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The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public

(www.honest-broker.com)
451 points imartin2k | 2 comments | 06 Jul 25 06:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source
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spacemadness ◴[06 Jul 25 16:40 UTC] No.44482156[source]▶
Having seen the almost rabid and fearful reactions of product owners first hand around forcing AI into every product, it’s because all these companies are in panic mode. Many of these folks are not thinking clearly and have no idea what they’re doing. They don’t think they have time to think it through. Doing something is better than nothing. It’s all theatre for their investors coupled with a fear of being seen as falling behind. Nobody is going to have a measured and well thought through approach when they’re being pressured from above to get in line and add AI in any way. The top execs have no ideas, they just want AI. You’re not even allowed to say it’s a bad idea in a lot of bigger companies. Get in line or get a new job. At some point this period will pass and it will be pretty embarrassing for some folks.
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echelon ◴[06 Jul 25 18:15 UTC] No.44482850[source]▶
Companies that don't invent the car get to go extinct.

This is the next great upset. Everyone's hair is on fire and it's anybody's ball game.

I wouldn't even count the hyperscalers as certain to emerge victorious. The unit economics of everything and how things are bought and sold might change.

We might have agents that scrub ads from everything and keep our inboxes clean. We might find content of all forms valued at zero, and have no need for social networking and search as they exist today.

And for better or worse, there might be zero moat around any of it.

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delta_p_delta_x ◴[06 Jul 25 18:19 UTC] No.44482876[source]▶
> agents that scrub ads from everything

This is called an ad blocker.

> keep our inboxes clean

This is called a spam filter.

The entire parent comment is just buzzword salad. In fact I am inclined to think it was written by an LLM itself.

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1. echelon ◴[06 Jul 25 19:23 UTC] No.44483271[source]▶
You're not a normie and defaults matter. Most of the world doesn't even know what an ad blocker is let alone know how to install one.

There's really only two browsers and one search engine. It doesn't matter what you do, because the rest of society is ensnared and the economic activities that matter are held captive.

If generative models compress all of the useful activities (lowering the incumbency moat) and agents can perform actions on our behalf, then it reasons that we may have agents that act as personal assistants and have our best interests as top priority. Ads are clearly in violation of that.

It's so funny to be a contrarian on HN. I get quite a lot of predictions right, yet all I get in exchange is downvotes and claims that I'm an LLM. I'll have to write a retro one of these days if I ever find the free time.

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2. delta_p_delta_x ◴[07 Jul 25 01:33 UTC] No.44485847[source]▶
> You're not a normie and defaults matter. Most of the world doesn't even know what an ad blocker is let alone know how to install one

These problems don't need LLMs to solve; they need something that also starts with 'L', but is a lot more boring—legislation. The online world is rampant with rubbish and misinformation not because LLMs aren't yet at our beck and call like a digital French maid, but because laws in most parts of the world haven't caught up and multi-national megacorps do whatever the heck they see fit. Especially so in 'capital-friendly' countries. One sees a lot less of this in the PRC, for instance.

I would love to see a GDPR-style set of legislation straight up addressing everything from privacy defaults on social media to aggressively blocking online ad networks.

> I get quite a lot of predictions right

Good for you, then.