Yes, if the product is seen as bad for the world, it won't sell. But it's pretty bad for people, and I don't know how you'd hide that for the people being harmed.
Go talk to an artist, a junior developer, or a musician. And then realize that the goal is to generalize the damage to every other intellectual domain.
And they only count the influencers who use the OpenAI's partner hashtags!
US business model: go into billions of debt, brainwash the population via YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and Hacker News influencers. Intimidate foreign governments to allow the current snake oil. Wait a decade until you have minor profits and the stock price is through the roof because #growth-mindset.
World's best AI models doesn't offset public resentment caused by putting data centers in residential areas, openly buying off the White House and Congress with PAC "donations" and constantly threatening to eliminate everyone's job.
This is the mistake they made. Anthropic and OpenAI are great technically. I love them. But they are absolute crap at making most people feeling like its relevant to them or that AI companies care about them. So its' really easy to be dismissive of the tech and oppose things like data centers. I think the influencer route is a quick fix. They need to appeal to everyday problems but, understandably, the founders like Dario and Altman think very high level. They think they are doing what's best in a way, but not in a way that's relateable to most people. LLMs need to be more human friendly; example, solve little problems like actually writing without sounding like AI
OpenAI is trying to level up their growth marketing to match Anthropic’s. Tactics in growth marketing (speaking from my experience leading in this space) are not public knowledge as it’s a cat-and-mouse game on multiple fronts (ie CAC goes up and changes the economics when a high ROI source is found, etc. etc. etc.), which makes hiring the right person vital as information asymmetries are where the ROI is (ie more revenue per dollar spent on marketing). Anthropic hired the right person for strategy and execution long ago in LLM-years, and there is a good podcast on the story here:
https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-1b-to-19b-grow...
I think the OP was referring not to their public image, but to why they are hiring human influencers instead of deploying computer-generated influencers created by their world-beating models supposedly worth $30T.
They're buying the credibility of the influencers.
Influencers have the greatest influence on their audience, especially repeat viewers who follow or subscribe to them. You need to establish credibility with an audience before you're worth anything to the marketers. This takes time to build.
OpenAI's hypothetical robot influencers have no audience.
And that is incredibly unfortunate to their business strategy.
But... food for thought: people are good at detecting slop, because it looks like slop. If it does not, people won't detect it. So there is a confirmation bias, where the "obvious slop" looks obvious, but the "better slop" goes by undetected.
One could call it Elonism as an evolution of entrepreneurial capitalism. Had Elizabeth Holmes taken the time to build an influencer army instead of doing PR the traditional way, she might not be in prison.
> […] The company isn't asking influencers to assuage fears that a rogue AI could destroy humanity. Instead, it's prompting them to showcase why ChatGPT is "cool" […]
Emphasis mine - ouch. So either influencers are automatons like LLMs who just do as their current-highest-bidder says based on a prompt (!), or in fact perhaps we skipped that bit and they’re all LLMs, for convenience. Or in this post-thinking world we just say prompt instead of ask or instruct.
Not sure which dystopian option displeases me least.
put 'good for the world' in quotes because obviously it's not
A more neutral headline would be: OpenAI Is Enlisting Influencers to Promote Its Public Image.
The rest of the article reads like anti-AI slop. For instance:
> The company isn't asking influencers to assuage fears that a rogue AI could destroy humanity.
It is weird how prominent anti-AI sentiment is online and in media. It's by far the most popular and fastest growing technology in the world. So presumably people have a general favorable impression of the technology as they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it. And I don't buy that it's being jammed down the throats by most employers. Sometimes maybe, but I see the reverse, where people WANT to use frontier models and are being prevented through archaic security hoops.
The big question is who is funding the influencer army to gaslight people into thinking AI/data centers will somehow end the world?
> It is weird how prominent anti-AI sentiment is online and in media. It's by far the most popular and fastest growing technology in the world. So presumably people have a general favorable impression of the technology as they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it
It is popular because it’s useful but people still have unfavorable attitudes towards it in polls. It’s like Amazon. We use Amazon cuz it’s convenient but do we like the way Bezos treats his employees?
> So presumably people have a general favorable impression of the technology as they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it.
That's not implied by engagement. It's possible to use the advantage AI gives you in a competitive landscape while still fearing the future it will bring.
It's clear that people are using it for personal reasons
> The Brookings Institution / AmeriSpeak Survey: A nationwide survey found that 57% of Americans use generative AI for personal tasks (such as web browsing, daily use, or information searches), while only 21% report using it in a professional or work role.
Is there "competitive" reasons to have an AI girlfriend? There is an implied preference that you like the technology by using it by choice and you don't think it will end civilization. You may tell pollsters you're worried but it's the same people telling pollsters sea levels are rising while investing in beach front real estate. Meaningless.
> The big question is who is funding the influencer army to gaslight people into thinking AI/data centers will somehow end the world?
It was discussed a while ago on HN, with a more well known source, that I cannot find right now, but on a quick DDG search this is a quick article I could conjure.
> It's by far the most popular and fastest growing technology in the world. So presumably people have a general favorable impression of the technology as they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it.
This in itself is not an argument. British Opium was selling like hotcakes in China, so surely people people must have had a general favorable impression if they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it?
> The big question is who is funding the influencer army to gaslight people into thinking AI/data centers will somehow end the world?
The companies are doing this themselves in a (stupid) attempt to do regulatory capture/ set up a cartel. Dario Amodei recently published an essay pushing this idea.
> And I don't buy that it's being jammed down the throats by most employers. Sometimes maybe, but I see the reverse, where people WANT to use frontier models and are being prevented through archaic security hoops.
What is N here? 1?
> It is weird how prominent anti-AI sentiment is online and in media. It's by far the most popular and fastest growing technology in the world.
Is it though? Do we actually know that? Is it growing faster than facebook did or google search? Is it even possible to measure when some of the "adoption" is probably people triggering it incidentally (e.g. AI mode in google search shouldn't count as adoption here).
People are worried about it because it is a highly disruptive technology with unproven ROI for businesses as of yet (restricting claims to LLMs here). It has a lot of negative potential side effects for many different groups of people. The media is reflecting these viewpoints. If there's any astroturfing going on, it's from the pro LLM camp.
> The big question is who is funding the influencer army to gaslight people into thinking AI/data centers will somehow end the world?
It may be a difficult concept for an astroturfer to understand, but people are activists for free. If you have found any anti-AI financiers, please share them so I can apply. Of course you already know there are none.
I feel like the "We hacked hugging face" thing and this influencer thing are targeting different things but have the same goal of hyping up the company for the IPO.
- The HF incident was to get the attention of investors and convey the message: "we have this incredibly powerful technology, imagine where we will be in 5 years"
- With this influencer campaign it's just a drive to get more people to use ChatGPT / sign up to ChatGPT so when IPO time comes, they can show strong user growth.
Over the past few months I've seen various reports that OpenAI's financial position isn't great and if those reports have any merit, then likely the higher ups at OpenAI are panicking that they might become a WeWork 2.0. Everything they are doing now is an attempt to justify their $1T valuation to investors during the IPO.
There's been multiple YouTubers saying they've been paid recently to make... AI Doomerism videos (e.g. Sabine).
I imagine this is simply part of the campaign, AI doomerism followed by AI Bloomerism, it could even be part of the same organisation's campaign; selling the solution to a problem they put in your mind. Hype, criti-hype, it's all so tiresome.
>could even be part of the same organisation's campaign
Eh we know its part of the same campaigns. "Please provide us with regulatory capture because our tech is an existential threat" has been going on for a while now.
US business model: go into billions of debt, brainwash the population via YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and Hacker News influencers. Intimidate foreign governments to allow the current snake oil. Wait a decade until you have minor profits and the stock price is through the roof because #growth-mindset.
I like that you think that only one side is doing it. And without clear partner hashtags or sponsorship declarations neither [1].
Seems like an obvious response from OpenAI ngl.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPdmYMHrWKg
Elon is a stupid fascist and he only got where he is by failing upwards repeatedly.
Influencers have the greatest influence on their audience, especially repeat viewers who follow or subscribe to them. You need to establish credibility with an audience before you're worth anything to the marketers. This takes time to build.
OpenAI's hypothetical robot influencers have no audience.
But... food for thought: people are good at detecting slop, because it looks like slop. If it does not, people won't detect it. So there is a confirmation bias, where the "obvious slop" looks obvious, but the "better slop" goes by undetected.
But now ... this. I am clueless.
I thought they already had HN?
Emphasis mine - ouch. So either influencers are automatons like LLMs who just do as their current-highest-bidder says based on a prompt (!), or in fact perhaps we skipped that bit and they’re all LLMs, for convenience. Or in this post-thinking world we just say prompt instead of ask or instruct.
Not sure which dystopian option displeases me least.
"enlisting an influencer army"
put 'good for the world' in quotes because obviously it's not
A more neutral headline would be: OpenAI Is Enlisting Influencers to Promote Its Public Image.
The rest of the article reads like anti-AI slop. For instance:
> The company isn't asking influencers to assuage fears that a rogue AI could destroy humanity.
It is weird how prominent anti-AI sentiment is online and in media. It's by far the most popular and fastest growing technology in the world. So presumably people have a general favorable impression of the technology as they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it. And I don't buy that it's being jammed down the throats by most employers. Sometimes maybe, but I see the reverse, where people WANT to use frontier models and are being prevented through archaic security hoops.
The big question is who is funding the influencer army to gaslight people into thinking AI/data centers will somehow end the world?
It is popular because it’s useful but people still have unfavorable attitudes towards it in polls. It’s like Amazon. We use Amazon cuz it’s convenient but do we like the way Bezos treats his employees?
That's not implied by engagement. It's possible to use the advantage AI gives you in a competitive landscape while still fearing the future it will bring.
It's clear that people are using it for personal reasons
> The Brookings Institution / AmeriSpeak Survey: A nationwide survey found that 57% of Americans use generative AI for personal tasks (such as web browsing, daily use, or information searches), while only 21% report using it in a professional or work role.
Is there "competitive" reasons to have an AI girlfriend? There is an implied preference that you like the technology by using it by choice and you don't think it will end civilization. You may tell pollsters you're worried but it's the same people telling pollsters sea levels are rising while investing in beach front real estate. Meaningless.
Give you a hint: starts with C, ends with a P, with a C in the middle
It was discussed a while ago on HN, with a more well known source, that I cannot find right now, but on a quick DDG search this is a quick article I could conjure.
https://www.gate.com/news/detail/david-sacks-warns-ai-doom-n...
This in itself is not an argument. British Opium was selling like hotcakes in China, so surely people people must have had a general favorable impression if they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it?
The companies are doing this themselves in a (stupid) attempt to do regulatory capture/ set up a cartel. Dario Amodei recently published an essay pushing this idea.
> And I don't buy that it's being jammed down the throats by most employers. Sometimes maybe, but I see the reverse, where people WANT to use frontier models and are being prevented through archaic security hoops.
What is N here? 1?
> It is weird how prominent anti-AI sentiment is online and in media. It's by far the most popular and fastest growing technology in the world.
Is it though? Do we actually know that? Is it growing faster than facebook did or google search? Is it even possible to measure when some of the "adoption" is probably people triggering it incidentally (e.g. AI mode in google search shouldn't count as adoption here).
People are worried about it because it is a highly disruptive technology with unproven ROI for businesses as of yet (restricting claims to LLMs here). It has a lot of negative potential side effects for many different groups of people. The media is reflecting these viewpoints. If there's any astroturfing going on, it's from the pro LLM camp.
> The big question is who is funding the influencer army to gaslight people into thinking AI/data centers will somehow end the world?
It may be a difficult concept for an astroturfer to understand, but people are activists for free. If you have found any anti-AI financiers, please share them so I can apply. Of course you already know there are none.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/22/1144867/dont-be-...
eg:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49814211
Not even flagged, just disappeared.
- The HF incident was to get the attention of investors and convey the message: "we have this incredibly powerful technology, imagine where we will be in 5 years"
- With this influencer campaign it's just a drive to get more people to use ChatGPT / sign up to ChatGPT so when IPO time comes, they can show strong user growth.
Over the past few months I've seen various reports that OpenAI's financial position isn't great and if those reports have any merit, then likely the higher ups at OpenAI are panicking that they might become a WeWork 2.0. Everything they are doing now is an attempt to justify their $1T valuation to investors during the IPO.
I imagine this is simply part of the campaign, AI doomerism followed by AI Bloomerism, it could even be part of the same organisation's campaign; selling the solution to a problem they put in your mind. Hype, criti-hype, it's all so tiresome.
Eh we know its part of the same campaigns. "Please provide us with regulatory capture because our tech is an existential threat" has been going on for a while now.