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People hating on Sundar completely overlooking the fact that he pivoted Google to an AI first company 6 years ago, way before AI was hyped up. https://venturebe

People hating on Sundar completely overlooking the fact that he pivoted Google to an AI first company 6 years ago, way before AI was hyped up. https://venturebeat.com/ai/ai-weekly-google-shifts-from-mobile-first-to-ai-first-world/ https://venturebeat.com/ai/ai-weekly-google-shifts-from-mobi... He funded the Brain team that came up with major research breakthroughs like Transformers that power ChatGPT. AI is embedded behind the scenes in pretty much every Google product, you just don't know it because it's not packaged into a fancy chat interface. They didn't push Bard because they know LLMs have problems with getting facts straight, and they still are rolling it out in response to ChatGPT very cautiously.

EagnaIonat 4y ago
> Google to an AI first company 6 years ago, way before AI was hyped up AI hype train started back in 2015.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- p1esk 4y ago
  AI hype train started in 2012 thanks to Alexnet winning Imagenet competition, and this paper from Google: https://www.wired.com/2012/06/google-x-neural-network/amp https://www.wired.com/2012/06/google-x-neural-network/amp
  - pornel 4y ago
    Ooof, an AMP link. Reminds me why avoid Google products.
    - jwilk 4y ago
      Unamped: https://www.wired.com/2012/06/google-x-neural-network/ https://www.wired.com/2012/06/google-x-neural-network/
- hnfong 4y ago
  And Google Brain gained traction way before Sundar became CEO
gspencley 4y ago
You say all of that as if it's a good thing. Objectively, Google is doing just fine as far as I know. So my personal subjective experience is just that: anecdotal. However, over the last 6 years I have found myself abandoning Google's products en masse, with the most notable being search. Where Google really shined in its application of ML IMO was eliminating spam. Since then they have tried to use ML to solve all sorts of problems and it has only served to make their products worse. I switched away from search because, at some point, it started trying to infer some sort of meaning from my keywords when all I want are 1:1 keyword matches ranked by relevance, with exclusion and grouping operators. I started using DuckDuckGo not because of privacy concerns (ok maybe a little bit because of privacy concerns), but because I started to find that it was giving me more relevant results. I use GMail for work and it's fine, but even that widely popular product doesn't seem any better than the alternatives these days. I still have an ancient Yahoo mail account from the 90s and I use Tutanota for other personal email addresses. Granted, I'm not an email power user so I don't really use tags or other advanced features. Maybe GMail really shines there. But for a simple email client with good spam filtering, GMail is no better than alternatives these days IMO. Google docs and sheets are OK. I'm not sure how those are leveraging ML but it's the same deal as with GMail. I've used Office365, G-Suite and Libre Office running locally and as for features the only difference in functionality that I can observe is cloud vs local; if that's not a factor then they are all interchangeable. So I don't see how being "AI First" has improved the end user experience. I liked their products much better 10 years ago.
fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
Ai first? They completely missed the mark on LLMs as a critical component of search. They are AI last. This company had to be dragged into innovating on their core business using their supposed core competency.
ur-whale 4y ago
>People hating on Sundar completely overlooking the fact that he pivoted Google to an AI first company 6 years ago Wrong. Like all good McKinsey trained goons, Sundar has been trained to jump on existing established trends. He did realize the size of the AI swell when it was already very big and hopped on the gravy train. The deep net powered AI revolution started way before Sundar ever realized it was important. And all of this is nice, but none of the dollars poured into AI R&D at Google have been converted to a world changing product. Sure, you can now get Google to recognize your pet in your photos. But given all the shite they invented since 2010-ish in the AI domain, you'd think they'd have found a way to make something useful with it. I can think of maybe three places where AI really shines in Google products: translate, photos and spam filtering. That's it. Given the billions poured in the AI R&D black hole, that's really nothing to be proud of as a CEO.

EagnaIonat 4y ago

> Google to an AI first company 6 years ago, way before AI was hyped up AI hype train started back in 2015.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
p1esk 4y ago
AI hype train started in 2012 thanks to Alexnet winning Imagenet competition, and this paper from Google: https://www.wired.com/2012/06/google-x-neural-network/amp https://www.wired.com/2012/06/google-x-neural-network/amp
- pornel 4y ago
  Ooof, an AMP link. Reminds me why avoid Google products.
  - jwilk 4y ago
    Unamped: https://www.wired.com/2012/06/google-x-neural-network/ https://www.wired.com/2012/06/google-x-neural-network/
hnfong 4y ago
And Google Brain gained traction way before Sundar became CEO

gspencley 4y ago

You say all of that as if it's a good thing. Objectively, Google is doing just fine as far as I know. So my personal subjective experience is just that: anecdotal. However, over the last 6 years I have found myself abandoning Google's products en masse, with the most notable being search. Where Google really shined in its application of ML IMO was eliminating spam. Since then they have tried to use ML to solve all sorts of problems and it has only served to make their products worse. I switched away from search because, at some point, it started trying to infer some sort of meaning from my keywords when all I want are 1:1 keyword matches ranked by relevance, with exclusion and grouping operators. I started using DuckDuckGo not because of privacy concerns (ok maybe a little bit because of privacy concerns), but because I started to find that it was giving me more relevant results. I use GMail for work and it's fine, but even that widely popular product doesn't seem any better than the alternatives these days. I still have an ancient Yahoo mail account from the 90s and I use Tutanota for other personal email addresses. Granted, I'm not an email power user so I don't really use tags or other advanced features. Maybe GMail really shines there. But for a simple email client with good spam filtering, GMail is no better than alternatives these days IMO. Google docs and sheets are OK. I'm not sure how those are leveraging ML but it's the same deal as with GMail. I've used Office365, G-Suite and Libre Office running locally and as for features the only difference in functionality that I can observe is cloud vs local; if that's not a factor then they are all interchangeable. So I don't see how being "AI First" has improved the end user experience. I liked their products much better 10 years ago.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago

Ai first? They completely missed the mark on LLMs as a critical component of search. They are AI last. This company had to be dragged into innovating on their core business using their supposed core competency.

ur-whale 4y ago

>People hating on Sundar completely overlooking the fact that he pivoted Google to an AI first company 6 years ago Wrong. Like all good McKinsey trained goons, Sundar has been trained to jump on existing established trends. He did realize the size of the AI swell when it was already very big and hopped on the gravy train. The deep net powered AI revolution started way before Sundar ever realized it was important. And all of this is nice, but none of the dollars poured into AI R&D at Google have been converted to a world changing product. Sure, you can now get Google to recognize your pet in your photos. But given all the shite they invented since 2010-ish in the AI domain, you'd think they'd have found a way to make something useful with it. I can think of maybe three places where AI really shines in Google products: translate, photos and spam filtering. That's it. Given the billions poured in the AI R&D black hole, that's really nothing to be proud of as a CEO.