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I've heard that Google have models at least as good as the competition, but they're not using them in production because of scale. Don't know if it's true, but

I've heard that Google have models at least as good as the competition, but they're not using them in production because of scale. Don't know if it's true, but it sounds reasonable. Running inference that uses a lot of compute might be too expensive when you have billions of search requests and make a fraction of a cent on each, or whatever the actual numbers are. If that's the case they're not working towards a "better" model, they're probably more concerned with a cheaper one. And maybe something where you can make sure to construct the answer using their knowledge graph instead of hoping the black box doesn't just give plausible sounding replies that are wrong.

visarga 4y ago
Google never released a state of the art model, what they run in translate, ranking, etc are efficient models on par with state of the art a few years ago. They train huge models that are too large to even demo (PaLM 540B) and never release the models, not even for academia to try to build on them. Their voices and OCR are behind competition, I'd rather use ElevenLabs and Amazon Textract. Google makes a lot of noise but delivers little, and what they deliver is almost never the best in the world. I think maybe they made a mistake with TPUs and the PyTorch-NVIDIA path seems to be more productive and can deploy more advanced LLMs. There was a time when I was dying for an invite to Gmail or Google Wave, but that time has long passed and nothing in-between caused that level of excitement. What I appreciate most from Google is YouTube, and not for the UI or recommendations but for simply being the largest video platform with everything you could want in music and education. If I lost access to YouTube internet would be dead for me, well, almost dead.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  Google does produce world-class products that are virtually free (and wouldn't be through competitors). They say, the best products run so well you barely even notice their competitors or their complexity. Google Maps comes to mind.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Google Maps has actually gotten worse over time, and not even in the same way Search has where spam has been winning. eg in Japan they used to license the very best map data, but switched to the 2nd-best and cheaper one also used by Apple, and do a worse job presenting it. And of course globally its color scheme and visual hierarchy are stuck in 2005.
rvnx 4y ago
If this would be the case, Google would offer a paid version of LaMDA that would cover the costs of infrastructure ;) So this is not the reason.
mark_l_watson 4y ago
You make a really good point about blending large language models with their Knowledge Graph (I worked for a short while at Google using their Knowledge Graph). What gets me the most excited about systems like ChatGPT is not the systems as they are now, but rather all of the possible hybrid architectures, mixing in old tech and new ideas. I think ChatGPT is just a little first step.

visarga 4y ago

Google never released a state of the art model, what they run in translate, ranking, etc are efficient models on par with state of the art a few years ago. They train huge models that are too large to even demo (PaLM 540B) and never release the models, not even for academia to try to build on them. Their voices and OCR are behind competition, I'd rather use ElevenLabs and Amazon Textract. Google makes a lot of noise but delivers little, and what they deliver is almost never the best in the world. I think maybe they made a mistake with TPUs and the PyTorch-NVIDIA path seems to be more productive and can deploy more advanced LLMs. There was a time when I was dying for an invite to Gmail or Google Wave, but that time has long passed and nothing in-between caused that level of excitement. What I appreciate most from Google is YouTube, and not for the UI or recommendations but for simply being the largest video platform with everything you could want in music and education. If I lost access to YouTube internet would be dead for me, well, almost dead.

hackernewds 4y ago
Google does produce world-class products that are virtually free (and wouldn't be through competitors). They say, the best products run so well you barely even notice their competitors or their complexity. Google Maps comes to mind.
- astrange 4y ago
  Google Maps has actually gotten worse over time, and not even in the same way Search has where spam has been winning. eg in Japan they used to license the very best map data, but switched to the 2nd-best and cheaper one also used by Apple, and do a worse job presenting it. And of course globally its color scheme and visual hierarchy are stuck in 2005.

rvnx 4y ago

If this would be the case, Google would offer a paid version of LaMDA that would cover the costs of infrastructure ;) So this is not the reason.

mark_l_watson 4y ago

You make a really good point about blending large language models with their Knowledge Graph (I worked for a short while at Google using their Knowledge Graph). What gets me the most excited about systems like ChatGPT is not the systems as they are now, but rather all of the possible hybrid architectures, mixing in old tech and new ideas. I think ChatGPT is just a little first step.