I think this can't be understated. It also destroyed search. I listened to a podcast a few years ago with an early googler who talked about this very precipice in early google days. They did a lot of testing, and a lot of modeling of people's valuation of search. They figured that the average person got something like $50/yr of value out of search (I can't remember the exact number, I hope I'm not off by an order of magnitude). And that was the most they could ever realistically charge. Meanwhile, advertising for just Q4 was like 10 times the value. It meant that they knew that advertising on the platform was inevitable. They also acknowledged that it would lead to the very problem that Brin and Page wrote about in their seminal paper on search.
I see LLMs inevitably leading to the same place. There will undoubtedly be advertising baked into the models. It is too strong a financial incentive. I can only hope that an open source alternative will at least allow for a hobbled version to consume.
This is an interesting take - is my "attention" really worth several thousand a year? In that my purchasing decisions being influenced by advertising to that degree that someone is literally paying someone else for my attention ...
I wonder if instead, could I sell my "attention" instead of others profitting of it?
Yes, but your attention rapidly loses value the more that your subsequent behavior misaligns with the buyer’s desires. In other words, the ability to target unsuspecting, idle minds far exceeds the value of a willing and conscious attention seller.
I see LLMs inevitably leading to the same place. There will undoubtedly be advertising baked into the models. It is too strong a financial incentive. I can only hope that an open source alternative will at least allow for a hobbled version to consume.
edit: I think this was the podcast https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-google-getting-worse/