[tokioyoyo]

I have very normie and not-so-normie friends that ask ChatGPT almost anything. My parents consistently make use of it, and they're almost 70, and not that tech-literate. There was a fun release from Anthropic about the type of queries that they're receiving, and code-gen is minority. I think we're, once again, not the average user.

[OccamsMirror]

I wonder how many of those “average users” will actually happily pay what the true cost is though? Are they really getting perceivable value for it or is it just more convenient than present day Google.

[TheDong]

They all pay the price of google (micro-brainwashing by ads to buy things they don't need).

I think the average person will happily pay the same price to OpenAI (being micro-brainwashed by the AI to buy things they don't need, i.e. ads). I feel confident OpenAI will be able to charge even more for ads than Google since OpenAI will be able to influence people even more strongly, and hide the ads even better.

[sofixa]

But OpenAI's costs are exponentially higher than Google's (even taking into account the various Google freebies they don't charge for).

[jaxn]

Google wasn’t always profitable.

[sofixa]

But they weren't losing money on paid users, and their cost base was never so high.

[quitit]

When you say "true cost" I've interpreted that to mean the down-sides of using an AI ChatBot as a primary information source, so my reply below is in context of that interpretation:

There is a sizeable chunk of people who (perhaps foolishly) trust ChatGPT despite knowing it can produce errors. They use it because it does the "research" for them, and does so quickly. This presents a type of tech-agility that they themselves do not possess. So on balance they may be more tech-empowered by using a flawed AI ChatBot than they are by manually reading news, websites and blogs.

There is also an issue of trust. A novice reading the top 5 search results has no real idea if the information being presented is biased, error free, or even factual. Google's work to blend paid and organic placement also presents the flaw of dollars over quality. ChatGPT on the other hand presents a known level of trust to them.

A similar scenario plays out with the way novices are more trusting of apps that appear on a curated store rather than seeking out software via web searches.

I think that users on HN take for granted that they have outsized experience and skill in developing trust in the tech landscape, and have a mental list of news, websites and software providers that they deem trustworthy. This can lead to not understanding the motivation for relying on an AI ChatBot, or compartmentalising people who use those services as some kind simpleton.