Recently I went on vacation in Italy. GPT-5 was consulted for restaurant and sightseeing recommendations. It said that the best place to eat near our Rome hotel was just a few minutes walk along Via Margutta. The meal was one of my favorites. After I returned home, I inquired about the restaurant that the model chose. I don’t want to disclose the name in case it is a future choice for me. Babette. Please call ahead to make reservations. Answer was impressive and complex. The restaurant was praised for its combination of Roman-style cooking and contemporary cuisine. The short walk was also a factor.
Trust was also required on my part. GPT-5’s honesty was important to me. It had to convince me that it would pick the right restaurant for my family. It would have been possible to do my own research to verify the recommendation. I did check the website, but AI bypasses that.
I was reassured by the results of OpenAI, but the experience also led me to wonder: Will AI suffer from the value erosion that is a hallmark of the technology apps we currently use?
Word Play
Cory Doctorow is a tech writer who calls erosion by that name. “enshittification.” He argues that companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook initially aim to satisfy users. But once they have defeated their competitors, the platforms become intentionally less helpful to maximize profits. WIRED’s republishing of Doctorow’s seminal work, The Disappearance of the American Dream in America (1996) was a major success. 2022 essay The term became popular because it accurately described the phenomenon. The American Dialect Society chose Enshittification as its 2023 Word Of The Year. This concept is so widely used that its vulgarity has become a part of everyday language. Doctorow published a new book. an eponymous book on the subject; the cover image is the emoji for … guess what.
Chatbots or AI agents that are enshittified could become worse than Google Search, Amazon’s results being cluttered with advertisements, and Facebook showing a less socially-oriented content, in favour of clickbait.
The AI will soon be our constant companion and provide one-time answers to most of our questions. People already rely on it to help interpret current events and get advice on all sorts of buying choices—and even life choices. It’s reasonable to expect that, due to the high costs involved in creating an AI model of this magnitude, only a handful of companies will be able dominate the market. They all plan to invest hundreds of billions in the coming years to develop their AI models, and to get them to as many people possible. AI has entered what Doctorow refers to as the “good to the users” stage. But the pressure to make back the massive capital investments will be tremendous—especially for companies whose user base is locked in. Doctorow writes that these conditions allow businesses to take advantage of their business and user customers. “to claw back all the value for themselves.”
Advertising is the first thought that pops into mind when one thinks of the future of AI. AI models making recommendations based solely on companies that have paid to be placed is the nightmare. AI firms are currently exploring the space for ads, though it is not yet happening. It’s not happening now, but AI firms are actively exploring the ad space. a recent interviewOpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. “I believe there probably is some cool ad product we can do that is a net win to the user and a sort of positive to our relationship with the user.” OpenAI announced an agreement with Walmart to let its customers shop in the ChatGPT App. It’s hard to imagine that there would be a conflict. Perplexity’s AI platform offers a feature that lets you search for people using the AI. sponsored results Get the details in clearly labeled Follow-ups. However, the promise is that it will be there. “these ads will not change our commitment to maintaining a trusted service that provides you with direct, unbiased answers to your questions.”
