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by mrweasel5 hours ago |
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upvoteby c7b5 hours ago|
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> and the best monetization plans is ads.... Again?

Several of the biggest companies today are fueled by ads, and OpenAI has the perfect ad vehicle. What else were you expecting?

That's why local LLMs are important, and to preserve the current open weight models, because those are likely still untainted by ads. It won't be long until ad recommendations are directly baked into the weights of open models.

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upvoteby manuelmoreale4 hours ago|
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> Several of the biggest companies today are fueled by ads, and OpenAI has the perfect ad vehicle. What else were you expecting?

I'm old enough to remember when these people were claiming AI was as important and as revolutionary as fire and electricity. I don't know about you, but I pay for my electricity and the power companies don't have to run ads on my power lines in order to run their business.

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upvoteby nancyminusone3 hours ago|
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They probably would if they could. That gives me some bad ideas - you could vary the line frequency to play the McDonald's 'I'm Lovin It' jingle, etc.- good thing I'm not involved with either ads or power delivery.
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upvoteby altern83 hours ago|
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Don't forget morse code
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upvoteby shafyy4 hours ago|
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And that's all you really need to know about this AI grift.
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upvoteby mrweasel5 hours ago|
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I wasn't expecting anything else, because I think Sam Altman is a conman. Let's not forget Altman lambasting ads, and telling us how they were a last restort for OpenAI. So are we there yet? Are we willing to admit that OpenAI is a failing company?
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upvoteby jjordan4 hours ago|
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Failing or not, there's no way to justify their current spend without saying the words "massive" and "bubble".
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upvoteby brutal_chaos_5 hours ago|
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> What else were you expecting?

some of us were hoping for actual innovation, not more ads

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upvoteby c7b2 hours ago|
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I think today's LLMs and their derivatives (agents,.. ) are an impressive technological/research achievement with amazing real-world utility. Innovation at its best. I don't see the enshittification of commercial products based upon LLMs as taking away from that. Like I said, I see the potential of this technology in the local/open weights model space. Yes, those are currently noticeably behind the commercial offerings. But that's not a fundamental problem. It's not a race. If we keep improving open products they can one day match if not exceed the commercial options. A bit like open source desktop environments/operating systems - it took a while, but now the OSS options can arguably match if not beat the commercial ones.
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upvoteby calvinmorrison3 hours ago|
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Great observation, and thank you for pointing that out. I deployed a new MR for that using the awesome YASaaS for only 17.99/mo to create QR codes in your NextJS website. Using your company credit card to a new platform tied directly to your bun dependencies to pay for all your library subscriptions. Would you like me to tell you how much you'll spend this month?
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upvoteby anigbrowl52 minutes ago|
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Indeed. What advertisers want is chatbot that works as a sales rep, and this is the sort of thing LLMs can be really really good at. Money talks.
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upvoteby Aurornis4 hours ago|
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> and the best monetization plan is ads.... Again?

Their monetization plan is to have ad-free subscription options from $20 to $200/month and an API which charges by token.

These ads are for the free and new low-cost ad-subsidized tier that comes in below their existing $20/month plan.

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upvoteby notrealyme1233 hours ago|
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But they could make more money if they show the ads to everyone.

E.g like Amazon prime.

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upvoteby array_key_first2 hours ago|
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For now, but they'd be stupid to not push ads on all their tiers.

You know what's better than 20 bucks a month? 20 bucks a month and ads.

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upvoteby due-rr3 hours ago|
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Ads are they only way to make a lot of money on the internet.
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upvoteby JeremyNT3 hours ago|
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Their valuation is dumb no matter what but you've got to think it's based off of the potential for B2B / gov revenue, not monetizing the consumer facing stuff directly.

Which is to say I feel like they're going to use ads on the consumer stuff just to stop bleeding out VC money as quickly, but nobody's deluded enough to think this is going to bring them much closer to profitability overall.

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