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These are addressing two very different concerns but framed as a singular one. Google is first and foremost a search engine - it searches the web for answers, t

by tfsh 4y ago

These are addressing two very different concerns but framed as a singular one. Google is first and foremost a search engine - it searches the web for answers, the key point being the answers need to exist on the web. The other is a machine learning model tasked with deriving answers, and sometimes - if not very often answers will be provided in an authoritative tone whilst being completely and utterly incorrect. Google is working on the latter called LaMDA[1] which is arguably more impressive and extensive than GPT-3, but for the reasons discussed above can't just be rolled out to the public. (edit: as others have noted, the code snippets themselves are wrong, but the Twitter poster didn't verify this because they're not interested in the answer, just the lack of one from Google). It's certainly an interesting discussion for sure. Mathematics help (homework) is being built into search presently and one day for sure code-snippets will be embedded on search. However at Google's scale and the amount of scrutiny it receives spitting out machine-learning based results without any curation or substantiation is dangerous. Legally it is much safer to delegate to websites, thus alleviating any blame to the host. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA

deleted 4y ago
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michaelt 4y ago
> Google is first and foremost a search engine - it searches the web for answers Sure, but Google tries to provide instant answers - i.e. questionably accurate machine-generated extracts of content they've borrowed from other sites - so you could argue they've fallen behind the cutting edge for questionably-accurate machine-generated extracts of stuff found on the internet.
- codeviking 4y ago
  But falling behind is very different than "being done." I think the original tweet is very much an exaggeration, and agree with the point made here. Google is no where close to "being done." Sure, their answers aren't perfect. But they've managed to deploy them at scale. They're probably available globally. They're fast. And they probably see way more eyeballs than OpenAI's system. It's going to take a long time for folks to deploy advanced techniques like this at the scale required for something like Google. And if anyone has the resources to do this, it's Google. So I suspect Google will just learn from these examples and integrate them into their existing offering, which will probably eclipse any chance at disruption -- both because of their existing market share and because of the computational firepower they have to make this happen.
numpad0 4y ago
I know I’m being idiot on this as always but nor I’m sure why this isn’t said more often: Web search, and by extension Google Search, is a hostile document organization and search system. Its principle is 1) there is a collection of “stolen Soviet documents”, or the web crawl, 2) obscured slice of meaningful data hidden in it that relates mutually by a $CODEWORD, and 3) “hostile” interest in it from a “spy” overhearing it, that the search engine can then work on to compile into a collection to present. Whatever that answers a question given it is not a search, it’s something different.
teawrecks 4y ago
Google is first and foremost an advertiser. The search engine, android, all the random short lived products, they're all attempts to find new ways to put ads in front of eyes. The only way google is "done" is if someone can figure out a way to put the ads in front of more receptive eyes/wallets AND do it on Google's scale without first being acquired or killed off. This means they would need to more effectively gather information about the viewer. This language model is neat, but it doesn't attempt to gather much info at all. It's almost completely orthogonal to Google's business model.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > The only way google is "done" is if someone can figure out a way to put the ads in front of more receptive eyes/wallets AND do it on Google's scale without first being acquired or killed off. No, alternatively they just need to steal googles traffic, they don’t need to steal the ad spend. If you take the traffic, you’ll take their revenue, and they’ll die. If you steal 50% of traffic, you’ll steal 50% of their ad impression revenue. Advertisers will go elsewhere.. like meta or apple. In fact, most companies are disrupted by orthogonal businesses not by being directly outdone by a startup. No one is going to make a better general purpose search engine anytime soon, but Amazon is successfully stealing product search and discovery queries from Google. Google is first and foremost a collection of products. A product needs to make money from users. If you take their users, you take their source of income. Everyone likes to make sassy claims about “you’re the product” due to ads. You are still consuming a service designed to provide you value, even if you didn’t pay for it directly. There is no reason web search needs to gather data about you and show ads, it’s just an easy way to pay for the service. Google could offer a subscription to a “pro” search engine if it wanted, and fund the company that way (probably less profitably though). (And fwiw there’s no reason a language model based service couldn’t capture exactly the same data, it’d just be harder to get people to click on ads).
  - teawrecks 4y ago
    All good points, especially about orthogonality being....orthogonal to disruption :D. I would love to see advertising disrupted. Advertising seems stuck in 2010; very rarely are ads relevant or worth my time. A perfect solution would offer precisely what I want to see, precisely when I want to see it, all while respecting my privacy. We're nowhere near that.
Simon321 4y ago
Nevermind lamda, they have Flan-U-PaLM which is even better. They have the best LLM know to man. But it's private.
GalahiSimtam 4y ago
The feature of Google that is lampooned is called Google Quick Answer I know that because a physics PhD friend once made a lecture for students on how to find truthful physics/engineering information on the web, with a dozen slides examples of factual mistakes in Google Quick Answer. Regardless of whether they are from other sources verbatim or transformed by Google - e.g. modulus of elasticity of cast iron is stripped of units So it certainly could be an improvement there

by tfsh 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

michaelt 4y ago

> Google is first and foremost a search engine - it searches the web for answers Sure, but Google tries to provide instant answers - i.e. questionably accurate machine-generated extracts of content they've borrowed from other sites - so you could argue they've fallen behind the cutting edge for questionably-accurate machine-generated extracts of stuff found on the internet.

codeviking 4y ago
But falling behind is very different than "being done." I think the original tweet is very much an exaggeration, and agree with the point made here. Google is no where close to "being done." Sure, their answers aren't perfect. But they've managed to deploy them at scale. They're probably available globally. They're fast. And they probably see way more eyeballs than OpenAI's system. It's going to take a long time for folks to deploy advanced techniques like this at the scale required for something like Google. And if anyone has the resources to do this, it's Google. So I suspect Google will just learn from these examples and integrate them into their existing offering, which will probably eclipse any chance at disruption -- both because of their existing market share and because of the computational firepower they have to make this happen.

numpad0 4y ago

I know I’m being idiot on this as always but nor I’m sure why this isn’t said more often: Web search, and by extension Google Search, is a hostile document organization and search system. Its principle is 1) there is a collection of “stolen Soviet documents”, or the web crawl, 2) obscured slice of meaningful data hidden in it that relates mutually by a $CODEWORD, and 3) “hostile” interest in it from a “spy” overhearing it, that the search engine can then work on to compile into a collection to present. Whatever that answers a question given it is not a search, it’s something different.

teawrecks 4y ago

Google is first and foremost an advertiser. The search engine, android, all the random short lived products, they're all attempts to find new ways to put ads in front of eyes. The only way google is "done" is if someone can figure out a way to put the ads in front of more receptive eyes/wallets AND do it on Google's scale without first being acquired or killed off. This means they would need to more effectively gather information about the viewer. This language model is neat, but it doesn't attempt to gather much info at all. It's almost completely orthogonal to Google's business model.

vineyardmike 4y ago
> The only way google is "done" is if someone can figure out a way to put the ads in front of more receptive eyes/wallets AND do it on Google's scale without first being acquired or killed off. No, alternatively they just need to steal googles traffic, they don’t need to steal the ad spend. If you take the traffic, you’ll take their revenue, and they’ll die. If you steal 50% of traffic, you’ll steal 50% of their ad impression revenue. Advertisers will go elsewhere.. like meta or apple. In fact, most companies are disrupted by orthogonal businesses not by being directly outdone by a startup. No one is going to make a better general purpose search engine anytime soon, but Amazon is successfully stealing product search and discovery queries from Google. Google is first and foremost a collection of products. A product needs to make money from users. If you take their users, you take their source of income. Everyone likes to make sassy claims about “you’re the product” due to ads. You are still consuming a service designed to provide you value, even if you didn’t pay for it directly. There is no reason web search needs to gather data about you and show ads, it’s just an easy way to pay for the service. Google could offer a subscription to a “pro” search engine if it wanted, and fund the company that way (probably less profitably though). (And fwiw there’s no reason a language model based service couldn’t capture exactly the same data, it’d just be harder to get people to click on ads).
- teawrecks 4y ago
  All good points, especially about orthogonality being....orthogonal to disruption :D. I would love to see advertising disrupted. Advertising seems stuck in 2010; very rarely are ads relevant or worth my time. A perfect solution would offer precisely what I want to see, precisely when I want to see it, all while respecting my privacy. We're nowhere near that.

Simon321 4y ago

Nevermind lamda, they have Flan-U-PaLM which is even better. They have the best LLM know to man. But it's private.

GalahiSimtam 4y ago

The feature of Google that is lampooned is called Google Quick Answer I know that because a physics PhD friend once made a lecture for students on how to find truthful physics/engineering information on the web, with a dozen slides examples of factual mistakes in Google Quick Answer. Regardless of whether they are from other sources verbatim or transformed by Google - e.g. modulus of elasticity of cast iron is stripped of units So it certainly could be an improvement there