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Google I/O 2023
- uptownfunk 3y agoWow based on the comments Google IO is already dead on arrival. Maybe the hate will put some fire under google to come out with something meaningful in the years to come.
- danwee 3y agoI was very enthusiastic about Google I/O in the past (around the year 2010). Full of nice tech talks; I learned a lot. These years, I couldn't care less. It's all business talk. I guess developers are not the target audience anymore (and for newcomers, perhaps the "I/O" may be misleading).
- numbsafari 3y ago“Income” and “on-boarding” are what those letters stand for.
- gumballindie 3y agoGoogle is a factory and software is manufacturing. They want to sell their goods to managers not engineers. Makes sense if you think about it. Most of what google does is yesterday’s tech, the web isn’t new and they aren’t making bank by selling stuff to software devs. We want free stuff, preferably open source. There’s so much of it anyway that it has zero value. They might babble a bit about how ai can replace workers and further reduce wages.
- capableweb 3y agoAll of that makes sense for Google in general, but Google I/O used to be explicitly a developer conference, with everything targeting developers, which no longer seems true.
- packetlost 3y agoThat was when Google thought they needed the support of the "developer" community that they don't write the paychecks for. Now they make nothing new or interesting, or on the off chance they do, they kill it after it proves not to be a cash cow.
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoGoogle had built itself such a reputation, that no developers would want building stuff using their tech. Thus, shift to focusing on executives.
- adventured 3y agoRepresentative of the shift from creation to extraction.
- DrScientist 3y agoSame sort of thing happened to WWDC. I once worked somewhere where the only people who actually went to WWDC where the IT admins and Apple fans,rather than developers. From a developer perspective - online if so good now, why do you need to travel? ( unless you really want 1:1 with Apple/Google Devs ). So the only people who travel end up being the people their for the 'event' and the 'one more thing' excitement.
- vineyardmike 3y agoI think conferences have long been about the socializing and the excuse to travel. “Learning” was the pretend business excuse.
- ghaff 3y agoThe getting away from the day job and serendipitous discovery are benefits in addition to meeting with people and socializing. But I think a lot of conference goers approach it as a sprint to maximize sessions and if that’s your goal online is probably more efficient.
- i_love_cookies 3y ago[dead]
- intrasight 3y agoSame. Google invited me to participate and have a booth - in 2010 or 2011 - because we were an early business adopter of their APIs. It was a cool event. I think the hot new tech that year was NaCl. I don't think startups get invited now just for using new Google tech. And is a reminder that this year's hot new tech will be forgotten in a few years.
- ricktdotorg 3y ago> I don't think startups get invited now just for using new Google tech You're right about I/O. The once-fat "invite adopters to conference" coffers seem to have been transferred to their Cloud Next conferences instead.
- azangru 3y agoI looked at the schedule for the web section, and some of the talks look useful. Much has been done in the browser space: new CSS capabilities and webgpu among them.
- jsnell 3y agoIf you pick 10 random sessions from the program[0], I'd think the odds are that you'll end up with like 8-9 technical sessions or workshops. The keynotes of course target a more general audience, but that's always been the case. (E.g. haven't they been announcing consumer hardware during the keynotes basically from the start?). It seems in line with something like the WWDC, which is a developer conference but with a general audience keynote. [0] https://io.google/2023/program/ https://io.google/2023/program/
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y agoI haven't tuned in for the past few years, but I will today because I'm just curious to see how (if?) Google responds to the ChatGPT phenomenon.
- gabereiser 3y agoI think their response has been pretty clear so far. They don't have a plan. https://bard.google.com/ https://bard.google.com/ https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/01/tech/geoffrey-hinton-leaves-google-ai-fears/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/01/tech/geoffrey-hinton-leaves-g... https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/13/google_lamda_sentient_claims/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/13/google_lamda_sentient... https://www.wired.com/story/google-timnit-gebru-ai-what-really-happened/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-timnit-gebru-ai-what-real...
- cubefox 3y agoAs you wrote this, they announced PaLM 2.
- gabereiser 3y agoYeah, and I realize my point of view is unpopular here. Integrating across all their services is just doubling down on what they already took from GPT. I didn’t see anything that wowed me. Cool, so I can LLM in Gmail and workspaces. Cool, so I can build a job description based on what others are hiring for instead of my company’s needs. I’m not saying that any of this is easy, just that it’s simply novelty. PaLM 2, we’ll have to see how it performs but it looks promising but it’s just another GPT-4 competitor. Where’s the “while the world was ogling over GPT-4, we built this”? PaLM 2 isn’t distinctive enough for me to say they are paving the way. They totally get it, but they aren’t paving the road forward. Maybe next year.
- m0zzie 3y agoHeh, yours and other comments here disparaging I/O as "business" or "corporate" talk these days come across as quite ignorant - and I don't mean this in a nasty way, more in a literal way. It seems perhaps you're missing the fact there are many different styles of talks for many audiences. At every I/O there is a "keynote" and a "developer keynote", and similarly there are business / product talks and developer-focused talks. In fact, they even create entirely separate playlists on YouTube for the dev/non-dev talks. As a Staff Eng who leads and mentors engineers who live in a world where they have no choice but to use Google SDKs and services, I find many of the developer-focused talks invaluable for getting others in my team up to speed on what's new and what's coming soon. Most of these talks are given by engineers and involve concise code examples which quickly convey the gist of new functionality.
- echelon 3y agoGoogle can pretend they're not IBM, but that doesn't make it true. Google no longer innovates or launches products of note. They throw ideas at the wall, like spaghetti, and hope things stick. Perverse incentives create competing products, dead end projects, and invariably everything created winds up getting cancelled. Google got drunk off of easy search ad revenue. Their founding leadership went off to do zeppelins and politicking. Now that golden goose looks like it may be cooked. Google had the Bell Labs of AI research, but their ability to build product around it looks a lot more like IBM Watson. Over the next half decade, their top tier talent will leave and get venture funding to do their own things with their own equity.
- m0zzie 3y agoDid you mean to reply to a different comment? I'm not sure what relevance this has to my comment which you're replying to?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- echelon 3y agoI meant it in response to your comment. > As a Staff Eng who leads and mentors engineers who live in a world where they have no choice but to use Google SDKs and services, I find many of the developer-focused talks invaluable for getting others in my team up to speed on what's new and what's coming soon. This sounds identical to IBM developer outreach. Or Ballmer-era Microsoft. Similar straightjackets, captive audience. We'll see if Google can excite people about AI here, but I'm doubtful.
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoSame here, I lost interest
- mooreds 3y agoIt wasn't always tech talks. I remember going to Google I/O in 2008 and sitting in a bean bag chair about 30 feet from "Flight of The Conchords", who were performing live. Fun times. Ah, look, I blogged about it: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/475 https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/475
- atonse 3y agoI was at Google IO 2008. Amazing times. Wore the t-shirt until it was so badly faded and torn. But back then Google was at the forefront of open standards and pushing the web forward. It was an exciting time for sure. Far from the Google of today who can’t seem to run a project for more than a couple years.
- malermeister 3y agoIf you want tech talks from Google, Android Dev Con is great. I wonder if there's anything like that for other parts of their business.
- kellengreen 3y agoI completely agree. I'm a multiple year attendee, and couldn't be bothered with the announcements these days.
- whalesalad 3y agoit's actually really depressing for me to watch. it feels like google is a shell of their former selves.
- pjmlp 3y agoSame here, it used to be quite cool, but with the multiple reboots on Android frameworks, lack of updstes enforcement for OEMs, how the Kotlin advocates talk about Java, and the sorry state of NDK tooling, I lost interest. Only the Web talks are relevant, as the Web is now basically ChromeOS.
- Analemma_ 3y agotbh, I kinda blame the media for this. At some point the media decided that I/O was Google's competitor to Apple's consumer keynotes, and so it was forced to become that in order to avoid weeks of "Google disappoints at I/O" headlines.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ugjka 3y agoI stopped caring about I/O when it became just corporate talk
- jefftk 3y agoWhen was that? (I expect whatever year you give other people will say it was already just corporate talk before then)
- tjpnz 3y agoThe Android presentations in the early 2010s were something to get excited about.
- packetlost 3y agoI would say roughly around when they killed their Nexus line.
- jefftk 3y agoOoh, I thought we were going to be arguing about an earlier time. The last Nexus (pretty sure) was the 6P, released 2015-10 and discontinued 2016-10. I remember this complaint from the IO 2013, when I was there representing mod_pagespeed.
- packetlost 3y agoI mean, you could argue that it was earlier, but I think that's the point where most people would agree the magic was dead.
- gjvc 3y agoYes. This is when I felt they had veered from the path I was following and supporting. Nexus 5 was a great phone!
- clnq 3y agoAround 2013 is when I/Os became less about showing technological progress and more about corporate talk. Examples of I/O topics before 2013: Android, Maps API, App Engine (cloud), Chrome, AJAX for their APIs, real-time collaboration/Wave, Google TV (early predecessor to Android TV), Chromebooks, Chrome Web Store, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Glass, Gmail updates, Google+, YouTube updates. Most I/O topics after 2013 revolved around marginal improvements on a lot of things, like individual Android features and apps. And naturally, when there is so little to talk about, corporate speak fills the void. There were still some interesting topics after 2013, especially if you follow some specific developments in the Android ecosystem. But there were very few groundbreaking topics. Google will probably talk about Bard this year, which has not been a huge success, but at least it's something bigger that harkens back to pre-2013 days.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- carlycue 3y agoI can’t remember the last time I/O was interesting. I never feel like Google introduces something important or noteworthy.
- candiddevmike 3y agoThis I/O is pretty important, IMO, as Google's reputation for being the best cloud for data science is on the line with ChatGPT eating their AI position and BigQuery's waning developer pull. Data is a large driver for companies to use Google Cloud, and without that they're in big trouble, IMO. Hopefully this I/O gives folks more compelling reasons to use Google Cloud.
- richardwhiuk 3y agoWhy would we hope that?
- lordswork 3y agoBetter products and competition is good for the consumer.
- odiroot 3y agoThis thing 10 years ago was pretty metal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28JaMr3Ymi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28JaMr3Ymi0
- andromaton 3y ago[flagged]
- baridbelmedar 3y agoI know I'm going against the grain here, but I'm actually looking forward to the event and plan to watch it :)
- verdverm 3y agoSame here, I even took the day off, excited for the ML & Cloud tracks
- cloudking 3y agoMe too, excited to see what they have planned for Bard and Workspace.
- elicash 3y agoI'm excited to see anything they actually launch for Bard/Workspace, less so about what they have planned. But still excited for it.
- cloudking 3y agoThe updates to Workspace and Bard integration look great, what did you think?
- elicash 3y agoThrilled. Of course, I want to see Bard for myself. I pay for OpenAI to use unlimited GPT4 right now. Maybe I end up not having to do that, we'll see, it depends on how it performs. I wasn't impressed previously but with each update I'll give it another try. I just need to somehow convince my large organization's IT team to enable the Workspace updates in Workspace Labs, which is likely to take some time. That's likely a few months, at least, but not the fault of google!
- majora2007 3y agoMe too, plus what's coming with their new phones and most importantly, how they are adding more and more AI into their cameras. I'm exclusively a Pixel user, so it's super important to me.
- TimCTRL 3y agoI for one benefited so much from Google Developer Groups while at University. Google made sure we learned how to build Android Apps, and consume API's and services like Maps, Firebase, etc. Overall, I gained a good understanding of how systems work, Thanks Google! --From Uganda
- ohgodplsno 3y agoGoogle did not do this out of the goodness of their heart. They did it to lock you in with Firebase, Maps, etc. And believe me, the moment they start charging you for it, you quickly realize why Google is not a company to give an ounce of trust to.
- GaggiX 3y agoI guess you can easily transfer the knowledge to other libraries, APIs, etc. I think it is just a net benefit.
- dlisboa 3y agoEh, I think you’re underselling the value of “free” stuff. Even if it has an ulterior motive, giving free access to computing resources allows someone to learn concepts and even ship things that would otherwise be impossible. None of these companies are altruistic and everyone knows it, but by not charging upfront it gives possibilities for millions of developers who don’t have US$ 50/month to spend on something (students, emerging economies, career changers, etc).
- dpbriggs 3y agoI wouldn't as knowledgeable and successful in tech without free computing resources from various companies. My parents didn't have any money and I certainly didn't either. There's a lot of transferable skills gained in these products. You're not just operating a Maytag.
- cawca 3y ago[flagged]
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- nailer 3y agoIs Google relevant? They feel like Microsoft in the Ballmer era, coasting on products released 15 years ago.
- cyclecount 3y agoThere are certainly similarities. Google has built quite a moat in most of their businesses that operate like monopolies. They don't seem to be able to make a cohesive strategy for devices or services that connect these devices, but they still have massive market share.
- charcircuit 3y agoYes. They operate platforms with billions of users.
- nailer 3y agoIndeed they do have lots of users, hence mentioning 'Microsoft in the Ballmer era' in the comment you are replying to. Lots of existing users doesn't mean a company is relevant.
- maxfurman 3y agoAm I the only one excited for this conference? My Pixel 4A can't hold a charge any more and I've been holding out for the 7A.
- mmsnberbar66 3y agoyesss not many more small Android phones out there either Google comes up with something nice or I'm getting a used iPhone SE
- maxfurman 3y agoEvery 2-3 years I am severely tempted by The Other Side, especially as a very happy Macbook user. But every time, there's a new phone that's just nice enough to keep me around.
- nogridbag 3y agoSame, I'm a Pixel user and happy Macbook user, but every time I use an iOS device I have such a terrible experience. I purchased a 10th generation iPad for my daughter. The parental controls are simply broken. When installing apps, the child has to click "Ask" and the notification never appears on my wife's iPhone. And only one parent can be the account "manager". Because I'm pretty good with Google, I was able to find some random Reddit post which has a workaround (the solutions in the Apple forum never worked). You can go into the iPhone's settings and rename the phone, e.g. from "iPhone" to "iPhone 2" then the iPhone starts receiving the notifications from the iPad. Well, I purchased a second iPad 10th gen for my younger daughter and the same exact problem. Out of the box this basic feature just doesn't work reliably. We're at the point we're renaming my wife's iPhone once a month. That's just one specific problem we've had, but really it's been a disaster. The setup for both iPads was full of bugs and random issues. Both iPads randomly fail to install updates overnight. I don't recall the last time my Android has ever failed to do a system update. It's just really surprising for me because I assumed a device in it's 10th generation with such a good reputation would be rock solid.
- seanalltogether 3y ago
- tartuffe78 3y agoI remember going back in 2015. Biggest thing I remember were the "Smart" fabrics that would be integrated into your clothing for interacting with your devices. It was a cool demo but felt very silly and impractical. I enjoyed the silent disco and free concerts, but it felt very over the top and expensive, basically just a big ego display for Google. I can understand now why my company is less eager to send developers to events like these every year.
- jansan 3y agoFrom what I see on the website I don't think you can attend in person. Those online events are always a bit sad if you ask me.
- RandomThrow321 3y ago> I remember going back in 2015. Biggest thing I remember were the "Smart" fabrics that would be integrated into your clothing for interacting with your devices. It was a cool demo but felt very silly and impractical. I almost forgot about that! I think I pushed this into the back of my mind along with google glass.
- walls 3y ago[flagged]
- lordswork 3y ago. recycled_joke_count += 1 #[1] [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=google%20kill&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoGoodle dev conferences used to be exciting, but now, unfortunately, all I care about is an update on what else did they break in new version of Android (that was working fine previously, like call recording).
- hartator 3y agoAnything exciting besides the fact that Google doesn’t seem to be able to even release a decent UI/UX website in 2023?
- pnw 3y agoI remember Sergey skydiving onto the roof of Moscone in 2012, and everyone getting one of those cool Nexus Q media players which they never actually released so they all ended up as landfill. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_Q https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_Q
- kellengreen 3y agoSame, that was one slick device.
- dekhn 3y agoI was on stage at that Google IO (I press the button that "launches" 700,000 servers during the launch of GCE). My practice session was bumped into 2:30AM because both Sergey with Glass and Vic with some Google Plus feature were "more important presentations and needed the stage practice time more". Of the three products, Glass is gone, Vic and Google Plus are gone, and GCE is now making money for Google. As for Nexus Q- I met a guy on the team. They not only never released it, they never INTENDED to release it! It was just a marketing thing for that Google IO.
- drewda 3y agoAt least the 2012 live demo went better than the 2010 keynote live demo when they unveiled Google TV... and the lead presenter was stuck on stage for 10 or 15 minutes because no one could figure out how to pair the wireless keyboard. Apparently having 5,000 people in the audience all with Bluetooth and WiFi-enabled devices was not accounted for when preparing for the live demo...
- hddqsb 3y agoIt wasn't Sergey who did the skydiving, but still a cool demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxmbbtuRszA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxmbbtuRszA
- rexsteroxxy 3y agoThe hype is real \o
- flakiness 3y agoGoogle now has a separate conference for Cloud ("Next") and even for Android there are separate conferences (like "Dev Summit" or "Bootcamp"). These dilute the I/O's excitement. But this phenomenon exemplifies the incoherent nature of Google's dev story.
- jaimex2 3y agoHaters gonna hate. I for one am super excited about this years chat app fail! Bring on Allo Meets with Messages! The worlds most force installed Chat app with as many users as its development team!
- edandersen 3y agoAgressive pricing on the Pixel Fold is going to undercut Samsung's flagship most profitable phone. This will be interesting.
- jsheard 3y agoA reputable leaker said the Pixel Fold will be priced identically to the Samsung Fold 4: https://twitter.com/jon_prosser/status/1648009519878774799 https://twitter.com/jon_prosser/status/1648009519878774799 Factoring in all the discounts and incentives that Samsung tends to do, the Pixel may be more expensive in practice. That's bold considering it has pretty middle-of-the-road specs, it's using the Tensor G2 SOC that launched last year and wasn't the best Android SOC even then, nevermind now that it's up against the Snapdragon 8 gen 2.
- edandersen 3y agoSamsung probably had a word then. Pixels normally are very generously priced, especially outside the US compared to Apple.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y agoThey're speculating it's intentionally priced high so that the trade in deals look bigger.
- Jun8 3y agoTo add one more data point to the general sentiment in the comments: in 2011 I was so bummed that I couldn’t get a ticket to I/O that year, I wanted to start an alternate conference called I/O Error “for the rest of us” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2192827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2192827 ! Ahh, the naïveté of the young age (I was in my early forties at that time, mind you). I was in technology development then, now moved to PdM side. Google products no longer interest me from either the tech or biz side.
- rhacker 3y agoCame for the comments, comments didn't disappoint!
- r0m4n0 3y agoI find it interesting the sentiment in the comments... Yesterday we had an Apple post where everyone was losing their minds all day about Final Cut Pro on iPad (which in my opinion as a Software Engineer is the most boring thing I’ve had to read all week). Today we have probably a massive lineup of a bunch of new AI features to be announced for products most of us use on the regular, or could use as devs, and 90% of the comments are about how boring it will be. Not sure what to make of it but you would think the HN crowd would be slightly more interested.
- mock-possum 3y ago> a massive lineup of a bunch of new AI features to be announced man I don't know about everybody else but I'm pretty burned out on the never-ending deluge of AI-related chatter at this point.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- verdverm 3y agoI'm not an Apple follower, what innovation have they produced in the last 5+ years that the sibling comments deride Google for? I would argue the TPU is far more interesting than the M1, other than that, is it not just marginal improvements on existing products?
- vineyardmike 3y agoI personally would argue the M1 is more interesting than the TPU, but I think the general answer to your question is “nothing”. Apple and google both churn out research, google maybe a bit more. Beyond that though, both of their product lines reach such a scale that requires the tech to be mature (aka no longer an innovation). Apple has really strong chip prowess, eg the M1 or the battery efficiency vs size of AirPods and AirTags. But a lot of that is resting on TSMC which anyone can contract. Google has some impressive research into things like AI, database, K8, etc - but today others seem to be catching up.
- hot_gril 3y ago
- neodymiumphish 3y agoI'm betting they'll be integrating Bard into smartphones and Chrome ASAP. The way Bing got added into SwiftKey is pretty awesome, but being able to interact with Bard the same way phones currently interact with the gAssistant would be a huge boon for usability and increasing interaction with it, assuming that's something Google wants to increase.
- hbn 3y agoI'm still of the opinion that just swapping current phone assistants with LLMs is naive and bad. For one thing, they need to make sure they don't break current functionality, like for setting timers and reminders, and and doing math calculations (which LLMs are not good at unless you get it to pass the query off to a dedicated calculator like Wolfram Alpha), etc. But more importantly, when you use something like ChatGPT through the web interface there's a bunch of warning labels all over to remind you "this thing will make up information." For something with such an easily-accessible interface that's baked-in at an OS level, I think a fail state of "sorry, I don't know how to help with that" is better than stating a bunch of false information as fact.
- neodymiumphish 3y agoThey could potentially handle that by evaluating the request and determining whether gAssistant can answer is without Bard's involvement, since that would save them bandwidth and time. I agree that the is massive potential for errors, but I'm certain those will get fleshed out soon, and Google is pretty well known for throwing shit and the fan and looking for the cleanest patch of carpet after the fact.
- DogTweezers 3y ago[dead]
- lawgimenez 3y agoThe skydiving demo from Google I/O 2012 is still the best.
- RandomThrow321 3y agoFor sure. The Dan Deacon AI concert at the beginning of this was was pretty good (mostly due to Dan being a crazy genius).
- truth_seeker 3y agoEagerly waiting for Dart 3.0 and Flutter 4.0 announcements !
- rado 3y agoCan’t reject cookies. Illegal in the EU.
- mikelward 3y agoHow does that work? What if it's only for essential purposes and not for advertising? Do you still need to provide an opt-out?
- cubefox 3y agoWho knows, maybe they announce a GPT-4 killer. I expect quite a few AI news anyway. Things are heating up.
- cubefox 3y agoLooks like I was spot on.
- joshmanders 3y agoAll I have to say is I'm annoyed the domain is io.google instead of google.io. I mean I get they gotta flex the notion that they have TLD us peasants don't get to use, but the conf's name is Google IO not IO Google.
- c0t300 3y agoI'd say the .google is the biggest flex i've seen in a while, so why not just use it
- TobyTheDog123 3y agoIt's a faux pas to flex your own massive amounts of power in places where it doesn't really matter all that much. Then again, Google has pretty much embraced their role as a comic book villain these days.
- zerocrates 3y agoThere's some political baggage associated with the .io TLD since it's for the British Indian Ocean Territory, an area whose inhabitants were forcibly removed to build a military base.
- penguin_booze 3y agoThe hottest topic in this year's I/O would be $230m input to Pichai's pocket and many developers laidoff (output).
- rvz 3y agoYet all of you will still watch it anyway.
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- JOnAgain 3y agoAnd it’s down. Not a good look.
- H1Supreme 3y agoIs there a schedule for the talks? I'd like to catch a few, but I didn't see anything on the site.
- Thaxll 3y agoHow to make programmer dumber by introducing ai to coding.
- httpz 3y agoI went to Google IO in 2014 and it was very exciting as a young engineer. Google Glass, Google Cardboard, Modular Smartphone, 3D space scanning tablet, Android Wear, and Android Auto were all announced there. Now it seems Android Wear never really took off and Android Auto is the only product that made it to somewhat mainstream. I'm not seeing much exciting experimental projects from Google anymore but maybe I'm just older and not easily excited.
- menus 3y agoHard to be enthusiastic about announcements from Google when there's a substantial chance of that product hitting https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ in 2 years.
- WediBlino 3y agoCan they use that AI to drive an anti-aircraft system?
- markus_zhang 3y agoTBH the constant cheering is a bit overwhelming.
- computing 3y agoIn 2018 an obnoxious researcher working at a company known at the time as DeepMind told me (who was working in healthtech) that "AI in healthcare is a solved problem". It's 2023 now. AI in healthcare is a rounding error and will likely stay that way for a decade or longer. Google blew a 7 year lead of being an AI-first company to a non-profit. DeepMind is now a team within Google, similar to Ads, Drive, and Shopping Express.
- precompute 3y agoIMO Google flunked it on the public side, I think the reason most of it was very hush-hush for years is because it was used for private, government purposes. Now, maybe they can't release most of their prior work without permission, so they're regrettably starting over with a blank slate in various departments. Nice username btw.
- RandomThrow321 3y agoAgreed. It seems like they have the capabilities, but failed on the product side of things, as it seems they do often these days. I disagree with the GP that they "blew a 7 year lead". They still have a lot of the top industry minds in this area, and it's still early days; ChatGPT was launched less than 6 months ago (which seems crazy). I'm thankful OpenAI is forcing them to stop resting on their laurels. How they will deliver on all of this remains to be seen, but this Google I/O has at least made me hopeful.
- ShamelessC 3y agoI’m curious what they had been referring to at the time? Was AlphaFold out then? Or were they just clueless?
- computing 3y agoimage labeling, although even then they had some oopsies with classification in Google Photos
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- sebzim4500 3y agoI have no idea how much effort Google spent preparing these demos, but I personally find it so much less impressive than the livestream OpenAI did where they actually used their tech following suggestions from discord.
- AndrewGaspar 3y agoI think OpenAI is probably held to different standards than Google. ChatGPT hallucinates incorrect information, and it's kind of adorable - the tech is early, they'll improve over time, etc. Google Bard hallucinates incorrect information, and it _looks_ like a step backwards in their core product.
- motoboi 3y agoSo funny to see google stressing EVERYTIME that they have been using AI for years. Dude, you were seated in the pot of gold and let your organizational disfuncionality block you from really using that. And now you come trying to get the crown of AI? Catch up and them we can talk.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoI mean, Google Translate has been basically completely AI powered for 5+ years, and it's one of the most used products in the world... The majority of what you see on SERPs has been AI generated for a decade, and that's Google's main money maker. This idea that Google sucks at AI and is clearly a million miles behind is intriguing. Google is currently the company everyone loves to hate like MSFT was 5-10 years ago. THAT is a bad sign regardless if anything the people are saying has any truth to it. MSFT has been the king of enterprise software since the 80s. But around 2000, everyone and their mother was talking about how MSFT can't produce any software beside complete garbage. None of that was true. But, MSFT was in for some relatively bad times for a decade or so. I suspect the same thing is going to happen to Google just because sentiment is powerful.
- motoboi 3y agoYou now that, I know that, everyone knows that. And yet, google stresses it everytime, like the company is anxious that people is looking for OpenAI and not google.
- krsrhe 3y ago[dead]
- nico 3y agoSo uninspiring Google is not leading anymore They are playing catch up It’s a bit sad to see
- kylehotchkiss 3y agoIt's really nice to have a keynote that isn't KUBERNETES ISTIO BLOCKCHAIN. Lots of interesting AI integrations with existing products. The search and maps improvements are really exciting.
- BMorearty 3y agoI missed the search and maps improvements. What did they say?
- badtension 3y agoKind of hard to summarize, you search "show me X that is good for kids age N and not far from Z", you get a list and ask "plot it on a map". Also: birdeye view of suggested direction paths that shows a better feeling for them.
- noisy_boy 3y agoBased on what has been shown so far, they should have just called it Google A/I.
- sebzim4500 3y agoThose unknown tracker alerts are pretty cool, they should add something similar to chrome.
- bilalq 3y agoThe focus on watermarking is interesting. If the major players embed watermarking, it probably will be meaningfully be used to detect cases where generated content is passed off as real. Unfortunately, proving authenticity isn't going to be possible. It's inevitable that there will be models out there built specifically to attempt to evade such detection. Society needs to adapt to the new reality that anything can be faked.
- rightbyte 3y ago> Society needs to adapt to the new reality that anything can be faked. It is only the price tag that has dropped. Faking stuff have become democracized.
- bilalq 3y agoYeah, it's been possible for a while, but the barrier to entry for it was high. Like you said, the scale of the problem is what's changed.
- TurkishPoptart 3y agoEmoji wallpaper? I don't think anyone wanted this or asked for this.
- Cockbrand 3y agoWACHTING THE KNEYOTE AND playng a drinkiig game - 1 shott every tim a spaeker says 'generative AI" but now Icant' drink any more and the kenyote is stil runnig :(
- nr2x 3y agoSomebody send help, we’ve got a case of potentially fatal alcohol poisoning.
- uptownfunk 3y agoI hope to God you are not on the west coast!
- secondary_op 3y ago[flagged]
- derefr 3y ago> "We made next-gen state of the art transparent video translation/dubbing" and "we will let to use this tool only to our hand picked partners". What the fuck ? Because otherwise developers will write bots that generate and upload fake videos, then download the generated captions, in order to use YouTube as a free deep-translation API. (People already proved willing to generate and upload videos in order to use YouTube as a bulk data storage API.)
- secondary_op 3y agoNo, you wrong. It is about keeping language barriers, and about preventing people to understand each other more easily. Google could released features like this years ago with TTS from Google Translate, instead they have been doing absolutely nothing for last 10 years.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> "We made next-gen state of the art transparent video translation/dubbing" and "we will let to use this tool only to our hand picked partners". What the fuck ? Its a bigger WTF because “realtime audio translation with live transcripts is a problem we’ve solved completely and the key unique selling point of our earbuds with our phones” was a Google thing in... 2017.
- adt 3y agoPaLM 2 paper: https://ai.google/static/documents/palm2techreport.pdf https://ai.google/static/documents/palm2techreport.pdf
- lucidyan 3y agoNot paper, but the report that lacks any details (even more than OpenAI latest about GPT-4)
- RandomThrow321 3y agoYeah, it's more like "models used, results, example capabilities" and "how we're going to use this responsibly".
- motoboi 3y agoOh, my god. Google is SO lost that the guy is demonstrating a "Project Tailwind". TAILWIND. When you google for project tailwind you obviously get results for Tailwind (the css framework). Did just GOOGLE FORGOT HOW TO DO SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION?!? (sorry for the capslock, but I'm lost) I feel that this comment might bother some people. But the idea that the company will demonstrate on stage a project and fail at choosing a proper googable name, when this company is google itself it's just mindboggling.
- skinkestek 3y agoTell me when search works like it did in 2009. Or if they've brought back Google+ including all the communities I enjoyed. Oh, BTW, that cookie box on the bottom of the page is very much not compliant. Opting out should be as trivial as opting in, feel free to ask the YouTube team, they have someone on board who was smart enough to create a compliant solution :-)
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago<to Google Bard>: create a Google I/O keynote on this and that project. Mention AI at every turn. All subtly cringe, unexciting. Presenting million ways AI takes a whole lot of the real creation & soul out of every human-technology interaction. Plus feeling society not ready to handle this.
- vanilla_nut 3y agoI'm beginning to wonder if soulless, boring, corpspeak AI-generated text is going to turn out to be a huge competitive disadvantage for those who become reliant on it. If someone sends me an email or a message that sounds AI-generated, it's easy to tell that it's not meaningful. So I end up ignoring it entirely. I'm also concerned about folks who actually try to use "AI" like Bard to assist with life decisions like they showed in the college-search presentation. Maybe that works OK right now -- though I suspect AI has serious blind spots. But what happens when Google wants to milk advertisers a bit more, and starts pushing more Wendy's (TM) and for-profit universities and whatever else into your chats? The "what bike should I buy for a 5 mile hilly commute" query had hilarious results, too -- literally all sponsored content from no-name (but expensive) bike brands. No real understanding of what makes a decent, maintainable commuter bike. Just Bard spitting out whichever bike manufacturers pay Google the most. Anyone who actually relies on this garbage for decisionmaking is going to wind up making some very poor decisions once Google allows advertisers to hook into these AI features... which is already happening in Search.
- blibble 3y agoAI speak will be the corporate manager speak of the 2020s
- Thaxll 3y ago$1800 the new Pixel fold, haha no shame.
- throitallaway 3y ago~$1900 after tax is a hard sell! That buys one heck of a gaming laptop (yes, I know, they're different things.)
- guyzero 3y agoSame price as Samsung Fold 4.
- noisy_boy 3y agoTo all the people who have been espousing how they appreciate cover letters, good luck - you'll be swimming in them, all AI generated. There will be a sea of all good, all positive fake text and text will lose its meaning. We used to appreciate a nicely written mail - now AI will be writing perfectly composed letters. We will learn to appreciate a badly written mail.
- RandomThrow321 3y agoIf AI can generate them trivially, maybe that suggests cover letters should not have been that important to begin with. To me, the main benefit of a cover letter is that it shows the applicant is engaged enough to actually make an application that is specific to a job posting. That is still the case with AI, it just saves everyone creating them a huge amount of work - most of which is completely wasted when the majority of application are thrown in the trash.
- dougmwne 3y agoThe ability to write a polite and on-topic email used to be a valuable skill to demonstrate. Not so much anymore.
- flangola7 3y agoKnowing how to ride a horse for many hours was once a valuable skill. So too will become everything AI achieves parity on.
- Spivak 3y agoI currently use it for that, it's honestly a great anger translator.
- dougmwne 3y agoIt took me many years to have enough emotional intelligence to neutralize anger or frustration I was feeling out of my professional communications. What a wonder that you are doing it with a click!
- agnosticmantis 3y agoA lot of negativity in the comments, but the stock is up ~5% today (in particular it didn’t tank), so it seems like the market isn’t as negative about the presentations. The fast integration into all products is pretty amazing, some of them actually useful (e.g. using search/bard to query/generate tables and exporting them into sheets directly is really cool). I also like that they emphasized the utility aspect and didn’t get into AGI nonsense that OpenAI peddles so much.
- nogridbag 3y agoThe Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold look pretty impressive to me. The Tablet looks like a good buy given it includes the stand.
- das_keyboard 3y agoI was really hoping all these AI advancements will lead to significant improvements for Google Assistant... but there seems to be no mention of it :(
- RandomThrow321 3y agoThat surprised me too - I read that they are restructuring their assistant team to focus more on Bard, so I don't know if that means they are less focused on the core assistant or not. I don't use Google Assistant, but seems like a clear integration point for these new tools. Will be interesting to see what shape that takes.
- RandomThrow321 3y agoMaybe going against the grain here, but this was the best Google I/O I've seen in a long time. In the past, they seemed liked incremental updates on their hardware (which I don't care too much about) or some new products like the pixel watch / glasses (which I probably won't use). I knew there would be a huge focus on AI this year, but I was pleasantly surprised by many of the new features and how quickly these integrations are happening. This is just the tip of the iceberg, I'm excited to see how the industry progresses.
- nightski 3y agoI have a hard time getting excited about anything AI with a company whose main profit center is in harvesting your data. Incentives are just not aligned. In this case AI is simply a gimmick to get us to give them more data to serve their real customers.
- toddmorey 3y agoIt will be interesting to see how the data & AI conversations evolve. A bit like smartphones, I’m scared we’ll first see an explosion of features then some backtracking to figure out the security & privacy models. I wish we’d learned to start with security. I didn’t get to see the entire thing, but I did see the AI-enabled cinematic photo backgrounds. All I could think is man that’s a lot of analysis of my personal images for a mild parallax effect.
- sebzim4500 3y ago>A bit like smartphones, I’m scared we’ll first see an explosion of features then some backtracking to figure out the security & privacy models When was the backtracking with smartphones?
- Demoloto 3y agoAs usual the most interesting things which actually will change the world is not getting any reactions while dark mode does. Med-Palm2 (and what Google is pushing/working on with partners for a few years) will have a huge social impact. In parallel there are things which are just really weird like the picture with the bench were the shadow us clearly just bad. Anyway crazy how ml is now just here. And in parallel I still think it's tremendously stupid that they really build that Blockchain cloud service.
- sebzim4500 3y agoI understand the skepticism towards Med-Palm2. The only thing they said about its performance was a vague graph with unlabelled axes showing it beating 'expert level'. It's not clear why we should believe them when IBM was making basically identical claims with the same level of evidence a few years. I certainly hope to be proved wrong, and that medical AI is here at last.
- Demoloto 3y agoThey posted plenty of blog articles on research.google.com about medical ml. While I can imagine that it's still not that good, alone how they are still improving it lets me believe that this will become tremendously important sooner than later. Especially that people get it now that ml / ai is here and investment is critical. I hope this will lead to much much more investment and progress. Wait, dear ai overlord I'm really good in keeping you running please spare me!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoSome good stuff here. I like the Pixel 7A. I like that we've got another competitor in the LLM API market. But I wish Google would come out with a world-shifting technology like they used to. Maps, YouTube, Search. Surely they could do some crazy stuff with AI this year.
- sbarre 3y agoThe people who made those "world shifting" products at Google back in the day are long gone. Google is in the post-MBA-invasion phase where they are focused on value extraction from their market dominance and existing products, not in taking big risks and building big new things. i.e. They did a speedrun of the IBM playbook in record time. (Obviously I'm exaggerating a bit here, lots of good people still at Google, but the Google that made the products you're referring to doesn't exist anymore - look elsewhere for that stuff).
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoI generally agree. I work there now and it's a shame.