this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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This week YouTube hosted Brandcast 2025 in which it revealed how marketers could make better use of the platform to connect with customers.

A few new so-called innovations were announced at the event but one has caught the attention of the internet – Peak Points. This new product makes use of Gemini to detect “the most meaningful, or ‘peak’, moments within YouTube’s popular content to place your brand where audiences are the most engaged”.

Essentially, YouTube will use Gemini and probably the heatmap generated on YouTube videos by people skipping to popular points, to determine where to place advertising. Anybody who has grown up watching terrestrial television where adverts arrive as a way to build suspense will understand how annoying Peak Points could become.

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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 129 points 2 days ago (6 children)

I don't understand why this needs AI. I'm guessing this is just more marketing nonsense. You can already see the "most engaged moments" by simply hovering over the timeline.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 69 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's because it doesn't. Just don't tell the investors.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 24 points 2 days ago (3 children)

At some point you would think the investors would get upset about all the lying...

[–] gwilikers@lemmy.ml 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You know. I feel like its a bit obvious to say but a system where corporations are operated top-down by a group of individuals whose only interest is the profitability of said corporation with little to no consideration in other aspects of the corporation (the employees for one) is a pretty bad system. I remember reading that Henry Ford wanted to drop the price of the Model T to make it even more of an everyman car. Two of his top investors took him to court over it. This isn't to say Ford was some sort of paragon; but it strikes me sometime, the degree to which the naked greed of some people pierces the capitalist veil of competitive innovation for social betterment.

[–] sirdorius@programming.dev 8 points 1 day ago

This only strikes us plebes when we find out about it. It is common knowledge in economist circles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_primacy

The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits: a company has no social responsibility to the public or society; its only responsibility is to its shareholders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

This has only been recently challenged as a PR attempt to rebrand it into "stakeholder capitalism"

Also, not related but equally horrifying: in macroeconomics there is a target of unemployment of around 5%, aka full employment is to be avoided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAIRU

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It's worth noting that Dodge (yes, that Dodge) were the ones who took Ford to court over it. If you want the reason why shareholders come first, blame Dodge.

[–] gwilikers@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Riiight. Id like to learn more about Dodge; I'm gomna check if there's a Ken Bursesque History of Dodge documentary.

Edit: there is no such documentary.

Edit 2: But there is a fairly decent one.

Ford owed them dividends since they had shares from when they worked for him. And the Dodge Bros asked for these dividends but Ford basically already spent it on cutting wages, building factories, lower the price of cars, kissing puppies etc. All of which, as you may have noticed, is shit that investors (i.e. the Dodge Bros) hate in the short term, while, of course, expanding his business in the long term. Ford had a plan to buy them out, ya see. And, honestly, I can understand why they took him to court for that. Cuz he purposely made decisions that went against their interests as investors because they were his competitor. And the Dodge Bros, they're not some pampered plutocrats, they came from a fairly impoverished backround - the details of which I won't bore you with, as they are the same as every other rags to riches Americana. Though I do think its worth mentioning that they were not initially accepted among the social elite as they would drink beers and roughhouse with the men.¹

All of this is very interesting, but it kind of muddies the water in terms of serving as an example of greedy investors forcing the corporate hand. But what if the hand that guides the corporate hand is not the investors' but the invisible hand of the market?² And the Dodge Bros and Ford are just puppets to the invisible hand³ as it guides them along with a relationship to the wellbeing of actual humans⁴ that could be characterised as arbitrary at best and malicious at worst. Maybe that's the lesson here.

That and that Henry Ford is a scary motherfucker.

  1. Which is, I suppose, another rags to riches Americana story, but its one that's pretty charming, a kind of, still one of the boys attitude, a dream that you can become wealthy and not be innately corrupted by that wealth. Like the Dodge Bros eventually were.

  2. Which, looking at it now, I appreciate is a contrived metaphor, but it sounded good in my head.

  3. The invisible hand is doing one of those Godfather cover art pupeteer with strings and shit. They're not sock puppets. I did consider making a fist-of-capitalism-up-your-ass joke here but it sidetracks the issue a bit, and its a bit sexist/kink shamey.

  4. And plants and trees and animals.

[–] Archer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

We need more comments with endnotes

[–] sirdorius@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago

It's a funny story because Ford was suspecting them of building a rival car company so he wasn't doing it entirely out of altruistic pursuits. He wanted to them to get lower profits from their Ford investments. Whenever you think capitalists have reached the peak of greed, they truly innovate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

[–] thejoker954@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Too greedy. They want all the money so bad they will believe any conman.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Doesn't matter because they get a cut every time they let their friends lie to the board. Executives get a cut every time they seem like they're approving something. No one is personally liable for the lie. And those selling the lie get bonuses on every contract until they can sell the company to the next bag holder. It's all imaginary power plays to funnel money.

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Google’s been deploying engagement models before anyone even knew the name OpenAI.

This is oldschool machine learning, driven by viewing metrics from users. Gemini is just a brand.

[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 day ago

That only works after the video is out and has usage statistics.

This could theoretically start to identify those moments before the video is public.

[–] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

They already do it in Podcasts and it is usually extremely ham-fisted. The presenter will be mid sentence talking about something and suddenly IMPROVE YOUR DIET WITH FACTOR

[–] TwistedCister@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

Or stand up specials. So much comedy on YouTube and they just drop Dick Pills ^TM^ commercials in the middle of punchlines.

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

isn't that just very basic timestamps like every 10 minutes or whatever?

[–] half@lemy.lol 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I mean... an "if" statement is technically AI, so investors can see the buzz word and all Google has to code is "if most engaged moment, then play ad" lol

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

conditional and logical expressions have been the foundation of computing since the very beginning. you are using a definition of "AI" that is completely divorced from that history.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's a computer (Artificial) making a choice that is better than random (Intelligence)

What it is not is a LLM (aka chatbot). It isn't even any type of neural network. Does not make it any less AI though

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No, it's a computer making a computation. The programmer is the one using intelligence by choosing the appropriate computation for the situation at hand.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's a computer (Artificial) making a choice that is better than random (Intelligence)

That's not what AI is, that's just programming. AI implies the software was trained on a dataset in order to make pseudo-decisions on its own about the best way to do things.

[–] dr_robotBones@reddthat.com 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's machine learning, AI just means artificial intelligence.

[–] acosmichippo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

And artificial intelligence is still not basic programming.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Machine learning is artificial intelligence...

[–] dr_robotBones@reddthat.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Its a subset of artificial intelligence, not the only type.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Right, but basic automation is not artificial intelligence.

[–] dr_robotBones@reddthat.com -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I wonder where we can draw the line. Its weird because the definition of AI is continuously changing, even though its two self evident words, artificial intelligence.

[–] aim_at_me@lemmy.nz 4 points 1 day ago

If we took the words at face value, I don't think we could label anything we've built AI.