Comment by crystal_revenge

> ads in the future.

It boggles my mind that people still think advertising can be a major part of the economy.

If AI is propping up the economy right now [0] how is it possible that the rest of the economy can possibly fund AI through profit sharing? That's fundamentally what advertising is: I give you a share of my revenue (hopefully from profits) in order to help increase my market share. The limit of what advertising spend can be is percent of profits minus some epsilon (for a functioning economy at least).

Advertising cannot be the lions share of any economy because it derives it's value from the rest of the economy.

Advertising is also a major bubble because my one assumption there (that it's a share of profits) is generally not the case. Unprofitable companies giving away a share of their revenue to other companies making those companies profitable is not sustainable.

Advertising could save AI if AI was a relatively small part of the US (or world) economy and could benefit by extracting a share of the profits from other companies. But if most your GDP is from AI how can it possibly cannibalize other companies in a sustainable way?

0. https://www.techspot.com/news/109626-ai-bubble-only-thing-ke...