directing their ai resources to make even better ads.

1000000% this. I remember lamenting all through the 2010s that all the high paying jobs were basically ad revenue supported.

Now its AI.

Maybe AI doesn't materialize the way we want, but I'll take that bet over business as usual before every time.

That's not what was happening though. Whatever happened between 2000 and 2022 cannot be compared to the llm monomania we see now.

> too many smart people were building out social networks and similar services trying to maximize ad impressions.

Honest question: where should these very smart people work then in your opinion? Nearly all suitable-looking, "smarter" ideas that come to my mind will bring less revenue/profit in expectation than, for example, letting them maximize ad impressions.

I of course wish we lived in a "more intelligent" world where this is not the case. :-(

The consequences are different this time because why?

Seems like an even bigger opportunity to inject ads, influence thought, and scrape user information.

I'm not even sure that I do prefer the AI train to the social media / ad train. I certainly would if the direction was "we're throwing ourselves blindly in AI so to gradually free citizens from the need to work", but right now it's "we're throwing ourselves blindly in AI so that we can sacrifice workers for higher corporate profits".

You think AI won’t/isn’t being used to maximize ad impressions…?

During the social media boom: Attention is all you need

During the AI boom: Attention is all you need

Same people, different context.

I mean there are ads in certain chatGPT plans. There have already been multiple studies showing that regular use of genAI makes you less intelligent...

Additionally, it's pretty clear that the owners of this tech (dario, altman, etc..) do not have the best interest of "the people" at heart and only care about accumulating as much power and wealth possible. Not that it's their responsibility to save humanity or something, but I'm not sure this future is much better...

"The smartest people" were not working on ads because building an advertising behemoth is not a smart thing to do.

When there's nothing good being invested in, "the smartest people" are simply underutilized. They do things that they think are good instead.

"The smartest people" have never sought maximum capital accumulation, and have not historically been driven by "highest wages" jobs.

The computer industry formed out of WW2 because a bunch of smart people ran into each other and did what they thought was really cool and had realized was suddenly possible. Von Neuman literally met one of the other guys and discussed computers as a theory at a train station and that meeting was influential on the future industry. They did not try to make billions of dollars. They had fairly average jobs that paid average. Often working for the government itself.

"The smartest people" did not work on targeting ads at people, and while some of them may have been involved with early transformer work, they certainly would be disillusioned with LLMs by now and would not be working at companies burning trillions on them.

And crypto.

Social networks only destroyed discourse.

This both destroys discourse, and centralizes the means of production into ~4 companies, with everyone else paying them an economic tax in order to be competitive.