I’m not a hard core student of this, but here is my observation.
You know how you use Chat GPT to get answers without all the ads? Well, those days are numbered.
The rush to spend trillions on huge energy sucking data centers by the giants is not to make our lives better out of benevolence. It’s for profit.
No surprise there, and I wouldn’t expect them to spend that kind of money as a gift.
It’s all about advertising. Whoever has the audience gets to charge the money.
Right now, Google has a toll booth in front of every business. Imagine someone setting up a toll booth in front of your business, charging everyone who wants to come in and do business with you. If someone searches your name and they click on almost any of the results that Google shows, they get paid by that business. And the price of the toll is mostly set by auction – whoever pays the most, sets the price. That’s how it is now.
The AI race from this viewpoint, it would seem, is about big companies figuring out a way to dethrone Google and get the money they are getting, and Google defending.
Chat GPT is from a company called Open AI (“Open?”) and the largest investor is Microsoft. Chat GPT will start showing sponsored results soon. Companies will have to pay to be in the top results. Google’s Gemini will be the same.
It won’t be about information untainted by advertising anymore.
AI has incredible benefits. But it seems pure search results won’t be one of them for long.
I’m disappointed.
I did not know this, nice lesson Larry.
Thank you
Anyone remember when Google Ads were free? Yes, it was a very long time ago. Used to be called Froogle. Get the audience is the first step of the business model. I imagine it was quite a while before Google actually turned a profit, but they knew what they were doing quite well.
The energy and material requirements for AI data centers are ludicrous. AI may increase productivity. Productivity of what? Why? So we can consume more with less effort? AI advertising is a good thing, of course. How else is it going to hack our Paleolithic neuro-reward systems to get us to buy more things? #economicmachine
I’m not surprised at this, as the internet and technology are taking over everything. All the more reason to amp up all efforts to get word of mouth referrals. FREE! Kudos to the treehouse, we would be lost without them!
From AI itself: “The billboard that talks back”. “Your disappointment is the correct emotional response to a “bait and switch.” We were sold a super-intelligence; we are being delivered a super-salesman.
The way out is to treat AI as a tool you wield (like a hammer), not an oracle you obey, and to build a business that relies on human relationships (referrals) rather than algorithmic permission.”
The AI game will certainly evolve into a pay to play situation (like Google is today), so the new challenge is to make sure your company’s website can be seen, understood and trusted by the LLMs. The promise of AI has been overhyped, but one thing it does very efficiently is comb through a lot of data and spit out a summary—and customers are using this new tool to make purchasing decisions because it takes less effort than digging around a Google SERP, clicking on a bunch of sites, then searching Reddit, then YT, and on and on…So the moral of the story is the game will remain pay-to-play, but it has gotten more complicated—and businesses need to have their digital ducks in a row or risk being left out.
It’s not all about ads because a lot of the functions aren’t related to products. However, it is certainly about money. I’m very thankful that there is competition in this marketplace. ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok are leaders in the field and all charge comparable amounts for less-limited use of their service. I fully expect that they will soon be showing ads in order to pay for the service of those that don’t pay for a subscription, just like all other software. OpenAI also charges for usage but it’s more on the backend of software products. Many new software products integrate AI into their programs to accomplish complex tasks faster. They pay AI engines to perform the work and pass along the cost to their customers who rent their software. (Personally owned software is well on it’s way to being a thing of the past)
What we have done it gone full circle in a huge way. When computers were first getting started everyone used dumb terminals to tap into huge mainframe computers. Then technology improved and much smaller computers could do the same things. Then the personal computer became mainstream in the 80s and eventually everyone had one or several in their homes and businesses. Now we seem to be moving back to “dumb terminals” where our devices simply access the centralized computing system. We call our phones “smart” but what could they truly do if they weren’t tied into the Apple or Google systems or the internet? My phone without internet connectivity is a very dumb phone with very limited capability. That’s the way they want it though. Because I have to pay to play and if I don’t they cut me off.
This sounds like a great topic for Tanner to write a paper on! The discussion surrounding our dependence on technology and digital data would be one worth having. It would also be interesting to analyze the power requirements of original mainframes, then personal computers and now phone, tablets, PCs and data centers. Did the power requirements ever plateau or did they continually rise since computers were invented? Lot’s of questions here to answer and then one big one. Are we headed in a good/better direction or should there be some corrections?