It definitely doesn't mean ads, and introducing ads would be a mistake.

They will likely lower the limits on free use once they're ready to handle a huge influx of paid users. They are in a tough spot temporarily ramping up things enough to take the limits of paid accounts, and since they can't onboard everybody they're being generous with the free tier, but that will end.

> They need to monetize it, which means ads.

Why ads? Seems like they're going the service route. Are you predicting them to start targeting the masses and build search/assistants/etc?

> They need to monetize it,

What's wrong with the current approach of just selling access?

I'm sure this internet thing will die out too.

GPT4s killer revenue stream isn't selling ads on keyword searches. It's selling access to a general compute engine that can take text and do useful things with it. The API is dead simple to use, and all you have to do is just change a line of text to "upgrade" to the newest models over time. (By the way, the upgrade from ChatGPT -> GPT4 is huge).

Google should be deathly afraid of this. Not because Microsoft is going to replace them with Bing. But because, GPT is going to be in every major software product that's connected to the internet within a few years. By the end of the decade if not sooner agents powered by LLMs will be the primary mode of interacting with the internet. Going to Google.com or whatever to search for an answer is done. You'll just ask Siri 3.0 and the answer will be good enough.

I’ve said this before on HN, but if LLM agents catch on, won’t it be self-defeating in the long term? They need to pull tons of info from the web to be useful and up-to-date. If we all stop visiting websites, then who’s going to keep publishing all of that info?

The ad based revenue model is done, yes. A lot of sites will still exist though behind paywalls.

Doesn’t that mean that search products will also struggle, since they rely on everything being freely available?

Well, I would assume a lot of the producers, for example people making products would still have sites the agents could pull from to have up to date information. You'd most likely lose a lot of the middlemen that take that data, add something, and then cover the page in ads.

There are also tons of ego websites that aren't going anywhere from what I can tell. Tiktok will still be around unless it gets banned, and something else will pop up behind it if it does.

Product descriptions are a good example of info that will still be published, because people will still by buying and selling products. The problem is with writing where the writing itself is the product, such as news.

The LLM relies on free access to that writing in order for it to be informed about current events. The news publisher relies on readership to pay writers. If LLMs are too useful to the point that people rely on them alone for news, then ironically they will become worse products over time as the publications they draw from go out of business.

Who says this is true? The AGI will certainly be able to figure it out without depending on some crap medium blog

The internet you’re describing sounds like hell on earth. I don’t want to talk to an llm.

> don’t want to talk to an llm

Nobody is forced to use a search engine. It's just the best way to interact with most of the web. I'm sure there will still be people who want to sift through raw data, which will increasingly be created for consumption by LLMs versus humans, but that's a niche.

Out of curiosity, have you played around with ChatGPT-4 at all? While I would disagree with you on v3.5 alone, on v4 I _strongly_ disagree with that sentiment. Interacting with it is significantly better than modern search engines to get a mental model of something, slight mistakes and searching to validate claims and all.

They already have monetized it. Its $20/month.

Basically OpenAI succeeded right from the start with what Google never got right (monetize search) until Google discovered how to monetize their search product through an advertisement model. Now that ads aren't anymore needed for a successful search product Google is in existential danger. Classic Innovators dilemma.

They seem on the right path to become a platform.

They'll grow together with their customers. And the possibilities are huge

They can monetize with their plugin (aka apps) ecosystem. Take 10% of each transaction.