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10 years ago, Google was one of the most exciting companies in the world to me, culminating in that amazing Google Chrome comic https://www.scottmccloud.com/goo

10 years ago, Google was one of the most exciting companies in the world to me, culminating in that amazing Google Chrome comic https://www.scottmccloud.com/googlechrome/ https://www.scottmccloud.com/googlechrome/ Their products and software seemed genuinely inspiring. Now, it seems to just be maintenance or death. Seemingly happens with all once-loved tech companies to some degree. It's quite sad but I guess time moves on. Totally self-inflicted for them though, they decided to stop moving forward

cma 4y ago
DeepMind's stuff has all been impressive.
- mdorazio 4y ago
  1) where can I use it? Compare this to what’s come out of OpenAI in the last two years. It’s like science fair vs. a company making actual tools. 2) how is it helping Alphabet’s bottom line? I haven’t seen it helping here either.
  - mirker 4y ago
    Alphafold is open and seems fundamentally transformative in the science space. GPT is nice but it’s a smart meme-generator at the moment. I don’t disagree with the impact on G’s bottom line, though.
    - uejfiweun 4y ago
      Gonna have to disagree about GPT. I’ve been using it as a tutor to learn ML on the side, and it’s literally the best tutor I’ve ever had.
      - mirker 4y ago
        Sure, I agree they are useful. My objection is it’s more in the tool category than science, while Alphafold is both. There isn’t convincing evidence that GPTs are pushing what we know; rather, they make it easier to process/search what we already know. You could hire an ML expert to be your tutor without GPTs and you’d get equal or better tutoring, though at a higher price. You can’t hire people to predict protein folding better than Alphafold. It’s very convenient that GPTs exist and they can provide tons of value, but they’re essentially the next version of mechanical turk or a domain expert you’d hire for contract work except more scalable. The net impact of GPTs may also be higher due to how often we use text, but I’d rather see a society curing disease, etc. than one generating fake books, etc.
        uejfiweun 4y ago
        I see what you're saying. However, I'd argue that the zero-shot learning capabilities of the latest GPTs, if continually improved upon, could potentially offer a path towards a generalist "scientist" agent, one that could perform its own research and take over R&D for humanity (aka, the singularity). But yes, I absolutely agree that the current gen capabilities of GPTs are nowhere close to this hypothetical situation. Of course, the models from Alphabet don't really fit this bill either. I do wonder how many "protein folding" style problems there are out there, for these narrow superintelligent AIs to solve.
  - cma 4y ago
    > where can I use it? Compare this to what’s come out of OpenAI in the last two years If you are using OpenAI stuff you are using it. > how is it helping Alphabet’s bottom line? I haven’t seen it helping here either. I guess I wasn't talking about "bottom line" impressive. Oracle might make a lot by squeezing current licensees in an unimpressive way, for example.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  True but they are quite independent of Google from my understanding.
LewisVerstappen 4y ago
No stapler for you!
bertman 4y ago
That was even 15 years ago (September 2008, time flies...).
gremlinsinc 4y ago
The very nature of how people search is changing. Personally, I'm LOVING phind.com, it hits all my buttons of what a modern AI inspired SE should be. IMHO someday soon, Google will just be the Youtube company. That will be their primary thing, and maybe that's good so they can make that better so it doesn't fail too.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  Meh - using phind a few times so far : - regurgitates stuff it hits on a shallow search as authoritative response (communicating uncertainty would be a great improvement for GPT models but I'm guessing that's not going to happen because of shallow RHLF preferences) - search index is worse than google (eg. I've tried a search where google lands on a good solution, phind hits official docs and offers suboptimal solution) - produces results slower than I can read source - I still need to go to the source for full reference or do follow-up (but again it's slow) Not seeing the value tbh. If it was gpt 3.5 fast with 4 quality now we might be on to something.
ChatGTP 4y ago
I thought Microsoft was well dead, but hey…here we are.

cma 4y ago

DeepMind's stuff has all been impressive.

mdorazio 4y ago
1) where can I use it? Compare this to what’s come out of OpenAI in the last two years. It’s like science fair vs. a company making actual tools. 2) how is it helping Alphabet’s bottom line? I haven’t seen it helping here either.
- mirker 4y ago
  Alphafold is open and seems fundamentally transformative in the science space. GPT is nice but it’s a smart meme-generator at the moment. I don’t disagree with the impact on G’s bottom line, though.
  - uejfiweun 4y ago
    Gonna have to disagree about GPT. I’ve been using it as a tutor to learn ML on the side, and it’s literally the best tutor I’ve ever had.
    - mirker 4y ago
      Sure, I agree they are useful. My objection is it’s more in the tool category than science, while Alphafold is both. There isn’t convincing evidence that GPTs are pushing what we know; rather, they make it easier to process/search what we already know. You could hire an ML expert to be your tutor without GPTs and you’d get equal or better tutoring, though at a higher price. You can’t hire people to predict protein folding better than Alphafold. It’s very convenient that GPTs exist and they can provide tons of value, but they’re essentially the next version of mechanical turk or a domain expert you’d hire for contract work except more scalable. The net impact of GPTs may also be higher due to how often we use text, but I’d rather see a society curing disease, etc. than one generating fake books, etc.
      - uejfiweun 4y ago
        I see what you're saying. However, I'd argue that the zero-shot learning capabilities of the latest GPTs, if continually improved upon, could potentially offer a path towards a generalist "scientist" agent, one that could perform its own research and take over R&D for humanity (aka, the singularity). But yes, I absolutely agree that the current gen capabilities of GPTs are nowhere close to this hypothetical situation. Of course, the models from Alphabet don't really fit this bill either. I do wonder how many "protein folding" style problems there are out there, for these narrow superintelligent AIs to solve.
- cma 4y ago
  > where can I use it? Compare this to what’s come out of OpenAI in the last two years If you are using OpenAI stuff you are using it. > how is it helping Alphabet’s bottom line? I haven’t seen it helping here either. I guess I wasn't talking about "bottom line" impressive. Oracle might make a lot by squeezing current licensees in an unimpressive way, for example.
sebzim4500 4y ago
True but they are quite independent of Google from my understanding.

LewisVerstappen 4y ago

No stapler for you!

bertman 4y ago

That was even 15 years ago (September 2008, time flies...).

gremlinsinc 4y ago

The very nature of how people search is changing. Personally, I'm LOVING phind.com, it hits all my buttons of what a modern AI inspired SE should be. IMHO someday soon, Google will just be the Youtube company. That will be their primary thing, and maybe that's good so they can make that better so it doesn't fail too.

moonchrome 4y ago
Meh - using phind a few times so far : - regurgitates stuff it hits on a shallow search as authoritative response (communicating uncertainty would be a great improvement for GPT models but I'm guessing that's not going to happen because of shallow RHLF preferences) - search index is worse than google (eg. I've tried a search where google lands on a good solution, phind hits official docs and offers suboptimal solution) - produces results slower than I can read source - I still need to go to the source for full reference or do follow-up (but again it's slow) Not seeing the value tbh. If it was gpt 3.5 fast with 4 quality now we might be on to something.

ChatGTP 4y ago

I thought Microsoft was well dead, but hey…here we are.