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Discussion (180 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
US business model: go into billions of debt, brainwash the population via YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and Hacker News influencers. Intimidate foreign governments to allow the current snake oil. Wait a decade until you have minor profits and the stock price is through the roof because #growth-mindset.
I don't want to be mean, but don't you think you're being a little naive here?
I like that you think that only one side is doing it. And without clear partner hashtags or sponsorship declarations neither [1].
Seems like an obvious response from OpenAI ngl.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPdmYMHrWKg
Now, don't take it as me saying what OpenAI is doing is good. It's more if you're in the industry you know that if you're not doing things like this, you're the only one. Whole damned thing is corrupt.
Everything has inauthentic messaging right now.
Like using doomerism to get regulatory capture for Big AI.
> Seems like an obvious response from OpenAI ngl.
What response? Big AI has been paying influencers forever and they can afford more than Hossenfelder:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/google-microsoft-pay-creator...
Even chess channels have been full of undisclosed vibe coding and robot product placements for at least two years.
I'm saying, the game is the game and everyone's playing it.
I don't like it either. I think all influencers should be declaring payments.
Ahh the paid pretend fence sitters have arrived.
I'm not questioning it. I know it does. I just cannot wrap my head around it beyond the initial marketing angle (you cannot be interested in an article unless you know it exists).
Eg I like to watch some pretty mainstream creators like mkbhd. Never was I actually interested in any of the products he pitched. Literally every marketing $ spent on him that ultimately reached my eyeballs was entirely wasted by the sponsors
After all the delivery is different.
With traditional advertising you're being sold a fantasy. The advertisment is usually produced so you're self-inserting yourself into the production. So when you're seeing the fit and good looking cowboy smoking a Marlboro... You subconsciously think: that's who I wanna be, and consequently may be more likely to buy it.
Influencer marketing is however inherently contextualized to the para social relationship between the viewer and the creator. The people that buy the product do so because "their" creator told them about it.
Influencers have the greatest influence on their audience, especially repeat viewers who follow or subscribe to them. You need to establish credibility with an audience before you're worth anything to the marketers. This takes time to build.
OpenAI's hypothetical robot influencers have no audience.
I guess not all people realize how deeply entrenched use of influencers and other means of astro-turfing are in use at all times.
Maybe we need a catchy little phrase to explain how it works.
"If you're using influencers you're evil. If you're not using influencers you're stupid".
Thank you for your service, your influencer token stipend has been applied to your account.
But... food for thought: people are good at detecting slop, because it looks like slop. If it does not, people won't detect it. So there is a confirmation bias, where the "obvious slop" looks obvious, but the "better slop" goes by undetected.
That's not true. There are all kinds of products that benefit certain people, so sell, but are overall harmful to the world or a harmful to much larger number of people than those who benefit.
> and I don't know how you'd hide that for the people being harmed.
The trick is to make the people being harmed too powerless to stop the harm being done to them. Then your problem is solved and everyone (who matters) is happy.
People generally understand that all of the above are not clear absolute negatives. There are some positives to each. And to LLMs.
No, he's not a literalist throwback. But he is planning to glorify and expand his OpenAI reich.
It only becomes compelling to me if you believe in true AGI/ASI, at which point all human labor becomes irrelevant, and then we have something quite new to think about.
But simply "it automates away a small portion of jobs" is not compelling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots
Here's just a taste:
> ChatGPT was shown to support and even encourage dangerous drug use, with statements such as "Hell yes—let's go full trippy mode" and advice on reducing his Xanax tolerance so that a single tablet will "fuck you up"
So have ballpoint pens.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-32489335 https://www.tribune242.com/news/2020/jan/22/ballpoint-pen-ki... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Fi_murders
So have many pharmaceuticals that are generally regarded as beneficial. Suicide is a side effect of more than a few, but doctors disregard that, believing that the results are worth the risk.
With large enough numbers the existence of any extremely rare event becomes certain. Consequently claiming there are instances carries no information value.
Proportionality is the only sensible measure. How much more dangerous are Chatbots compared to, say, teapots?
Many of the vocal critics claiming AI will make us all dumb and is terrible go "I have two Max subscriptions myself.." at some point in the discussion.
It seems to me that more people express a negative opinion than are ready to forego the convenience.
Maybe not unlike climate action, where you will see strong agreement ideologically, but little tolerance for personal inconvenience.
I mean, to make a terribly bad analogy, i don't immediately discount the bad experiences of soldiers in regards to killing people, or of addicts in regards to drug abuse.
Because if you’re paying voluntarily for a tool that you don’t need, you have agency to remove your “suffering” by canceling your subscription and not use it! So the “suffer” complaint in those instances can be dismissed.
Here I'm pointing out that often it seems the usefulness outweighs the negative sentiment as even many vocal critics seem to use the tool.
As for dismissing supposed first hand experiences of suffering, I see none here. The critics often argue on other's behalf.
Because the people doing that dismissing are being dishonest. Their goal is to attack and discredit their enemy, period. Critical testimony from a user has some vague similarities to hypocrisy, so can be twisted for propaganda purposes and portrayed as hypocrisy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_2W2jnxwJg
see: gambling, food delivery, ride sharing, video games, online therapy, etc
I was at a hotel bar the other night and some guy kept bothering the bartender about what was on TV. Every time the bartender told him what they could do he went off for a few minutes, sent it to ChatGPT, and went back to the bar saying "well ChatGPT said this." I can't believe the bartender didn't lose his patience with it. The guy was fucking desperate to see some football on the telly and GPT kept telling him he was right to keep challenging the bartender.
Another guy looks lost with his family and he comes up to us and asks where a good restaurant is. We ask if he wants good local stuff or not and he says, he doesn't know, he just asked ChatGPT and felt like he got stranded. The restaurant it pointed out was like 2 minutes walk away. He was like the one guy in the family who seemed to speak english and was probably the one that was just dragging them around on a GPT adventure. The rest of them looked bored, like they were tired of his shit.
If it doesn't work out, it's not GPT that was wrong, it was everybody else. It pits technology against humanity again.
No wonder he relies on hype and manipulating social media mainly, as all actual scientists have left openAI years ago when they found out who Altman really is and unfortunately unsuccessfully tried to remove him.
What oAi nowadays attracts is unfortunately not the prime talent like in the beginning that were in it for a better world, but semi-talented virtue-signaling people who are attracted by the compensation and name recognition and, as we have seen it quite a few of their recent "innovation" claims, don’t mind misinterpreting, mislabeling and outright copy/steal other people’s innovations and putting big IPO-associated oAi stickers on it without deserving any of it.
But now ... this. I am clueless.
"enlisting an influencer army"
put 'good for the world' in quotes because obviously it's not
A more neutral headline would be: OpenAI Is Enlisting Influencers to Promote Its Public Image.
The rest of the article reads like anti-AI slop. For instance:
> The company isn't asking influencers to assuage fears that a rogue AI could destroy humanity.
It is weird how prominent anti-AI sentiment is online and in media. It's by far the most popular and fastest growing technology in the world. So presumably people have a general favorable impression of the technology as they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it. And I don't buy that it's being jammed down the throats by most employers. Sometimes maybe, but I see the reverse, where people WANT to use frontier models and are being prevented through archaic security hoops.
The big question is who is funding the influencer army to gaslight people into thinking AI/data centers will somehow end the world?
I can say everyone I know in software is both forced to use AI and hates it, even if they would have used ai otherwise. With one exception of someone who does less software than infrastructure and he complains about his coworkers bad (but voluntary) ai code. I wonder what your industry is?
It is popular because it’s useful but people still have unfavorable attitudes towards it in polls. It’s like Amazon. We use Amazon cuz it’s convenient but do we like the way Bezos treats his employees?
Something being useful doesn’t mean people like it. Burning Coal is useful. Anybody who’s read anything about coal as a power source doesn’t like it.
Like coal, AI has a bunch of problems that collectively make it undesirable as a technology
That's not implied by engagement. It's possible to use the advantage AI gives you in a competitive landscape while still fearing the future it will bring.
It's clear that people are using it for personal reasons
> The Brookings Institution / AmeriSpeak Survey: A nationwide survey found that 57% of Americans use generative AI for personal tasks (such as web browsing, daily use, or information searches), while only 21% report using it in a professional or work role.
Is there "competitive" reasons to have an AI girlfriend? There is an implied preference that you like the technology by using it by choice and you don't think it will end civilization. You may tell pollsters you're worried but it's the same people telling pollsters sea levels are rising while investing in beach front real estate. Meaningless.
It's in quotes because it appears to be an specific phrase used by a campaign pitch (supposedly).
It's different from normal advertising of a commercial product which obviously will call their product "good", but "good for the world" implies something deeper.
So am I pro- or anti- AI? Both. It depends what it is.
It was discussed a while ago on HN, with a more well known source, that I cannot find right now, but on a quick DDG search this is a quick article I could conjure.
https://www.gate.com/news/detail/david-sacks-warns-ai-doom-n...
This in itself is not an argument. British Opium was selling like hotcakes in China, so surely people people must have had a general favorable impression if they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it?
Opium is a dangerous drug that harms its user. AI is a useful tool that helps people be more productive or explore their interests.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12255134/
Either way though, we've disproven the neat rhetorical trick of conflating usage numbers and popular perception.
Give you a hint: starts with C, ends with a P, with a C in the middle
> The big question is who is funding the influencer army to gaslight people into thinking AI/data centers will somehow end the world?
It may be a difficult concept for an astroturfer to understand, but people are activists for free. If you have found any anti-AI financiers, please share them so I can apply. Of course you already know there are none.
The companies are doing this themselves in a (stupid) attempt to do regulatory capture/ set up a cartel. Dario Amodei recently published an essay pushing this idea.
> And I don't buy that it's being jammed down the throats by most employers. Sometimes maybe, but I see the reverse, where people WANT to use frontier models and are being prevented through archaic security hoops.
What is N here? 1?
> It is weird how prominent anti-AI sentiment is online and in media. It's by far the most popular and fastest growing technology in the world.
Is it though? Do we actually know that? Is it growing faster than facebook did or google search? Is it even possible to measure when some of the "adoption" is probably people triggering it incidentally (e.g. AI mode in google search shouldn't count as adoption here).
People are worried about it because it is a highly disruptive technology with unproven ROI for businesses as of yet (restricting claims to LLMs here). It has a lot of negative potential side effects for many different groups of people. The media is reflecting these viewpoints. If there's any astroturfing going on, it's from the pro LLM camp.
Well done OpenAI comms team. Just lost a subscriber.
But I considering money a voting mechanism.
And I'm happy just looking myself in the mirror having voted in a different, hopefully-better, way.
I imagine this is simply part of the campaign, AI doomerism followed by AI Bloomerism, it could even be part of the same organisation's campaign; selling the solution to a problem they put in your mind. Hype, criti-hype, it's all so tiresome.
Eh we know its part of the same campaigns. "Please provide us with regulatory capture because our tech is an existential threat" has been going on for a while now.
and how muse topping charts. Its all befuddling to me.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/22/1144867/dont-be-...
eg:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49814211
Not even flagged, just disappeared.
- The HF incident was to get the attention of investors and convey the message: "we have this incredibly powerful technology, imagine where we will be in 5 years"
- With this influencer campaign it's just a drive to get more people to use ChatGPT / sign up to ChatGPT so when IPO time comes, they can show strong user growth.
Over the past few months I've seen various reports that OpenAI's financial position isn't great and if those reports have any merit, then likely the higher ups at OpenAI are panicking that they might become a WeWork 2.0. Everything they are doing now is an attempt to justify their $1T valuation to investors during the IPO.
Emphasis mine - ouch. So either influencers are automatons like LLMs who just do as their current-highest-bidder says based on a prompt (!), or in fact perhaps we skipped that bit and they’re all LLMs, for convenience. Or in this post-thinking world we just say prompt instead of ask or instruct.
Not sure which dystopian option displeases me least.
eg. in the gpt 6 release thread i saw multiple people make absurd claims about usage, like saying they go through their entire max usage plan in a day. i think i saw one comment that claimed hours. some recently made accounts seemed very eager to tell everyone the newly released models weren't any better despite being out only for a few hours.
in another thread about how anthropic gated reading AGENTS.md with telemetry, it's full of people defending anthropic. you'd never see people do that for openai. one comment even said we need a "general drumbeat against openai", keep in mind this was in a thread where anthropic was caught doing something shady and that comment could have easily applied to anthropic instead.
now this thread has gotten very popular very fast - which makes me think that there is something fishy going on (not with op). weird rise of anti-openai / pro-anthropic sentiment on this site at the exact same time both companies release new models...
Elon has some functional products in markets where he has no competition, and they work.
Starlink works and sells. FSD drives untrained routes. No competition in either market.
Lately I noticed more and more youtube folks try in-video advertisements. These are a bit harder to catch by ublock origin. In the past, I would manually skip this, but recently I decided that if someone has a need to sell some ad-crap, I simply no longer care and insta-close the tab. That is actually much more efficient. And if many people do so, we'll see fewer pester-ads in general. I understand the "but this is how I make my money" - even that still does not make me want to care about wasting my life on any ads whatsoever, no matter which fancypants excuse is used.
In concluding, I now suspect that OpenAI must suck, since they depend on propaganda outlets (aka "influencers"; I don't call them "influencers", they are scummy people who work on something like mercenaries would, just on the propaganda department. Any regular guy cleaning the streets with a broom, has 10000x more credibility than these "influencers" - but does not make as much money as these bribed individuals).
It would make for an interesting matchup.