Thread

ChatGPT now knows what you do on other websites via ad collector

764 points · 395 comments · lmbbuchodi

mavsman · 1789923911 · focus · HN ↗
To me, this quote just about sums it up:
> The mechanism is standard adtech. What has no precedent is running it on an AI chat product.
As someone who has been well aware of this mechanism for quite some time, I still feel icky anytime I re-read the details of it.
What a time to be alive.
1. jsrozner · 1789925147 · focus · HN ↗
  People think they're interacting with an "intelligence," when actually they're just getting a maximally optimized Weizenbaum feed. We're living through the sloppification of the human mind.
  See e.g., <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-chatbots-are-becoming-experts-changing-people-s-minds-what-s-their-secret" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-chatbots-are-beco...
  1. ben_w · 1789927543 · focus · HN ↗
    What's the old quote from WW2?
    I couldn't help but notice how each successive headline reporting our glorious victories seemed to draw closer to Tokyo.
    Something like that.
    Well. I can't help but notice how each successive headline reporting how this "scam"/stochastic parrot/"scare quotes intelligence" seems to be solving more and more things that were but a few years ago widely regarded as being indicators of high intelligence.
    Being highly convinving is one of the things on that list.
    mopsi · 1789928506 · focus · HN ↗
    It was Berlin and not Tokyo, I believe. Germany kept producing newsreels until the very end. Many of them are now on Youtube, a very interesting watch on how to frame things positively.
    fiu10 · 1789928756 · focus · HN ↗
    We need a downfall parody: "Hitler uses Openclaw".
    ben_w · 1789929107 · focus · HN ↗
    I've heard many variants; Paris in an earlier war, too.
    I try to keep an open mind about propaganda fooling me today; the people who were fooled in the past often were not fools themselves.
    godelski · 1789936617 · focus · HN ↗
    > the people who were fooled in the past often were not fools themselves.
    I think this can't be said enough. Propaganda's greatest weapon is making you think you are immune to it. Maybe some, but so much is propaganda. We all fall for propaganda (and ads), constantly
    Being fooled doesn't make you a fool. But being unwilling to change your mind does. Being unable to admit you don't know or don't have enough information to make a strong opinion makes you a fool too.
    Propaganda wants to take shortcuts, to simplify things. To trivialize. "It's so easy, you just..." because the fool is the person who already knows, the person who has nothing to learn, the person who thinks they're better than everybody else.
    dylan604 · 1789939587 · focus · HN ↗
    In the past, there were not the avenues of finding alternate sources for news. While those avenues are present today, it also allows for additional sources for propaganda. So are we any better today or not???
    ben_w · 1789940727 · focus · HN ↗
    Not. A thousand cable channels all licensed by a government, is much the same as five broadcast channels licensed by the same government.
    A million YouTubers grinding The Algorithm while secretly sponsored by various world governments, isn't much different to a thousand well-placed gossipers secretly sponsored by various world governments.

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