A former OpenAI researcher says the introduction of advertising into AI platforms could fundamentally change how those systems behave and how companies design them.
In an interview with ABC News Australia, Zoë Hitzig raises concerns about the economic incentives created when ad revenue is tied directly to user engagement. She says the dynamic could pressure companies to maximize user time and dependence.
“One of the reasons why advertising is a concern for us to be bringing to everyone’s attention right now is that advertising creates a direct translation between time spent on the platform and dollars for the company.
And what I’m really concerned about is that creates an incentive for these companies to keep people on the platforms to keep people engaged, to keep people coming back. And we really don’t know what dependence on these platforms will mean for people socially and psychologically.”
Hitzig acknowledges that companies may initially follow stated principles around responsible advertising. But she questions whether those guardrails would hold once large profits are at stake.
“OpenAI put out a set of principles that they plan to adhere to, and I feel rather confident that in the very first iteration of advertising, they will probably adhere to those principles pretty strongly. But what I’m concerned about is that when you strap this giant billion-dollar economic engine on top of a platform and have these incentives to override those principles, I’m just not sure that they have earned our trust.”
Hitzig compares the potential trajectory to the early days of social media.
“And I think about social media. I think that social media started in a way that felt very innocuous. Facebook also had principles about how it would and wouldn’t use user data. And it all looked very fine and good. But over time, once they built that advertising engine, once that engine started bringing in billions of dollars of profit, the company really changed and the consequences for society and for people’s lives…
But of course, there are issues for kids, teenage eating disorders, political polarization, fake news. I mean, I don’t have to tell what we went through.”
Earlier this month, OpenAI started rolling out ads in ChatGPT to help fund the Free and Go tiers. The company said users can control the ads they see, and the ads are designed to respect user privacy.
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