[dnautics]

> Just looking at the sheer amount of work gone to optimize ad clicking is insane.

It's circular -- while I think ads are absurd and am actively trying to remove as many of them from my life as possible, it's not like technologies that have been subsidized by optimizing ad clicking haven't come back around to help science out.

[Swenrekcah]

Are you referring to ad tech somehow being useful or that some of FB/Google pet projects ultimately funded by ads have been useful?

Just curious, especially if you mean the former.

[dnautics]

both. For the first category, basically "machine learning advances in general". For the second, "machine learning advances like alphafold".

I reserve the right to claim at some future date, possibly in the next few hours, "the circular payoff is mostly tapped out".