Only a society which doesn't want anything, needs nothing, demands nothing can do without ads. While privacy invading ad tech is obviously a bad thing, ads - namely the thing used to introduce you and others like you to a new idea - is a good thing.

Needlessly reductionist take that doesn't steelman what the OP is after, nor do they need a lesson in definition of the word ad.

Ads in their current form are predominantly a nuisance and malware. Only incidentally do they help the person actually find what they are looking for. This has to change.

So you want software from people for free, hope you share also your work power with others for free.

I the end someone pays for open source and often it's some developer with his spare time.

Yes to open source, but yes to money for the developers.

ChatGPT is already free to use? What, do you expect them to keep providing this without any return?

Besides, who will pay for the compute of LLMs in your utopian future?

“I want someone to work for me but I don’t want to pay them” is exactly the kind of mindset that led to ads everywhere.

So sad to see that most of the commenters can't even try and visualize this future; and prefer to try and justify the current explotative economic model. And the even saddest part, is that they probably aren't even the ones doing the explotation).