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> Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago That seems like a weird thing to throw in there. Does anyone else read it as a hasty "we were doing AI before C

> Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago That seems like a weird thing to throw in there. Does anyone else read it as a hasty "we were doing AI before ChatGPT was cool"?

guerrilla 4y ago
Hopefully someone can inform us as to whether they did announce such a pivot (I have no memory of that) but it wouldn't surprise me. ChatGPT feels a lot like search-without-citations to me, and the closest existing thing in production to it is the blurb at the top of Google results, which I suppose will soon be replaced by this kind of thing (if they can ever get it to stop lying.)
- knorker 4y ago
  “Computing is evolving again. We spoke last year about this important shift in computing from a mobile-first to an AI-first approach. … In an AI-first world, we are rethinking all our products and applying machine learning and AI to solve user problems.” —Sundar Pichai, 2017 https://techbeacon.com/enterprise-it/google-goes-ai-first-io-what-dev-ops-need-know https://techbeacon.com/enterprise-it/google-goes-ai-first-io...
- ta988 4y ago
  It is not lying, it is not conscious. It is just displaying whatever it says using confidence filled sentences.
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    > it is not conscious Obviously. Whatever you want to call it, it needs to stop consistently vomiting up false statements before it's fully useful.
- spuz 4y ago
  Since 2015, Google have rolled out RankBrain, BERT and MUM which are machine learning enhancements of their search algorithm and allow Google to understand the meaning of the terms you search for and provide matches based on that.
  - oriolid 4y ago
    So that explains how Google knows that when I'm searching for X, it can give me results for slightly related Y instead. Sometimes it works, often it feels almost hostile.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
      I've noticed the same thing with YouTube notifications. It feels like Google wants to recruit/queue my attention as a resource for their client's ads instead of just notifying me when a new video from someone I follow is available.
      - oriolid 4y ago
        That at least make some sense, but I don't understand whose benefit is showing results for Rider and IDEA when I search for some detail in CLion that is different from the other IDEs from the same company.
gnfargbl 4y ago
I would guess he means that they use AI algorithms to perform some of the tasks that are performed manually at most companies. If so, most of Google's customers wouldn't really consider this to be a win. ML-driven account suspensions etc are universally hated and seem to have damaged Google's image, at least in the tech community.
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  Part of my job is developing and testing a Google calendar sync tool. I've created a secondary throwaway email address so I don't fill my own calendar with test data. During testing I often have to link/unlink the calendar with different users in my application. Some AI bot has evidently flagged this as 'suspicious' because I now get 'An error has occurred, please try again' when linking my application with Google Calendar. No further details of which error it might be or what I might do to resolve it. To whom may I write to explain this situation and have my account unlocked? There is no one. I really despise this behaviour. Why should I put the time in to test and develop an application that benefits users of Google's calendar when they won't even lift a finger for me?
  - lmm 4y ago
    > Why should I put the time in to test and develop an application that benefits users of Google's calendar when they won't even lift a finger for me? Well, why are you? They treat you like that because you let them.
    - HeckFeck 4y ago
      Modern users expect everything to integrate with Google Calendar, unfortunately. You can't avoid them when it comes to developing scheduling applications.
  - visarga 4y ago
    > To whom may I write to explain this situation and have my account unlocked? There is no one. I really despise this behaviour They will probably never hire humans for support tickets. But they could "hire" their star model PaLM to solve support questions. It could be a good demo and a product useful for many companies. Even if it is only 70% or 80% effective, still better than nothing.
swyx 4y ago
> "we were doing AI before ChatGPT was cool" definitely google is on the defensive right now[0] and just this week they had jeff dean do a "here's all our AI credentials" recap [1] 0: https://lspace.swyx.io/p/google-vs-openai https://lspace.swyx.io/p/google-vs-openai 1: https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyond-language.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyon...
- throwaway29303 4y ago
  Jeff Dean has been doing yearly recaps since 2017. 2017 https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on.html 2018 https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on.html (part 1) https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on_12.html (part 2) 2019 https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/01/looking-back-at-googles-research.html 2020 http://ai.googleblog.com/2021/01/google-research-looking-back-at-2020.html 2021 http://ai.googleblog.com/2022/01/google-research-themes-from-2021-and.html 2022 http://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyond-language.html
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  A friend of mine who is in "serious" AI research keeps telling me not to get too excited about Google's AI stuff, as they do release a lot of papers, but these are essentially worthless and non-reproduceable as they hide raw data. He suspects half of them or more are completely made up, as they do not align well with what else happens in the field. I can't verify that, but whenever the "AI" behind my Google Home gets a bit more stupid (happens once a week nowadays, with it 'forgetting' even the few things that worked before), I am inclined to agree.
  - swyx 4y ago
    agree that they are nonreproduceable, but they are probably not worthless in that i'm sure they have very extensive review processes and theyve said that they actually put models like T5 into production on search. there's no bigger skin in the game than that. > they do not align well with what else happens in the field i'm interested in this comment though. havent transformers changed the field? what is this referring to? mind getting your friend to elaborate?
achow 4y ago
Quite possible (ChatGPT related). Considering this was the Tweet that he sent yesterday.. https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1615820298305118221 https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1615820298305118221 As a followup to AI blogpost (which is clearly in response to ChatGPT) https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyond-language.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyon...
helsinkiandrew 4y ago
In Google I/O 2017 they announced a "pivot to AI". https://www.engadget.com/2017-05-20-at-i-o-2017-google-doubled-down-on-a-future-built-on-ai.html https://www.engadget.com/2017-05-20-at-i-o-2017-google-doubl... Google Assistant, Tensorflow, Google Lens, Cloud TPU, Google Goggles, auto mail responses etc. A lot of interesting stuff but nothing that has made the popular press like chatGPT, dall-e etc.
- kgwgk 4y ago
  DeepMind has occasionally made to the popular press - but not like ChatGPT. Coverage was more like that of IBM’s Watson and Deep Blue back in the day.
joshvm 4y ago
I'm not sure if you'd call it a pivot, but Google Brain was initially an X project that was started well before the deep learning craze took off. They hired Geoff Hinton in 2013. Investment in AI has been going on for a long time at Google, probably before Facebook/FAIR got seriously involved, but probably not Microsoft (MSR has been going for ~30 years and Chris Bishop started the Cambridge lab in '97 and they've long been known as a good ML group). It's not like Google wasn't using ML before that either. Search, recommender systems for ads, anti-spam, translate. Deep learning just turned out to be a lot better than the tools we used to use.
samwillis 4y ago
Google Ads, their most significant revenue stream, are entirely AI base, and speaking as an advertiser, it's only made it more crap. It's "ai" algorithms are designed to maximise value extraction from advertisers, rather than value creation for advertisers. There has been a systematic trend over the last 10 years to remove the controls advertisers have over their placements and spend and move towards a black box we are supposed to trust.
cutenewt 4y ago
This is definitely tone deaf. Who cares if you were held the lead in the first leg of the marathon? All that matters is who's in the lead now and who's in the lead at the finish.

> Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago That seems like a weird thing to throw in there. Does anyone else read it as a hasty "we were doing AI before ChatGPT was cool"?

guerrilla 4y ago

Hopefully someone can inform us as to whether they did announce such a pivot (I have no memory of that) but it wouldn't surprise me. ChatGPT feels a lot like search-without-citations to me, and the closest existing thing in production to it is the blurb at the top of Google results, which I suppose will soon be replaced by this kind of thing (if they can ever get it to stop lying.)

knorker 4y ago
“Computing is evolving again. We spoke last year about this important shift in computing from a mobile-first to an AI-first approach. … In an AI-first world, we are rethinking all our products and applying machine learning and AI to solve user problems.” —Sundar Pichai, 2017 https://techbeacon.com/enterprise-it/google-goes-ai-first-io-what-dev-ops-need-know https://techbeacon.com/enterprise-it/google-goes-ai-first-io...
ta988 4y ago
It is not lying, it is not conscious. It is just displaying whatever it says using confidence filled sentences.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > it is not conscious Obviously. Whatever you want to call it, it needs to stop consistently vomiting up false statements before it's fully useful.
spuz 4y ago
Since 2015, Google have rolled out RankBrain, BERT and MUM which are machine learning enhancements of their search algorithm and allow Google to understand the meaning of the terms you search for and provide matches based on that.
- oriolid 4y ago
  So that explains how Google knows that when I'm searching for X, it can give me results for slightly related Y instead. Sometimes it works, often it feels almost hostile.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
    I've noticed the same thing with YouTube notifications. It feels like Google wants to recruit/queue my attention as a resource for their client's ads instead of just notifying me when a new video from someone I follow is available.
    - oriolid 4y ago
      That at least make some sense, but I don't understand whose benefit is showing results for Rider and IDEA when I search for some detail in CLion that is different from the other IDEs from the same company.

gnfargbl 4y ago

I would guess he means that they use AI algorithms to perform some of the tasks that are performed manually at most companies. If so, most of Google's customers wouldn't really consider this to be a win. ML-driven account suspensions etc are universally hated and seem to have damaged Google's image, at least in the tech community.

HeckFeck 4y ago
Part of my job is developing and testing a Google calendar sync tool. I've created a secondary throwaway email address so I don't fill my own calendar with test data. During testing I often have to link/unlink the calendar with different users in my application. Some AI bot has evidently flagged this as 'suspicious' because I now get 'An error has occurred, please try again' when linking my application with Google Calendar. No further details of which error it might be or what I might do to resolve it. To whom may I write to explain this situation and have my account unlocked? There is no one. I really despise this behaviour. Why should I put the time in to test and develop an application that benefits users of Google's calendar when they won't even lift a finger for me?
- lmm 4y ago
  > Why should I put the time in to test and develop an application that benefits users of Google's calendar when they won't even lift a finger for me? Well, why are you? They treat you like that because you let them.
  - HeckFeck 4y ago
    Modern users expect everything to integrate with Google Calendar, unfortunately. You can't avoid them when it comes to developing scheduling applications.
- visarga 4y ago
  > To whom may I write to explain this situation and have my account unlocked? There is no one. I really despise this behaviour They will probably never hire humans for support tickets. But they could "hire" their star model PaLM to solve support questions. It could be a good demo and a product useful for many companies. Even if it is only 70% or 80% effective, still better than nothing.

swyx 4y ago

> "we were doing AI before ChatGPT was cool" definitely google is on the defensive right now[0] and just this week they had jeff dean do a "here's all our AI credentials" recap [1] 0: https://lspace.swyx.io/p/google-vs-openai https://lspace.swyx.io/p/google-vs-openai 1: https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyond-language.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyon...

throwaway29303 4y ago
Jeff Dean has been doing yearly recaps since 2017. 2017 https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on.html 2018 https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on.html (part 1) https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on_12.html (part 2) 2019 https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/01/looking-back-at-googles-research.html 2020 http://ai.googleblog.com/2021/01/google-research-looking-back-at-2020.html 2021 http://ai.googleblog.com/2022/01/google-research-themes-from-2021-and.html 2022 http://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyond-language.html
DocTomoe 4y ago
A friend of mine who is in "serious" AI research keeps telling me not to get too excited about Google's AI stuff, as they do release a lot of papers, but these are essentially worthless and non-reproduceable as they hide raw data. He suspects half of them or more are completely made up, as they do not align well with what else happens in the field. I can't verify that, but whenever the "AI" behind my Google Home gets a bit more stupid (happens once a week nowadays, with it 'forgetting' even the few things that worked before), I am inclined to agree.
- swyx 4y ago
  agree that they are nonreproduceable, but they are probably not worthless in that i'm sure they have very extensive review processes and theyve said that they actually put models like T5 into production on search. there's no bigger skin in the game than that. > they do not align well with what else happens in the field i'm interested in this comment though. havent transformers changed the field? what is this referring to? mind getting your friend to elaborate?

achow 4y ago

Quite possible (ChatGPT related). Considering this was the Tweet that he sent yesterday.. https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1615820298305118221 https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1615820298305118221 As a followup to AI blogpost (which is clearly in response to ChatGPT) https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyond-language.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyon...

helsinkiandrew 4y ago

In Google I/O 2017 they announced a "pivot to AI". https://www.engadget.com/2017-05-20-at-i-o-2017-google-doubled-down-on-a-future-built-on-ai.html https://www.engadget.com/2017-05-20-at-i-o-2017-google-doubl... Google Assistant, Tensorflow, Google Lens, Cloud TPU, Google Goggles, auto mail responses etc. A lot of interesting stuff but nothing that has made the popular press like chatGPT, dall-e etc.

kgwgk 4y ago
DeepMind has occasionally made to the popular press - but not like ChatGPT. Coverage was more like that of IBM’s Watson and Deep Blue back in the day.

joshvm 4y ago

I'm not sure if you'd call it a pivot, but Google Brain was initially an X project that was started well before the deep learning craze took off. They hired Geoff Hinton in 2013. Investment in AI has been going on for a long time at Google, probably before Facebook/FAIR got seriously involved, but probably not Microsoft (MSR has been going for ~30 years and Chris Bishop started the Cambridge lab in '97 and they've long been known as a good ML group). It's not like Google wasn't using ML before that either. Search, recommender systems for ads, anti-spam, translate. Deep learning just turned out to be a lot better than the tools we used to use.

samwillis 4y ago

Google Ads, their most significant revenue stream, are entirely AI base, and speaking as an advertiser, it's only made it more crap. It's "ai" algorithms are designed to maximise value extraction from advertisers, rather than value creation for advertisers. There has been a systematic trend over the last 10 years to remove the controls advertisers have over their placements and spend and move towards a black box we are supposed to trust.

cutenewt 4y ago

This is definitely tone deaf. Who cares if you were held the lead in the first leg of the marathon? All that matters is who's in the lead now and who's in the lead at the finish.