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It makes sense though. The biggest threat to Google right now isn't some scrappy startup eating their lunch. It's the looming regulatory action over antitrust a
by jonas21 4y ago
It makes sense though. The biggest threat to Google right now isn't some scrappy startup eating their lunch. It's the looming regulatory action over antitrust and privacy that could weaken or destroy their core business. As this is a political problem (not a technical one), they don't want to do anything that could upset politicians or turn public opinion against them. Personally, I doubt they have serious ethical concerns over releasing the model. I do believe they have serious "AI ethics 'thought leaders' and politicians will use this against us" concerns.
- londons_explore 4y agoAnd that concern is well placed. Having the Google brand attached makes it a far more juicy target for newspapers...
- throwaway23597 4y agoAgh, I've thought this through and you're completely right. It's an interesting conundrum. Certainly releasing powerful tools into the wild runs a high risk of swaying public opinion in a negative direction. Given this I honestly wonder why Google continues to invest so much in AI at all. I imagine having automatically generated video ads and stuff would be cool, but would hardly move the needle on the core business enough to justify the massive investment they've made into AI. Not that I'm complaining about it though... Google's tech advances always seem to diffuse (heh) into the open source world, so at least we have that to look forward to.