[rm445]

People are reacting negatively to the ads, but there's a bigger point. This is bearish as heck for AGI. If OpenAI were recursively improving their general-computer-using agent, who was going to be superhuman at every job, they wouldn't need to be messing around with things like this.

ChatGPT is a useful product, which they're monetising in a well-travelled internet company way. The bad news is you're going to have ads in your ChatGPT in 2030. The good news is you're still going to have a job in 2030.

[rmitsch]

I'm surprised this isn't being talked about more. Sure, one could favourably assume that OpenAI just needs a little ad-powered financial push to finally hit AGI and solve every single problem under the sun, but that'd be a reach. It seems more probable that their internal evaluation of their ETA to AGI diverges starkly from what they communicate externally.

[usef-]

Yes, it means they don't expect fast takeoff in the next year, but we already knew that.

Having revenue from their free users might can just be a way to make it more sustainable. And/Or make fundraising easier from investors (which has immediate benefit).

Seeing the message "you're reached your limit..." makes free users switch to other AI providers, and ads are a way to fund higher limits. Their prime competitor, Google, has ad income from users so has an advantage.

[asdff]

They don't need AGI to fire you or not make jobs you would have taken. All these pro ai devs on here talking about 10x productivity gains in their own work like management isn't looking at those claims and thinking about a 10x reduction in headcount.

[lelandbatey]

Sure, but any competitor is looking at their competition maintaining level productivity w/ 10x headcount reductions and wondering "if I use AI and the staff I have without firing them, I can provide 10x the product as the idiot cutting off their own nose over there."

[dragonwriter]

Increased productivity increases the value of work and the number of areas it is useful to apply it. Yes, if you are working for a non-growth firm with basically fixed sales, a productivity increase translates to a headcount decrease in that firm, but across the industry it means more jobs at higher pay, as shown by the whole history of productivity improvements in software development.

[falloutx]

$20/month product with ads, you would have to be an exec to think thats a good idea. Can they even push enough ads to ever make profit? Like the best care scenario for openAi at this point is to declare bankruptcy.

[schmichael]

> $20/month product with ads

That's a Netflix + Hulu subscription - with ads in both. Before streaming people regularly paid $50/mo (not adjusted for inflation) for cable TV with ads.

While it's easy to bemoan Google pushing ads into every corner of our digital lives, I think they arguably offered an unprecedented level of services relative to the number of ads, and we all got used to that.

Now whether OpenAI could ever push enough ads to make a profit: I have no idea! It's very interesting to see this race actually start.

[johanyc]

> Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions will not include ads

[tomnipotent]

Except the existing $20 plan isn't getting ads.

[scuff3d]

It's almost like LLMs represents a fairly useful but modest step forward, instead of a complete and utter paradigm shift that will up end society and put everyone out of a job.