Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson (Preview) All About AI Companions: Personalization Upsides, Dystopian Downsides, AI Therapy, Advertising Tension, and Lots More
31 snips
Apr 28, 2025 AI Snips
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LLM Quality Degrades Over Time
- Large language models (LLMs) tend to degrade in quality over time due to optimization for cost efficiency.
- This is similar to mp3 compression, where reduced data rates cause loss in output quality and diversity.
Advertising Threatens AI Trust
- Advertising conflicts with high-trust AI companions because it risks distorting the AI's advice toward economic incentives.
- Trust in AI erodes if users suspect answers prioritize ads over their best interests, unlike typical social media ads.
Trust Key to AI Companion Success
- Maintaining user trust is a major challenge deterring AI companies like OpenAI from ads.
- Trust correlates to alignment seen in companies like Apple, which sell premium, ad-free products users feel respect their interests.