mbow30
Spudmeister Supreme
It’s been STRONGLY implied
Tech Thread
- Thread starter MindzEye
- Start date
zeke
Well-known member
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
They're pushing ChatGPT as a storefront/payment processor as well. So basically if you prompt ChatGPT looking for some gift ideas, it will present you with it's search output & give you the ability to purchase it's suggestions directly through ChatGPT and they'll act as the payment portal, similar to square, paypal, stripe, etc.
Which I'm sure will never lead to them gating that and having chatgpt only recommend products from partners. No, never, perish the thought.
I've only recently started using Chatgpt in place of traditional search engines for more dynamic search questions/prompts because it's just so much fucking better at that, and I don't think I'd scrap using it entirely over that, but I would definitely stop using it the way I do now. It was part of my workflow recently to kit out a full tethering setup for a contract employee I'm hiring for the season and though I have enough specific knowledge on the gear to know if it was pushing me in the wrong direction, I don't think I'd use it for stuff like that if I knew that OpenAI had a financial incentive for trying to direct me towards one lens, laptop, or tethering cable over another.
Cal Gal
Well-known member
“I HATE AI”: A woman was told she had a heart attack. A cardiologist later informed her that an EKG reading done with AI was wrong
“This has to be medical malpractice.”
CH1
The Artist Formerly Known as chiggins.
super long read....but excerpted a few parts...interesting GPT will only make 2% commission dramatically lower than Google Shopping’s historical 12% or Amazon’s 15%
**Trust factors introduce significant friction with economic consequences**. State-of-the-art LLMs achieve approximately 80% accuracy on benchmarks, meaning one in five recommendations could contain errors. Unlike traditional search where users see multiple sources and can verify independently, LLM commerce presents synthesized, curated results where verification asymmetry creates information problems. This trust gap appears in behavior: 46% of shoppers report being unlikely to let AI manage their entire shopping trip according to Walmart surveys, and 72% of commerce leaders cite privacy and security as moderate to major roadblocks for AI implementation.
The trust deficit has direct implications for elasticities. When consumers don’t fully trust recommendations, they’re more likely to conduct additional research or comparison shopping before purchasing, reducing the price insensitivity that platforms need to extract surplus. Trust must be built through accuracy and transparency, creating a time dimension to elasticity estimates—current elasticities may not reflect long-run behavior once trust develops.
**Recommendation bias emerges as the key market failure concern**. Unlike search advertising where paid placement is clearly marked, LLM recommendations blend algorithmic judgment with potential commercial influence. If OpenAI can bias recommendations toward higher-commission merchants or partners while maintaining plausible deniability (“our AI determined this was the best fit”), it gains ability to extract surplus through implicit rather than explicit pricing mechanisms.
The FTC’s emphasis on algorithmic transparency and prohibition of exclusionary conduct becomes critical. If platforms face credible regulatory constraints on recommendation bias, commission rates remain the primary revenue extraction mechanism. If platforms can subtly favor commercial partners in recommendations, explicit commission rates understate true merchant costs of platform access.
I was curious, so I asked
by Tyler Cowen September 30, 2025 at 12:31 am inMy prompt:
axlsalinger
Well-known member
Cal Gal
Well-known member
California police pull over self-driving Waymo for illegal U-turn — but officers can't ticket it
Officers stopped the vehicle but declined to write a ticket as "citation books don't have a box for 'robot,'" San Bruno police wrote on Facebook.
Cal Gal
Well-known member
Taiwan will not agree to 50-50 chip production deal with US, negotiator says
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
They're figuring out that the US is not their friend anymore and will hold their technological capability hostage in exchange for support to keep them free from China.
If America had their own capability at that scale, why protect Taiwan from China?
axlsalinger
Well-known member
Volcanologist
Well-known member
Ketamine thoughts by Elon Handy
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
Bleedsblue&white
Well-known member
If women don't find you handsome, use daddy's money to punish the world for it.
Cal Gal
Well-known member
Flying Taxis Just Made Their First US Public Flight—Right Here in Salinas
Flying Taxis Just Made Their First US Public Flight—Right Here in Salinas
Joby and Archer's electric air taxis flew before 65,000 spectators at Salinas airshow, marking the first public eVTOL demo in American history.
hoodline.com
zeke
Well-known member
CH1
The Artist Formerly Known as chiggins.
MindzEye
Wayward Ditch Pig
They just care about engagement, and negative emotions keep people more engage than positive emotions....if someone looked and their phone and got happy, they might put their phone down and go for a walk in the woods or something and that would literally be the collapse of western civilization.
CH1
The Artist Formerly Known as chiggins.
We evolved to be survival machines (always looking for threats) not happiness