[LapsangGuzzler]

People think journalism is draped in ulterior motives now, just wait until these publishers are just front ends for AI content created by private companies.

What’s the point in having sponsored content when your supposedly unpaid content is churned out by some kids who raised a couple million bucks off of this AI wave?

The ultimate goal of advertisement is to be invisible, to be influencing without having to admit as much, and AI is the perfect vehicle to do just that.

[Martinussen]

To be fair, just because we can generate text well doesn't mean we're any closer to actually knowing how to influence people subtly like that. Anything that makes content can be used for vague general propaganda/lobbying, but impacting product-decision in a specific way? Seems as difficult as ever.

[LapsangGuzzler]

> Anything that makes content can be used for vague general propaganda/lobbying, but impacting product-decision in a specific way?

A/B testing and tracking metrics on user behavior is a very mature practice in the industry. Some types of cases and behaviors might be hard to track, but then really obvious ones (like Jan 6) also stand out.

High profile universities like Stanford built behavioral design labs backed by millions in funding to advance our understanding of how to influence behavior through technology. This is a massive commercial research space with huge money on the line. We can’t ignore that.