I hate the Gemini 'Dear Sydney' ad more every passing moment(washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpost.com
I hate the Gemini 'Dear Sydney' ad more every passing moment
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/31/google-gemini-ai-dear-sydney-ad-olympics-satire/
83 comments
This and that awful Apple ad are both saying the same thing, or at least that’s how people interpret it. They’re saying “AI is here to make life sterile and empty and it’s awesome!”
What I find most intriguing is the fact that these are giant companies with huge ad budgets and that presumably clear the highest profile ads with the C suite or people near it. All these presumably smart people thought these ads were great. They either agreed with the message or wanted to convey a different one that absolutely did not come through… as any moron could have told them.
It shows how insulated the bubble is around these people and companies. They must never even interact with people who aren’t drinking the same brand of kool-aid.
It’s tempting to think this is just an elite mega corp thing but I see loads of out of touch bubbles around.
People need to mix more. Get out of whatever filter bubble you live in. Read things you disagree with. Know people outside your profession or who don’t think like you.
We used to say “travel” but I think intellectual and social diversity is more important now. We carry our filter bubbles with us. Travel can still help though, especially if it’s to places with differing dominant cultures.
What I find most intriguing is the fact that these are giant companies with huge ad budgets and that presumably clear the highest profile ads with the C suite or people near it. All these presumably smart people thought these ads were great. They either agreed with the message or wanted to convey a different one that absolutely did not come through… as any moron could have told them.
It shows how insulated the bubble is around these people and companies. They must never even interact with people who aren’t drinking the same brand of kool-aid.
It’s tempting to think this is just an elite mega corp thing but I see loads of out of touch bubbles around.
People need to mix more. Get out of whatever filter bubble you live in. Read things you disagree with. Know people outside your profession or who don’t think like you.
We used to say “travel” but I think intellectual and social diversity is more important now. We carry our filter bubbles with us. Travel can still help though, especially if it’s to places with differing dominant cultures.
With respect to the Apple ad, I don't think that was about AI at all - it was for the newest iPad Pro right?
I interpreted it as look at all these cool arts/creative things that we've managed to compress into a single sheet of glass. I sort of get how people interpreted it as just maliciously destroying those things as a means to an end, but that feels like an intentional reading of bad faith to a company that is generally very creativity-minded.
I wonder if it would have received less blow back if they had "hidden" the actual crushing of the objects and just showed them entering a chamber with an implied compression... but the visuals of everything exploding in the hydraulic press are pretty cool and a more dynamic way to convey the "look at what all we've packed into the product" message.
I interpreted it as look at all these cool arts/creative things that we've managed to compress into a single sheet of glass. I sort of get how people interpreted it as just maliciously destroying those things as a means to an end, but that feels like an intentional reading of bad faith to a company that is generally very creativity-minded.
I wonder if it would have received less blow back if they had "hidden" the actual crushing of the objects and just showed them entering a chamber with an implied compression... but the visuals of everything exploding in the hydraulic press are pretty cool and a more dynamic way to convey the "look at what all we've packed into the product" message.
> intentional reading of bad faith
In my opinion, marketing relies on targeting people's initial guttural feelings. That's why car commercials always show the cool part of driving, to activate the monkey brain "ooo shiny!" mentality.
So, I think criticisms of how people feel are fair game. Meaning if someone doesn't have a logical argument that's fine to me - because marketing is emotional manipulation anyway, so if your emotions got manipulated wrongly then the marketing failed.
In my opinion, marketing relies on targeting people's initial guttural feelings. That's why car commercials always show the cool part of driving, to activate the monkey brain "ooo shiny!" mentality.
So, I think criticisms of how people feel are fair game. Meaning if someone doesn't have a logical argument that's fine to me - because marketing is emotional manipulation anyway, so if your emotions got manipulated wrongly then the marketing failed.
> but that feels like an intentional reading of bad faith
I don't think it was an intentional reading in bad faith at all. I think the reaction is a result of the general public's existing perception of the state of things: big tech is here to monetize and worsen everything you love.
Whether or not that's an accurate perception, it is a very common one. The tech industry seems to view itself as unalloyed "good guys", but that's not generally how it's viewed among normal people.
I don't think it was an intentional reading in bad faith at all. I think the reaction is a result of the general public's existing perception of the state of things: big tech is here to monetize and worsen everything you love.
Whether or not that's an accurate perception, it is a very common one. The tech industry seems to view itself as unalloyed "good guys", but that's not generally how it's viewed among normal people.
> I wonder if it would have received less blow back if they had "hidden" the actual crushing of the objects and just showed them entering a chamber with an implied compression...
Yes. You just wrote a better ad than Apple's highly paid agency.
Yes. You just wrote a better ad than Apple's highly paid agency.
> All these presumably smart people thought these ads were great. They either agreed with the message or wanted to convey a different one that absolutely did not come through… as any moron could have told them.
I imagine there was a conversation something along the lines of:
Google: "Please make us an ad showing off the cool capabilities of our LLM"
Ad agency: "OK, how about we show it boosting productivity in a business environment?"
G: "Sounds like job losses, that's not the vibe we want, got anything else?"
A: "I've heard this stuff has genius-level intellect, could we show it designing a more efficient turbine engine? And we could show the CAD drawing gradually appearing as the AI moves the cursor around?"
G: "Nah, it can't any of that stuff."
A: "What about if we show a home user letting the LLM taking care of boring drudgery, like writing a complaint letter to an inept credit rating agency?"
G: "Boring drudgery isn't the vibe we want in our ad either. Got any other ideas?"
A: "Well what sort of thing were you thinking of?"
G: "How about we show the product being used while enjoying quality time with their family? Smartphone ads always show people taking photographs of their laughing, smiling children."
A: "For real? Like that Apple VR headset ad that shows a dude wearing it while watching his daughters blowing bubbles?"
G: "Oh yeah we had a Google Glass ad showing a dude wearing it while playing with his daughters about a decade ago too! That's precisely the sort of thing we want."
I imagine there was a conversation something along the lines of:
Google: "Please make us an ad showing off the cool capabilities of our LLM"
Ad agency: "OK, how about we show it boosting productivity in a business environment?"
G: "Sounds like job losses, that's not the vibe we want, got anything else?"
A: "I've heard this stuff has genius-level intellect, could we show it designing a more efficient turbine engine? And we could show the CAD drawing gradually appearing as the AI moves the cursor around?"
G: "Nah, it can't any of that stuff."
A: "What about if we show a home user letting the LLM taking care of boring drudgery, like writing a complaint letter to an inept credit rating agency?"
G: "Boring drudgery isn't the vibe we want in our ad either. Got any other ideas?"
A: "Well what sort of thing were you thinking of?"
G: "How about we show the product being used while enjoying quality time with their family? Smartphone ads always show people taking photographs of their laughing, smiling children."
A: "For real? Like that Apple VR headset ad that shows a dude wearing it while watching his daughters blowing bubbles?"
G: "Oh yeah we had a Google Glass ad showing a dude wearing it while playing with his daughters about a decade ago too! That's precisely the sort of thing we want."
Many have said it before: big tech is using AI to automate the wrong things.
I think there's plenty of "right" things that are being automated. They're just small/boring tasks so no one talks about them.
Like employees
> Writing a letter from the heart is not one of those things...
Is Notepad okay or should one write it up on Papyrus like Herodotus did? Is email fine, or you reckon Ravens, like the good ol' days?
Is Notepad okay or should one write it up on Papyrus like Herodotus did? Is email fine, or you reckon Ravens, like the good ol' days?
I’m not the most in touch person in the world but this ad felt super out of touch.
I was having this discussion with someone and they said the problem with tech is they’re just going to teach our kids to be prompt engineers and learn nothing else, and I naively defended the tech industry and said no, of course not, AI will be used to enhance people’s learning of traditional skills, not replace it, and boy does this ad make me feel wrong.
I was having this discussion with someone and they said the problem with tech is they’re just going to teach our kids to be prompt engineers and learn nothing else, and I naively defended the tech industry and said no, of course not, AI will be used to enhance people’s learning of traditional skills, not replace it, and boy does this ad make me feel wrong.
The Google Gemini "Allow me to reintroduce myself" ad is also hilarious. As in, right, re- introduce yourself... because the initial launch was such a hamfisted clusterfuck.
Or the Meta ad that muses "Write me a training plan to run a marathon." Because finding a training plan (a five minute internet search) is the hardest, limiting step of that endeavor! Not the months of dedication and will to stick to it.
Or the Meta ad that muses "Write me a training plan to run a marathon." Because finding a training plan (a five minute internet search) is the hardest, limiting step of that endeavor! Not the months of dedication and will to stick to it.
It's the same as any other piece of tech-that-will-disrupt-X-industry: a good concrete example is EdTech, where the core premise is that making curriculum "moar fun" is all that's needed. Spoiler: education's biggest challenge is the need for sustained motivation, not shinier graphics (or interactive content (or AI-generated personalized content)).
Turns out motivation is a uniquely human quality. I've heard countless stories of teachers who "saved my life" from people. Haven't gotten that same kind of response from EdTech endeavors.
What people think teacher do: teach material
What teachers actually do: address mental health blockers, help align resources where they're lacking at home, provide a positive environment that children can escape to, inspire children to want to learn, deal with any myriad of emergency issues that come up on a given day (e.g. how often does a coworker have a bathroom accident and need your help addressing it, in the middle of your presentation?)
What teachers actually do: address mental health blockers, help align resources where they're lacking at home, provide a positive environment that children can escape to, inspire children to want to learn, deal with any myriad of emergency issues that come up on a given day (e.g. how often does a coworker have a bathroom accident and need your help addressing it, in the middle of your presentation?)
The ad is seen as so bad because its attempt to create some supposed "essential" use case is hilariously transparent. There's just a visceral disgust we have when we see things like these targeted at children. We know what they are. The takeaway from the ad is a step back and away from the idea that technology will make us better or improve our lives; Google comes across as crassly presenting something bad (or pointless at best) as some human good, when most people can see right through it as the worst kind of marketing, a new low point in 2 decades and change of tech companies insisting they're "changing the world" with some half-baked, MBA fuelled, ghoulish crap.
> when most people can see right through it as the worst kind of marketing
No. Most people definitely cannot.
Most people can't see through the weird diversity nuclear option on all large company marketing these days. "White, male, straight, most common denominator in many countries and YOU have the NERVE to think that we should market to you!?" It'd be hilarious if it weren't so weird to think that people are actively trying not to include the largest demographics.
No. Most people definitely cannot.
Most people can't see through the weird diversity nuclear option on all large company marketing these days. "White, male, straight, most common denominator in many countries and YOU have the NERVE to think that we should market to you!?" It'd be hilarious if it weren't so weird to think that people are actively trying not to include the largest demographics.
I think the reality is that the vast majority of media, period, is about and targeted to white people. If you were to take up ALL the media, you'd realize minorities are still very under represented.
Also it makes people feel good when they're represented. White men won't admit that, because for them they're always represented. And when they're not its a problem, so clearly even they understand the power of representation.
And, lastly, if you LOOK you can see white people are still in almost every ad. They're just not the only people in the ad. This is a problem of greed, the white man does not settle for anything less than 100%.
Keep in mind I'm saying this as a white man. The world is truly made for us and our success. On the off-chance it's not this one time, we need to be okay with that and learn to get over it.
Also it makes people feel good when they're represented. White men won't admit that, because for them they're always represented. And when they're not its a problem, so clearly even they understand the power of representation.
And, lastly, if you LOOK you can see white people are still in almost every ad. They're just not the only people in the ad. This is a problem of greed, the white man does not settle for anything less than 100%.
Keep in mind I'm saying this as a white man. The world is truly made for us and our success. On the off-chance it's not this one time, we need to be okay with that and learn to get over it.
This would be fine if the representation was accurate. It's not.
>White men won't admit that, because for them they're always represented.
No they aren't... what? People represented to the market before they represented for "moral dilemmas".
>And, lastly, if you LOOK you can see white people are still in almost every ad.
No, they aren't. That's the point of my comment. It's almost a meme that every company refuses to put a white straight male in advertised media.
>The world is truly made for us and our success.
You sound like you've taken a sip of the Koolaid. This entire comment is bizarre and wrong. I'm going to assume you also think cultural appropriation is an actual thing too?
>White men won't admit that, because for them they're always represented.
No they aren't... what? People represented to the market before they represented for "moral dilemmas".
>And, lastly, if you LOOK you can see white people are still in almost every ad.
No, they aren't. That's the point of my comment. It's almost a meme that every company refuses to put a white straight male in advertised media.
>The world is truly made for us and our success.
You sound like you've taken a sip of the Koolaid. This entire comment is bizarre and wrong. I'm going to assume you also think cultural appropriation is an actual thing too?
I'm sorry, you're just wrong. White men are represented. In almost every TV show, EVEN the ones who promote diversity. I mean take a look at Disney's new star wars shows. All incredibly diverse and guess what - each one has white men in it.
Again, same with the ads. Ads typically have multiple people in them. Usually at least one is white, typically more or most are white. But as I've iterated, white people are greedy. Anything less than 100% may as well be 0% to the eyes of a lot of white people. That's been the theme since the inception of the US.
Again, same with the ads. Ads typically have multiple people in them. Usually at least one is white, typically more or most are white. But as I've iterated, white people are greedy. Anything less than 100% may as well be 0% to the eyes of a lot of white people. That's been the theme since the inception of the US.
Ah I see you're just a racist. That makes sense. I guess numbers will continue to delude you.
What are you on about? I can’t really dissect your words, but 60% of the worlds population is Asian. Like only 10% of the worlds population is white.
I don't think you understand which markets Apple targets with their $1.5k phones.
If they were marketing it for the masses it'd be vastly different. Obviously they're marketing it for Western nations.
If they were marketing it for the masses it'd be vastly different. Obviously they're marketing it for Western nations.
Even prompt engineering won't be necessary soon enough, where the AI can just ask a bunch of clarifying questions.
You can tell that Google gave a big advertising agency a truck full of cash and a slight glance at their product and told them to get to work. All their Olympics ads are generic designed-by-committee garbage. Perfect representation of the company's products as a whole these days.
Maybe Google used Gemini to create Ads for Gemini. That tracks.
https://gemini.google.com/share/815f28b9c364 (via https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/07/dear-sydney-why-i-find-go...)
It's funny how clearly it regurgitated phrases from the web (I'm pretty sure Gemini wouldn't say "pattern-matching autocomplete algorithm" by itself)
Also the ad doesn't make any mention of pattern recognition or improved responses, nor does it involve using an AI to "predict" the child's future.
I love this. I know this isn't exactly self-reflection but it's interesting to think about the type of self-reflection that is completely objective.
Hardly self-reflection; I asked it why an imaginary "Love, Jason" ad was so off-putting, changing the ad name from a letter salutation to the closing remarks, and it gave a very similar response.
Remember the point of an ad. It's to be memorable, and to get people talking about it. Google wants people talking about Gemini. Well, here we are. I think Google won in this instance. But yes, the ad content is very bad.
We’re talking about how Google sucks and is stupid.
I don’t think that’s what they wanted.
I don’t think that’s what they wanted.
But the commercial was about black people. Frankly, I think a big portion of this "I hate the ad" noise is just thinly-veiled racist dog whistling.
there's no bad publicity
I disagree. Having publicity that reduces the value of a brand is bad.
I think the expression was created by publicists who, of course, want more publicity no matter what, because it makes them money.
I think the expression was created by publicists who, of course, want more publicity no matter what, because it makes them money.
Googles brand today is cold correctness, people seeing dystopian AI overlords in them is not going against their brand image. The posts showing how it is wrong is much worse for their image than this is, so people thinking of this rather than the errors is better for their brand.
Google’s brand is a bloated cash cow gradually fading to irrelevance. It’s like IBM or 2000s Microsoft or whatever.
I don’t think they like this brand. I think they want people talking about things that promote them.
I don’t think they like this brand. I think they want people talking about things that promote them.
I feel like there is a material difference when the conversation is about how your product is so hostile that they want to regulate it out of existence.
I mean, by that logic MS couldn't have done better with Tay a few years ago. People were definitely talking about that one...
People are trying to bring back Clippy, because nostalgia for when bad wasn't quite as terrible.
Sorry to make you feel old, but Tay was over 8 years ago.
Does 8 not qualify as “a few?”
Does it? I seriously don't know.
I was taught that "a few" means 3-7 inclusive, but I can't seem to immediately find anything online to substantiate that; most dictionaries helpfully handwave it as a small number of things, and refuse to clarify what a small number might be.
Dang, really thought it was less than that...
> I mean, by that logic MS couldn't have done better with Tay a few years ago.
I was honestly disappointed that Microsoft shut down Tay because they feared reputation damage. So yes, this was in my opinion good advertising, and a bad handling of the outcry from Microsoft's side.
I guess Microsoft wants to target a different audience ...
I was honestly disappointed that Microsoft shut down Tay because they feared reputation damage. So yes, this was in my opinion good advertising, and a bad handling of the outcry from Microsoft's side.
I guess Microsoft wants to target a different audience ...
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A funny coincidence: the Bing AI internal codename was Sydney according to leaked system prompts. I'm sure Google didn't think about that at all, but one could turn it into a metaphor where Google is looking up to Microsoft/OpenAI with intent to eventually pass them.
Maybe I'm becoming too cynical, but now even an op-ed complaining about an ad feels like it might actually itself be a submarine ad in disguise; a "false-flag" attack against your own side to stir the pot and get people thinking about your product. There's no such thing as bad publicity, as they say.
> If you haven’t seen this ad, you are leading a blessed existence and I wish to trade places with you. But I am about to recount it to you so that you can share in my misery
Thanks. How kind.
Thanks. How kind.
> You’re missing it! You’re missing all of it! Go home, jump back into the sea, forget it, because this is the ride and you’re missing it.
Petri gets at something much broader: what is the point of tech like Gemini that ostensibly makes some small parts of our lives more efficient when doing so robs them of what makes life worth living in the first place?
Petri gets at something much broader: what is the point of tech like Gemini that ostensibly makes some small parts of our lives more efficient when doing so robs them of what makes life worth living in the first place?
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> Do you know what writing is?
It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people.
As if ad companies were ever interested in having users who can think...
It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people.
As if ad companies were ever interested in having users who can think...
How doubly ironic: marketing professionals failing to appropriately locate and communicate the value of their product, and doing so by telling a story about a family failing to appropriately locate the value of a fan letter that is meant to communicate a child's adoration.
Could have dropped the title almost completely. “I hate the… ad” would have nailed it.
We are just repeating history.
Webvan advertisement 1999:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOw5i1PJ3vs
Webvan advertisement 1999:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOw5i1PJ3vs
It was interesting seeing that - I hadn't before. You could see them get some things right and some wrong. Web based delivery is of course big now but 'you have the right to grocery store prices" plus loads of guys in huge vans delivering didn't really add up. It's about the details I guess. In London most deliveries are guys on ebikes and cost about £5 so the numbers actually balance.
In Vietnam, it is about $1-2. Was big before, but became huge after covid. I'm even seeing ghost kitchens here now.
I feel fortunate to not know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen this ad. I don’t do ads in my life.
Yeah like the article hints at, I thought it was made by anti-AI folks due to it highlighting exactly the type of AI we don't need at all. Replacing the personal with the impersonal "perfect" spam.
Only Google could mess up such an easy ad concept of athletes and AI.
Barely related: I find it interesting the more I read about engineers refusal to allow their kids near tech, and how often their same companies use kids frequently in advertising.
Only Google could mess up such an easy ad concept of athletes and AI.
Barely related: I find it interesting the more I read about engineers refusal to allow their kids near tech, and how often their same companies use kids frequently in advertising.
UnPayWalled: https://archive.ph/7OS2Q
Take-away quotation:
> All of the buffoons excited by the prospect of AI taking over all our writing — report summaries, data surveys, children’s letters, all tossed into the same pile indiscriminately — are missing the point in a spectacular manner. Do you know what writing is?
> It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people. It is a method for taking thoughts and images and stories out of your brain and putting them into someone else’s brain. E.M. Forster quotes a woman saying, “How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?” To take away the ability to write for yourself is to take away the ability to think for yourself.
Take-away quotation:
> All of the buffoons excited by the prospect of AI taking over all our writing — report summaries, data surveys, children’s letters, all tossed into the same pile indiscriminately — are missing the point in a spectacular manner. Do you know what writing is?
> It is thinking in a form that you can share with other people. It is a method for taking thoughts and images and stories out of your brain and putting them into someone else’s brain. E.M. Forster quotes a woman saying, “How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?” To take away the ability to write for yourself is to take away the ability to think for yourself.
I hate that ad.
But I don't agree with those quotes. Writing to other people is a way to communicate your ideas and feelings to them.
If you are unable to easily communicate those ideas and feelings, you can get someone, or some thing, to help you. The alternatives are to just send it and know it won't be understood, or struggle and hope it's understood.
That ad isn't asking for help with that, though. It's asking the AI to pretend to be his daughter and send a fan letter that means nothing. It isn't taking his daughter's thoughts and feelings and communicating them... It's just making everything up whole cloth, and even inventing a fake daughter for the guy to have that wants and does what he wants, instead of what she wants. It's disgusting.
But I don't agree with those quotes. Writing to other people is a way to communicate your ideas and feelings to them.
If you are unable to easily communicate those ideas and feelings, you can get someone, or some thing, to help you. The alternatives are to just send it and know it won't be understood, or struggle and hope it's understood.
That ad isn't asking for help with that, though. It's asking the AI to pretend to be his daughter and send a fan letter that means nothing. It isn't taking his daughter's thoughts and feelings and communicating them... It's just making everything up whole cloth, and even inventing a fake daughter for the guy to have that wants and does what he wants, instead of what she wants. It's disgusting.
> To take away the ability to write for yourself is to take away the ability to think for yourself.
She writes that as if this is a bad thing (from Google's point of view). Just think of how much more effective advertising will be!
She writes that as if this is a bad thing (from Google's point of view). Just think of how much more effective advertising will be!
> I don’t hate efficiency.
Are any of us trying to be “efficient” when writing a fan letter? I wouldn’t think so. I want a suggestion on how to start.
If I asked an AI for the letter from the ad, I would also have read and edited it heavily before I considered it “complete.”
Maybe TFA author is correct that people need to hear what he’s saying (they won’t), but I for one will be using AI output as suggestions.
Are any of us trying to be “efficient” when writing a fan letter? I wouldn’t think so. I want a suggestion on how to start.
If I asked an AI for the letter from the ad, I would also have read and edited it heavily before I considered it “complete.”
Maybe TFA author is correct that people need to hear what he’s saying (they won’t), but I for one will be using AI output as suggestions.
Maybe the athletes can just skip those pesky fans and type "Gemini, write a fan letter to me that I can read for a little confidence boost".
The entire sentiment and value of your AI-enhanced fan letter is contained in the prompt you fed the AI, because that's the part created by a human expressing their human feelings. All the rest is stochastic fluff. Why not just tweet the prompt to the athlete and call it a day?
The entire sentiment and value of your AI-enhanced fan letter is contained in the prompt you fed the AI, because that's the part created by a human expressing their human feelings. All the rest is stochastic fluff. Why not just tweet the prompt to the athlete and call it a day?
I haven't used Gemini at all, but figured I'd pop over and give it a try with your prompt. I cut-and-pasted "Gemini, write a fan letter to me that I can read for a little confidence boost", and its response was:
"Sorry, I won't create content that encourages self-loathing, but you can always ask to be complimented."
Is Gemini still so 'safe' that it's unusable?
"Sorry, I won't create content that encourages self-loathing, but you can always ask to be complimented."
Is Gemini still so 'safe' that it's unusable?
Give it a little thought. For a child's fan letter, the kind of suggestion that the LLM gave was still not useful at all, especially as a suggestion on how to start.
A fan letter from a child doesn't need to be correct in grammar or in spelling. On the other hand, it needs to talk about events that the child has experienced that the LLM will have no knowledge at all. So consider something like "I see you run on YouTube and my dad says that you run very fast. I want to be a runner just like you."
The experiences "see you run on YouTube" and "my dad says you run very fast" are crucial pieces of evidence that support the existence of that aspiration that the letter is meant to communicate, but the LLM has no knowledge of these experiences with the uninformative prompt shown in the ad.
I suppose that in the best case scenario, the LLM will give the prompter the feedback and reflection that I mentioned here, something like "think about why you want to write a fan letter, and what experiences led to that desire. These can help you write a good fan letter, and tell me about those experiences."
Ironically, the kind of reply the ad gave is the kind of reply you want if you want if you had to write vapid polite platitudes that you don't mean all the time, which perhaps reflects the milieu Google and the ad agency producing this operate in.
A fan letter from a child doesn't need to be correct in grammar or in spelling. On the other hand, it needs to talk about events that the child has experienced that the LLM will have no knowledge at all. So consider something like "I see you run on YouTube and my dad says that you run very fast. I want to be a runner just like you."
The experiences "see you run on YouTube" and "my dad says you run very fast" are crucial pieces of evidence that support the existence of that aspiration that the letter is meant to communicate, but the LLM has no knowledge of these experiences with the uninformative prompt shown in the ad.
I suppose that in the best case scenario, the LLM will give the prompter the feedback and reflection that I mentioned here, something like "think about why you want to write a fan letter, and what experiences led to that desire. These can help you write a good fan letter, and tell me about those experiences."
Ironically, the kind of reply the ad gave is the kind of reply you want if you want if you had to write vapid polite platitudes that you don't mean all the time, which perhaps reflects the milieu Google and the ad agency producing this operate in.
> Are any of us trying to be “efficient” when writing a fan letter?
A student who got that as a writing assignment in school would! They are targeting all the people who have to write bullshit optimistic letters everywhere, like HR, managers writing encouragements, students writing assignments, teachers writing feedback, and so on.
A student who got that as a writing assignment in school would! They are targeting all the people who have to write bullshit optimistic letters everywhere, like HR, managers writing encouragements, students writing assignments, teachers writing feedback, and so on.
Children editing LLM generated garbage instead of actually writing to their heroes. Christ. This article was aimed at people like you mate.
You’ve read far too much into the few words I used. And you know nothing else about me.
I’m not your mate, guy.
I’m not your mate, guy.
Do such ads negatively impact the perception of leadership at Google? It feels like there's no overarching vision of what AI should be from the public face of Google's leadership team, so we end up with stuff like Dear Sydney which just comes off as tone-deaf. Why didn't anyone at Google step-in and say: "hey, maybe this ad isn't very good and it's failing to communicate our values"? Although maybe the explanation is that Google's leadership no longer has any values beyond making infinite amounts of money by any means necessary.
All the AI ads I have seen on TV are like “HOLY SHIT YOU CAN TURN ‘write a sentence’ INTO ‘Hello! This is a sentence which has been written.’ WOWZERS”. It’s so… bad.
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The logical extension of this stuff is insane -- why have kids learn to write at all? They can just have an AI do it. Why learn anything? It's all on the internet anyway.
There are plenty of good use cases for AI generated texts. Creating transcripts from audio, writing meeting summaries, and other types of rote, monotonous tasks. Writing a letter from the heart is not one of those things that should be outsourced.
If there's anything on this earth we should value, it's humanity. And the tech giants are chomping at the bit to take that away. It's a sad vision for the future they're pushing