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> [Sundar Pichai] has emphasized that Google is an “AI-first” company Maybe I need to lighten up here, but I find this "AI-first" branding to be really off-put
by dougb5 6y ago
> [Sundar Pichai] has emphasized that Google is an “AI-first” company
Maybe I need to lighten up here, but I find this "AI-first" branding to be really off-putting. What I fear it means is "We're going to add the world's biases and a bit more unpredictability into every single one of our features."
And in some ways it's like like a carpenter deciding to become a "wrench-first" operation. Shouldn't the first priority be the people affected by the things that you do, rather than a particular tool that you inflict upon them? And, great as it can be, is it really the right tool for every job? Maybe some of the problems the AI fairness team has exposed (or tried to) will push Google to realize that it need not be present in everything, let alone first.
- rurounijones 6y ago> I find this "AI-first" branding to be really off-putting Honestly my first reaction was a snarky "Well, your moderation and support channels certainly are" given all the horror stories we hear about people getting locked out of their entire google accounts with no recourse or access to humans to appeal / investigate.
- haskellandchill 6y agoI kind of love how google has destroyed their reputation on the customer support side and doesn't seem to care. I believe at a certain point it will affect their bottom line. They must be betting that they develop passable AI support before that happens.
- pocketgrok 6y agoDid Google ever have a good reputation for customer support?
- killtimeatwork 6y agoIt reminds me of my managers talking about "focusing on moving to the cloud", without any real analysis whether it makes sense from technical or cost standpoint. It's purely hype driven.
- itisit 6y agoBecause it's the future and HBR (or some such "authority") told them so.
- kevincox 6y agoYour conclusion isn't wrong, but I think you are thinking about it the wrong way. "AI-first" isn't because Sundar thinks that AI is the best solution for Google's problems. "AI-first" is because Sundar thinks that getting good at AI is an important long-term investment for Google. So this is less like a carpenter deciding to use a wrench for every operation because they think that the results will be good and more like a carpenter deciding that they should find a project to use a wrench on because they want to learn how to use one.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]