[TheDong]

> move them over to ChatGPT

OpenAI has even more VC money to pay back than Google ever did.

Practically all the large tech companies so far have turned to ads and monetizing users rather than charging enough to remain more neutral.

I suspect one day, when you ask ChatGPT "Can you give me a link to mid journey", you'll instead probabilistically get a link to whichever competitor paid OpenAI for the best placement.

[itopaloglu83]

Or give you results that are completely unrelated and even try to convince you that what you’re trying to search doesn’t exist.

Studied with a guy from old Soviet Union, they were educated in a way that every modern invention had a Soviet inventor.

ChatGPT can create an individualized reality and truth for everyone depending on which advertiser’s target demographic they fit in.

[LtWorf]

Like how americans are convinced they invented the telephone because the patent office said so?

[alanh]

Curious, I asked Grok:

> Is there controversy over the true inventor of the telephone?Yes, there is controversy over the true inventor of the telephone. While Alexander Graham Bell is widely credited, several inventors and researchers argue for recognition based on their contributions:

> Antonio Meucci: An Italian inventor who filed a patent caveat for a "voice communication apparatus" in 1871, five years before Bell's patent. Meucci's device, the "teletrofono," could transmit voice over a wire. Due to financial hardship, Meucci couldn't renew his caveat, and Bell was granted the patent in 1876. In 2002, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution (H.Res. 269) recognizing Meucci's contributions, stating he demonstrated a working device earlier, though it didn't officially credit him as the inventor. Some still argue Meucci deserves primary credit.

> Elisha Gray: An American engineer who filed a patent caveat for a telephone-like device on the same day as Bell, February 14, 1876. Bell's patent was filed hours earlier, leading to disputes. Some claim Bell may have had access to Gray’s ideas through patent office connections, though no definitive evidence supports this. Gray later challenged Bell’s patent but lost in court.

> Philipp Reis: A German inventor who developed a device called the "Reis telephone" in 1861, capable of transmitting music and some speech. While it was less practical for clear voice communication, some argue it was a precursor to the telephone.

[itopaloglu83]

Just like how the history is written by the victorious, every nation tends to accept certain truths as their truth.

exclusions apply, ask your doctor if the truth is right for you.

[typpilol]

Ok I'm curious. Who's the real inventor

[ghshephard]

Antonio Meucci invented the Teletrofono around 1849 and filed a patent for it in 1871. I know this mostly because it was a big deal in a Soprano's episode.

[eru]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_telephone might be a good starting point.

[alanh]

See my reply to parent. Reply to sibling: Whoa, I've seen the Sopranos 3 times and never caught that reference.

[LtWorf]

And by the downvotes it seems they also get really touchy if it's pointed out…

[zamadatix]

Wait long enough and it seems like almost any company tries anything to increase its bottom line, but the main difference between ChatGPT and Google is at least ChatGPT attempts to give a paid option. Again, I don't think that'll stop them from ever getting to that point... but it'll go farther than "here's search, we pay for it via adtech".

Kagi is a similar boat - the product is what you pay for, not what they can get users to put up with.

[firejake308]

> at least ChatGPT attempts to give a paid option. Again, I don't think that'll stop them...

Netflix also attempted to give a paid option, but now we have an "ad-supported" plan. I think that same logic of maximizing profit means that even if there are some people paying for ChatGPT, the amount of free money that is sitting on the table means that we will see "ad-supported" ChatGPT pretty soon once the low-hanging fruit for quality enhancement start to dry up, which is kind of already happening.

[zamadatix]

I think the coexistence of ad supported plans is orthogonal to the above. E.g. Netflix still has an ad free plan, regardless of the other plans, but Google gives you no option.

[eru]

Google's YouTube has an ad free plan, at least.

[TheDong]

"And now let's introduce this video's Sponsor, SpywareVPN"

Yeah, sure, "ad-free plan". As long as you don't watch (what feels like) the majority of videos on the platform.

I pay for premium, but I'd gladly pay 4x as much if Youtube also required creators to mark sponsored segments and let them all get skipped automatically if you paid for youtube "double premium double ad free" or whatever.

[eru]

The premium plan actually gives you a little button to fast forward sponsor segments. (Not sure, if that's also on the free plan?)

You are right, that you still need to hit that button. It would be need to trigger it automatically. As far as I can tell, creators already tag the relevant segments as sponsored for other legal reasons.

[Dylan16807]

Wait, what VPNs are you accusing of being spyware?

[BobbyTables2]

It’s funny, in the late 90s and early 00s, respectable companies had no ads on their websites.

Now it seems like they all do!

[anal_reactor]

1. The reason why ChatGPT is free despite being honestly very advanced, is that they want the general public to have an association of ChatGPT being "the default AI", just like Google is the default search engine and YouTube is the default video platform. Once they have this position they can throw as much garbage at the users as they want and nobody will care. This is why it doesn't really matter how much it costs now to capture the market, if the potential benefits are huge.

2. Once the market is captured and solidified, ads and enshittification ensue. If you're willing to put on your tin foil hat for a second, I'd tell you that as a matter of fact the technologies to integrate different services with ChatGPT are being developed right now, and once they're ready it's just a small step to make sure that ChatGPT prioritizes answers mentioning those integrated partners, which can easily be justified to users as legit quality-of-life improvements.

Maybe the answer is indeed to just buy a book and go touch some literal grass, and let the civilization drown in the sewer of disinformation it produces.

[chasing0entropy]

Books, zero watts per token.

[eru]

You do know how paper is made?

[double0jimb0]

Just imagine all the gigawatts cooked to just serve ads via LLMs

[eru]

How's that different to all the time and effort spent on making television shows so that they can direct your attention to the next beer commercial, which also took lots of time and effort to make?

[notnmeyer]

maybe, but there was a time when google was the best alternative too.

[rurp]

I'd say it's practically guaranteed. It would be wildly unprecedented to not follow up the amount of hype and fundraising in the LLM AI industry without a massive amount of enshittification following it.

Even if improvements continue for years we might already be near the peak of LLM usefulness because all of greedy and abusive dark patterns are sure to follow once the manic land grab settles down.

[physicles]

This is one of the reasons why I’m getting familiar with self-hosting. Local models are improving shockingly fast. I use Gemma3 27B for generating summaries of podcast transcripts, for instance.

[eru]

> OpenAI has even more VC money to pay back than Google ever did.

Sure, so move them off OpenAI, once they start paying back?