Hey, you. You see those ads on every site on the internet? You know how they got there, right? I always thought internet ads were a lot like billboards: Company A pays Company B to show ads in a space on a page. And it may have been this way in the internet’s bronze age, in 1997, but no longer.
Today, a robots-only auction takes place in literally the blink of an eye:
A small technological marvel occurs on almost every visit to a web page. In the seconds that elapse between the user’s click and the display of the page, an ad auction takes place in which hundreds of bidders gather whatever information they can get on the user, determine which ads are likely to be of interest, place bids, and transmit the winning ad to be placed in the page.
Oh, man. The first sentient robots aren’t going to try to kill us; they’re going to try to show us ads, aren’t they?