The problem I have with this conclusion is that "trust but verify" long predates AI models. People can, and have been, posting total bullshit on the internet since time immemorial. You have never _not_ needed to actually validate the things you are reading.

> LLMs are just text prediction. That's what they are.

This sort of glib talking point really doesn't pass muster, because if you showed the current state of affairs to a random developer from 2015, you would absolutely blow their damned socks off.

They would be blown off by the "Unreasonable Effectiveness of [text prediction]", but it is still text prediction.

That's the very root cause why we still have unsolved problems like the inability to get the same answer to the same questions, the inability to do riguorous maths or logic (any question that only has one good answer, in fact) and hallucinations!

The problem is not the text prediction, which nobody denies, rather the "just" which minimizes its impact.

The difference is that often, particular things are more concretely defined. A ban on advertising might be so onerous you wouldn't even be able to 'advertise' your FOSS projects on HN.

In what way could you learn about novel commercial things in the absence of advertising? Word of mouth alone?

I don’t think it would be onerous nor ill defined. Simply make it illegal to pay someone to or receive payment for making a public announcement for a product, service, or brand. If no payment is involved, it’s fine. People are free to promote their own or others products on social media, YouTube, the side of their car or house, so long as they aren’t paid to do so. That is hardly any more convoluted or ill-defined than dozens of other laws on the books.

And yes, word of mouth and non-paid advertising is absolutely capable of spreading awareness on its own.

Does giving someone the product count as a payment?

In the US, yes that would count his taxable income so I'd also consider it a payment.

I'm actually convinced that "marketing", as such, can be completely orthogonal to profit altogether. Any sort of communication of a novel thing would fall under this banner, but I learn about new FOSS projects on here every day because the maintainers and developers are willing to 'advertise' them to me.

> Any sort of communication of a novel thing would fall under this banner

Yeah, that was what I was getting at. I believe it in theory, but in practice I find all advertising to be the sort of implicit-mugging the grandparent is describing.

> but I learn about new FOSS projects on here every day because the maintainers and developers are willing to 'advertise' them to me.

That’s an excellent counter-point. I’ve had the same experience.

I think the motivation is important. Many FOSS projects are sharing something the author considers useful to the world, as a way of making it better in a way that they know how. Its a lovely gift and I'm happy to know about it.

Others are there to promote lock in to some cloud service, or increase the authors rep as a 10x hacker and those are skeevy because the author is skeevy and did not have joy in their hearts.

All corporate ads ate the second kind.

> I find all advertising to be the sort of implicit-mugging the grandparent is describing.

Unfortunately, it's a useful thing that people have used to prey on our inquisitive simian brains.

Personally, I'm in favor of doing things like banning billboards &c, but it's hard to draw a line on banning advertising in general.

I think I'd be willing to extend it to all forms paid advertising that you are forced to see in the course of doing something else.

Marketing is so rarely for a "novel" thing. The biggest spender is CocaCola, how much do we still need to know about them?

Did you know the invented modern santa branding? Prior to that he was more a vagabond/homeless type and much much less jolly.

Snopes has a classic extensive article on that

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-claus-that-refreshes/

I wasn't trying to say the contents of the ads aren't novel- just that what they're selling very often isn't.

Its also so very rarely factual - the idea is more for you to believe that 'Disney Land is an important milestone for all happy families'. Or 'Stella Artois is the type of beer a sexy intellectual orders - that's you right?'

I completely believe that ads are a huge part of our culture.

Rarely by dollar amount or by volume? Because I assume, by volume, it must be mostly novel things.

Volume of ads I see, or companies buying ads?

Volume of ads I see is proportional to dollar amount imo. Outside of movie trailers I don't think I've ever seen an ad and been happy to know about whatever it was.