Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by al_borland 184 days ago
If the responses are sponsored, it seems the value drops dramatically.

I want the AI agent to act more like a fiduciary, an independent 3rd party acting in my best interest. I don't need an AI salesman interjecting itself into my life with compromised incentives.
2 comments
johnnyanmac 184 days ago
Us “AI hostile users” are this way partially because we know that our desires do not align with those funding these tools.

OpenAI was already taking steps to integrate ads, amd Grok shows how much we should be trusting AI as some impartial 3rd party. The goal was always about control and profiting off of said control. Pretty much the antithesis of hacker mindsets.

link
chaosharmonic 184 days ago
Is there a reason such a thing couldn't present a bunch of neutral options, but with affiliate links that provide revenue back to Mozilla?

(I mean, that could still steer it toward places that have affiliate programs, but if you're running a local AI tool to help you search for these things that seems like something you should reasonably be able to toggle on and off/configure in a system prompt/something.)

link
al_borland 184 days ago
What we’ve seen from other companies is exactly what you mention. Unfair ranking and promotion of items with affiliate links or the highest payouts for them. Changing incentives compromise the integrity of the results.
link
chaosharmonic 184 days ago
Huh. Somehow I'd thought those programs were platform level and not item level. Which, yeah, does explain the problem a lot more clearly.
link