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Imagine youre talking to someone and they suddenly start to add advertising to the exchange. What might that look like? In a 1965 episode of the classic sitcom I Dream of Jeannie, the protagonist uses her magical powers to create fake parents for herself in order to impress a date. She crafts them to be just like the people on television commercials, making them speak using sentences from commercials. Her synthetic parents appear friendly and normaluntil they start talking, reciting ads verbatim for products like streak-away for gray hair, dish soap, Grippo denture adhesive, and deodorant. They have so much to say, yet communicate nothing at all. Something similar might happen if OpenAI goes forward with its rumored plans to add advertising to ChatGPT. Last December, an article in Futurism, citing internal sources at OpenAI, suggested ad adoption could be near. Recently, The Information reported that the company is hiring digital advertising veterans and that it will install a secondary model capable of evaluating if a conversation has commercial intent, before offering up relevant ads in the chat responses. Annoying ads within ChatGPT could be for things as banal as a grocery product, a local destination to visit, or a handyman service. But they could also be a lot of something elsesomething dangerous. Given ChatGPTs track record, some poor soul might be pouring their heart out to the chatbot, only to be advised of a special on rope at their local hardware store. Im not making light of the latterIt could happen. There cant be true oversight with LLMs. And thats only one of their problems. Context is the Holy Grail OpenAIs advertising move is a bold and brilliant, but potentially terrible, crude attempt to automate contextual understanding, a missing link with the push toward combining big data and surveillance. For a long time, newspapers and radio stations were local and distributed. As transportation connected us and technology improved, the opportunity to distribute more centralized news from single, larger sources became possible. Television began with a few channels and concentrated programming that was the same across broad regions. This ushered in a heyday for advertisers who sponsored TV content and could show single ads to millions of viewers. As a distributed technology, the internet disrupted many forms of traditional media, and advertisers have been scrambling to try to reach us in new ways. While technology has enabled advertisers to benefit from our location in an attempt to hone in on what might appeal to us, internet ads are often not contextually relevant to what we want or need. What OpenAI intends to do with advertising, via ChatGPTs self-reported 900 million weekly users, will synthesize the local distributed model. This will enable the platform to reach into our homes in the same way that mass television once possessed. Its an attempt to unify and bypass the interfaces of phones and computers that we currentlyuse. In the process, OpenAI willbe creating a super platform for informational use and processing. The algorithms dont know us Within its current platform, ChatGPT offers a conversational medium of interaction and query; each chat captures how we use language, more detailed descriptions of the problems we seek to solve, and many of our needs. Thus, the opportunity for OpenAI to have platform control, along with access to our inner thoughts, all with the surveillance capability to compile these into targeted individual ads, is the ultimate goal for advertisers: to really reach us, deep inside our thoughts. However, this outcome is unlikely. The problem with this model is that it still relies on computational compiling and sorting. The algorithms wont know us, or form relationships with us. Because of that, they cant actually recommend true advertising solutions to our problemsjust like these algorithms cant solve our problems now. But their results can mimic helpfulness, just like Jeannies synthetic parents. While collecting and compiling our online data has brought advertisers closer to knowing what they think we need, what has been missing is an understanding of the context of what these actions mean to us. Qualitative research, which helps to discover the how, why, and what of interaction, has been pushed aside through the rush to embrace big data. The LLMs that feed chatbots are not magical: They are algorithms that statistically match words and rank them from sources that the model was trained on. An LLM listening to our conversations will not “understand” context as human qualitative researchers can. Thus, the ads that ChatGPT will suggest from our conversations may seem like a match, but they’re unlikely to offer anything contextually substantial.Another idea OpenAI suggests is that sponsored results could get preferential treatment. Subscribers might get better matching ads, but, again, because this is all based on word matching, it may not matter much. (It hasnt been revealed if there will be an option to avoid such advertising completely.) The trust is an illusion An OpenAI spokesperson told The Information: People have a trusted relationship with ChatGPT, and any approach would be designed to respect that trust. But theres a big difference between having a social relationship with someone and having a trusted social relationship. Many of us are trained to fill in social gaps when we interact with others who are trying to communicate with us. In that context, we may project sociabilityand, thus, trustonto them. By seeming to respond to us with a point of view and a chat style that feels personal, ChatGPT perpetuates that illusion of sociability and trust. By leveraging our innate social behaviors, ChatGPT also leverages that behavioral goodwill. But that sociability and trust is in our heads. It isnt realits just an algorithm. ChatGPT is merely a way for OpenAIs LLM outcomes to be presented to us. Is it trusted and social to siphon peoples knowledge and work to train a model? If OpenAI were a person, wed say no, pointing out how thats akin to a sociopath stealing our ideas and work and presenting them to others. But because we converse with ChatGPT, we project a trust upon it that it cant earn because it is not human. OpenAI adding advertising to ChatGPT seems like an inevitability. If we use this tool, we need to remember that we cannot form bonds to it, that it cannot have a relationship with us, and that all it can do is word atch. Any ad it serves us will be based on what we tell it, but it can’t “think” about all we tell it and propose an ad that speaks explicitly to us as a trusted friend who knows us would do. It is best to keep that in mind as these tools evolve to seemingly understand us. OpenAI as a company could try to earn its customers’ trust by discovering what its customers want and need using qualitative research rather than foisting its advertising decisions upon us. Even so, the idea that this advertising model will scale and deliver contextually relevant advertising to 900 million weekly users seems unrealistic. Context, especially driven through LLMs that already have issues with slop, hallucinations, and outright lies, can be a challenging match for advertisers, who need reliable recommendations to keep the integrity of their brands and reputations. Without trust formed between entities, were all at risk of being played: OpenAI, who believes their algorithms will deliver what they promise, the advertisers who trust that their ads will accurately match the users context and interest, and those who use ChatGPT, a service they trust that, in fact, seems intent upon using them for revenue instead.
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E-Commerce
Next week’s “Free America Walkout” is asking Americans to walk out of work (and school) on Tuesday, January 20, to disrupt “business as usual” in protest of the Trump administrations recent actions and policies, including its treatment of immigrants, attempts to curb democracy, recent abuse by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, and the recent fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. The protest’s main organizers are the Women’s March. The group came to prominence the day after President Donald Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, when it organized a massive nationwide protest, drawing hundreds of thousands of Americans to Washington, D.C. At that time, the protest on January 21, 2017, was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Now, nearly nine years lateralmost to the daythe Women’s March is back, marking the one-year anniversary of Trump’s second inauguration. On January 20, were calling on people everywhere to turn their backs on fascism and walk out, Rachel OLeary Carmona, executive director of Womens March, tells Fast Company. Authoritarianism runs on our obedience, and were withdrawing it. We walk out because a free America is the only America worth calling great. By disrupting “business as usual,” organizers explain they are sending a message to the administration that its actions will not be tolerated. This is a protest and a promise. In the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable, the Free America website says. Here’s what to know. What’s happening on Tuesday, January 20? More than 450 events are scheduled in all 50 U.S. states, as well as in Canada, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. Walkouts, sit-downs, vigils, and meetups are set to take place in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Boulder, Houston, New York City, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Portland (Oregon and Maine), San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, Tucson, and Washington, D.C. These include school walkouts; marches to federal buildings, city halls, local court houses, and capitals; and more. Why a walkout, not a march? “Marches show how many people care. Walkouts show how much power we have,” the website says. “And we have seen the power of walkouts around the worldpeople from Poland to Chile who have fought peacefully and successfully to dismantle injustice and topple authoritarian regimes.” “At this moment, visibility alone isnt enough,” the website continues. “We need action that tests our strength, builds coordination, and proves that noncompliance is a legitimate response to injustice.” Historically, walkouts and sit-insalongside protestshave been an effective nonviolent tool to create change. From the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements to the current New York City nurses’ strike, workers, students, teachers, and ordinary Americans have walked off the job and sat in protest to register their discontent. Who else is helping to organize the Free America Walkout? The day’s events are organized by the Women’s March organization along with 50501, a progressive grassroots movement, with a coalition of national and local partners including Feminist, Free DC, and the Immigrant Rights Committee in Tampa.
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E-Commerce
As we head into the new year, I am facing a daunting prospect. After over 34 years in higher education as a professor and administrator, Im moving to the private sector to support more effective teaching practices. I would classify this change as a significant career pivot. I am changing market sectors (public sector to private) and shifting from serving a single institution to a global base of clients. Decisions like this are not to be made lightly. It is important to ensure that you are making this move to run toward something attractive and not just away from something that frustrates you. Here are three important considerations if you think a significant career move may be in your future. Why do you want to do this? Career pivots are generally rooted in dissatisfaction. There is something about the work youre doing now that is frustrating or unsatisfying. For many people, there is a particular crisis that initiates the real desire to take a pivot. It could be an illness, accident, or death in the family, or it could be a crisis at work. Crises are helpful, because they allow people to take stock of their lives. Significant milestone events like a birthday or the end of a year can play the same role. However, dissatisfaction provides energy to run away from something. A career pivot also involves running toward something. So, a successful career pivot must also involve a reason to take on a new role. One common career switch involves moving from a position that no longer fits your personal values to one that is a better fit to the values important to you. For example, you may have been focused on achievement early in your career and now feel like doing something that benefits society is more important than personal gain. It is useful to be explicit about the ways that a new job may be a better fit to your personal values, because that compatibility is a crucial source of long-term satisfaction. In addition, you want to ensure that you are clear-eyed about what a new career path entails. Just about every job has a certain number of frustrating tasks you have to put up with. You want to acknowledge the frustrations and drudgery of the path youre selecting so that you are not just engaging in the mythical belief that the new career path will be free of BS. How does your experience and expertise transfer? If you are going to be successful in the new role, there has to be something about your knowledge and skills that will enable you to contribute. Psychologists use the word transfer to name the capacity to take what you know and what you can do in one area and use it in another. As you contemplate this career pivot, talk to people who are already doing this work about their day-to-day work life. If possible, shadow one of them for a while. Think about how you would react or solve problems in the new work you would be doing. Are you able to take your experience and apply it in the new setting? At the same time, you want to be realistic about your willingness to learn. Some people are very comfortable in situations in which they are a relative novice. They dont mind being someone who needs to be helped along and may make a certain number of rookie mistakes. Making a career pivot involves learning a lot. Youre not going to be the most effective person at work when you start in the new role. If you find that exciting, then you are a good candidate to make a change. Where does your life satisfaction come from? Earlier, I mentioned one big source of life satisfaction, which is the fit between the results of the work you do and your values. But, that is not the only thing that will make your life satisfying. For one thing, you may not derive your greatest satisfaction from your work. Instead, you may have organizations, hobbies, or relationships that are a deeper part of what makes your life worth living. If so, you want to think about how the new responsibilities at work will relate to what is most important to you in life. For another, your happiness with work is not just in the relationship between the mission of the organization and your personal values. The day-to-day engagement with work is also going to affect how you feel. Long commutes can suck the life out of you, even if you like the work youre doing. If you are someone who needs to be around people a lot, then a job that is mostly done remote may not feed your desire for social interaction. How does the work youll be taking on relate to the things you do and do not like to do? Look for some ways that your daily work life will bring with it a few elements that will be truly enjoyable so that you can envision yourself getting out of bed excited to take on the day rather than wishing that the weekend would arrive sooner. I explored all of these questions as I moved toward my new career path. Im excited to share more details about it over the next few weeks.
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E-Commerce
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