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by michaelt 684 days ago
> 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.

I imagine there was a conversation something along the lines of:

Google: "Please make us an ad showing off the cool capabilities of our LLM"

Ad agency: "OK, how about we show it boosting productivity in a business environment?"

G: "Sounds like job losses, that's not the vibe we want, got anything else?"

A: "I've heard this stuff has genius-level intellect, could we show it designing a more efficient turbine engine? And we could show the CAD drawing gradually appearing as the AI moves the cursor around?"

G: "Nah, it can't any of that stuff."

A: "What about if we show a home user letting the LLM taking care of boring drudgery, like writing a complaint letter to an inept credit rating agency?"

G: "Boring drudgery isn't the vibe we want in our ad either. Got any other ideas?"

A: "Well what sort of thing were you thinking of?"

G: "How about we show the product being used while enjoying quality time with their family? Smartphone ads always show people taking photographs of their laughing, smiling children."

A: "For real? Like that Apple VR headset ad that shows a dude wearing it while watching his daughters blowing bubbles?"

G: "Oh yeah we had a Google Glass ad showing a dude wearing it while playing with his daughters about a decade ago too! That's precisely the sort of thing we want."