Actually new product categories are vanishingly rare, so it's a sure bet that when something new comes around, people will be talking about it and I'll hear about it at some point.
But you do have a point -- avoiding advertising does mean that there may be some specific new products and services that I won't hear about for a while (although I will eventually). Personally, I don't see that as a real problem that requires solving.
On the other hand, I think it is not reasonable to expect people to tell all their friends about all the goods and services that are available. For example, when was the last time you talked to your friends about what electricity provider you are with, about your telecom company, about where you buy your gas and for how much, about what brand of mobile phone you use, about where you shopped for clothing and what you bought, about your heating and ventilation system, your lawn care, your health insurance company, your tax preparation software, your dishwashing detergent, your banking services, your insurance, and so forth? These are tedious things that require consumer information and consumer choice.
Our vision is for AI to autonomously do all the work and provide every sector of goods and services. At the end of the day consumers need to do their part to be informed about it, for effective market mechanisms and competition to function.
What is the alternative? An AI robot is putting a giant TV up in your living room and doesn't even ask you if you want one, it just buys it, delivers it, installs it and tells you Enjoy your new TV?
This would remove all market feedback.
So how do you give a choice about whether you want resources directed at a larger TV or a faster and larger GPU for gaming, without consuming and potentially responding to advertising on these subjects?
Additionally, how would better choices be promoted that require consumer education? An example would be dietary choices. How would the benefits of farm fresh fruits and vegetables be promoted, to compete with processed food? Are your friends going to tell you to choose fruits and vegetables? How will they know about it?
Disseminating information and allowing consumer choice is vital to the vision of the State of Utopia, and there has to be a mechanism for consumer reading and information, even when it is a chore.
Let's take an extreme example of resource allocation questions that are in the hands of consumers: a base on Mars would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and support a few people who have nothing to do up there. When it comes time to vote on whether you want it, how will you be informed of the benefits, if any, if the AI did not pay for informative advertising to try to convince you? Voting on this question requires an informed consumer base, and getting informed is work in and of itself. If the space agency division of AI were forced to produce informative advertising for it, people would consume it and then could vote yes or no. This would be direct market feedback that informs the actions of AI.
Absent this, you would not have a basis for an informed vote on the most basic resource allocation questions.
Clearly, an informed consumer and an informed voter are both necessary for the functioning of a market economy and democratic government, and we need a mechanism to disseminate information about the available choices.
> On the other hand, I think it is not reasonable to expect people to tell all their friends about all the goods and services that are available.
I don't expect such a thing at all, but it's pretty natural for people to tell their friends when they're delighted (or dismayed) by things they use, or to talk about them if I ask them "hey, how to you do X?" They're not going to tell everyone about everything -- and people who do would become as annoying as ads are.
> Our vision is for AI to autonomously do all the work and provide every sector of goods and services.
I don't share that vision with you, that sounds horrible to me. But it's orthogonal to the question of advertising.
> So how do you give a choice about whether you want resources directed at a larger TV or a faster and larger GPU for gaming, without consuming and potentially responding to advertising on these subjects?
There are numerous ways. I'm of the opinion that advertising (at least, if what we mean by "advertising" is marketing messages from the manufacturers or sellers) is the worst option. It's always going to be heavily biased and incomplete, and is very likely to be manipulative.
> This would remove all market feedback.
Market feedback comes from what sells and how much, as well as direct feedback from customers, not from advertising.
> Clearly, an informed consumer and an informed voter are both necessary for the functioning of a market economy and democratic government, and we need a mechanism to disseminate information about the available choices.
I agree. Where we disagree is about whether or not advertising has a useful role in this. I think it does not. Advertising is, in my view, adversarial to that goal.
