ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue

I am in awe.

It’s not your imagination: Shopping on Amazon has gotten worse by Geoffrey A. Fowler

The first page of Amazon results includes an average of about nine sponsored listings, according to a study of 70 search terms conducted in 2020 and 2021 by data firm Profitero. That was twice as many ads as Walmart displayed, and four times as many as Target.

In other words, more than half of the results you get on Amazon on average are ads.

Protect Me From What I Want by Tim Bray

Over on Mastodon, there are many people who enjoy not being in the grip of software like Facebook or Twitter that single-mindedly tries to maximize “engagement”, which means the amount of time you stare at the screen so they can show you ads. […] So the chant over there is “No algorithms on Mastodon!” This chant is wrong, and the discussion around it teaches us that we need clarity on what algorithms are, what moral weight they can carry, and whether they can be avoided. (Spoiler: They can’t.)