8 ms·

He's not wrong. DeepMind spends time solving big scientific / large-scale problems such as those in genetics, material science or weather forecasting, and Goog

He's not wrong. DeepMind spends time solving big scientific / large-scale problems such as those in genetics, material science or weather forecasting, and Google has untouchable resources such as all the books they've scanned (and already won court cases about) They do make OpenAI look like kids in that regard. There is far more to technology than public facing goods/products. It's probably in part due to the cultural differences between London/UK/Europe and SiliconValley/California/USA.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jahsome 3y ago
That statement isn't really directed at the people who care about the scientific or tech-focused capabilities. I'd argue the majority of those folks interested in those things already know about DeepMind. This statement is for the mass market MBA-types. More specifically, middle managers and dinosaur executives who barely comprehend what generative AI is, and value perceived stability and brand recognition over bleeding edge, for better or worse. I think the sad truth is an enormous chunk of paying customers, at least for the "enterprise" accounts, will be generating marketing copy and similar "biz dev" use cases.
roguas 3y ago
Oh it's good they working on important problems with their ai. Its just openai was working on my/our problems (or providing tools to do so) and that's why people are more excited about them. Not because of cultural differences. If you are more into weather forecasting, yeah it sure may be reasonable to prefer google more.
- faramarz 3y ago
  That’s what makes Altman a great leader. He understands marketing better than many of these giants. Google got caught being too big. Sure they will argue that AI mass release is a dangerous proposition, but Sam had to make a big splash otherwise he would be competing with incumbent marketing spendings far greater than OpenAI could afford. It was a genius move to go public with a simple UI. No matter how stunning the tech side is, if human interaction is not simple, the big stuff doesn’t even matter.
  - confused_boner 3y ago
    Google got Google Fiber'd
- dimask 3y ago
  Stuff like alphafold has and will have huge impact in our lives, even if I am not into spending time folding proteins myself. It is absurd to make this sort of comparisons.
freetanga 3y ago
While you are spot on, I cannot avoid thinking of 1996 or so. On one corner: IBM Deep Blue winning vs Kasparov. A world class giant with huge research experience. On the other corner, Google, a feisty newcomer, 2 years in their life, leveraging the tech to actually make something practical. Is Google the new IBM?
- behnamoh 3y ago
  google is the new IBM. apple is the new Nokia. openai is the new google. microsoft is the new apple.
  - brandall10 3y ago
    How is MS the new Apple? Apple has always been a product company, not seeing MS ever being that.
    - jboy55 3y ago
      Apple is the new Sony might be better. I'm trying to figure out who is the upcoming premium tech product company... not thinking of any. I think Tesla wants to be
      - bozhark 3y ago
        They can’t even get panels to line up right. Still.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        The issue with new premium tech is that you can't over-the-top existing ecosystems (Android, iOS). It's difficult to compete with an excellent product if whether you have a blue bubble in iMessage is more important.
      - sebastiennight 3y ago
        Humane definitely wants to be.
    - 3y ago
shutupnerd0000 3y ago
Nobody said he's wrong. Just that it's a bad look.
xipho 3y ago
> and Google has untouchable resources such as all the books they've scanned (and already won court cases about) https://www.hathitrust.org/ https://www.hathitrust.org/ has that corpus, and its evolution, and you can propose to get access to it via collaborating supercomputer access. It grows very rapidly. InternetArchive would also like to chat I expect. I've also asked, and prompt manipulated chatGPT to estimate the total books it is trained with, it's a tiny fraction of the corpus, I wonder if it's the same with Google?
- notpachet 3y ago
  > I've also asked, and prompt manipulated chatGPT to estimate the total books it is trained with Whatever answer it gave you is not reliable.
  - zlg_codes 3y ago
    How does this not extend to ALL output from an LLM? If it can't understand its own runtime environment, it's not qualified to answer my questions.
    - amputect 3y ago
      That's correct. LLMs are plausible sentence generators, they don't "understand"* their runtime environment (or any of their other input) and they're not qualified to answer your questions. The companies providing these LLMs to users will typically provide a qualification along these lines, because LLMs tend to make up ("hallucinate", in the industry vernacular) outputs that are plausibly similar to the input text, even if they are wildly and obviously wrong and complete nonsense to boot. Obviously, people find some value in some output of some LLMs. I've enjoyed the coding autocomplete stuff we have at work, it's helpful and fun. But "it's not qualified to answer my questions" is still true, even if it occasionally does something interesting or useful anyway. *- this is a complicated term with a lot of baggage, but fortunately for the length of this comment, I don't think that any sense of it applies here. An LLM doesn't understand its training set any more than the mnemonic "ETA ONIS"** understands the English language. **- a vaguely name-shaped presentation of the most common letters in the English language, in descending order. Useful if you need to remember those for some reason like guessing a substitution cypher.
michaelt 3y ago
> They do make OpenAI look like kids in that regard. Nokia and Blackberry had far more phone-making experience than Apple when the iPhone launched. But if you can't bring that experience to bear, allowing you to make a better product - then you don't have a better product.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tavavex 3y ago
  The thing is that OpenAI doesn't have an "iPhone of AI" so far. That's not to say what will happen in the future - the advent of generative AI may become a big "equalizer" in the tech space - but no company seems to have a strong edge that'd make me more confident in any one of them over others.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    OpenAI has all of the people using ChatGPT.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      A big advantage if this was a product with strong network externalities like social media networks, or even somewhat mobile phones with platform-biased communication tools. But I don't see generative AI as being particularly that way.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        Training data. Use begats feedback begats improvement.
      - nateburke 3y ago
        GenAI does not have network effects, correct. There was a time last year when consumer search was still on the table, and I can see how MSFT winning share there might have conferred network effects for genAI, but it didn't happen. Now it's all about the enterprise, which is to say isolated data, which pretty much rules out network effects.
scotty79 3y ago
> They do make OpenAI look like kids in that regard. It makes Google look like old fart that wasted his life and didn't get anywhere and now he's bitter about kids running on his lawn.
jazzyjackson 3y ago
Damn I totally forgot Google actually has rights over its training set, good point, pretty much everybody else is just bootlegging it.
chatmasta 3y ago
Great. But school's out. It's time to build product. Let the rubber hit the road. Put up or shut up, as they say. I'm not dumb enough to bet against Google. They appear to be losing the race, but they can easily catch up to the lead pack. There's a secondary issue that I don't like Google, and I want them to lose the race. So that will color my commentary and slow my early adoption of their new products, but unless everyone feels the same, it shouldn't have a meaningful effect on the outcome. Although I suppose they do need to clear a higher bar than some unknown AI startup. Expectations are understandably high - as Sundar says, they basically invented this stuff... so where's the payoff?
- utopcell 3y ago
  Why don't you like Google?
  - chatmasta 3y ago
    The usual reasons, evil big corp monopoly with a user-hostile business model etc. I still use their products. But if I had to pick a company to win the next gold rush, it wouldn't be an incumbent. It's not great that MSFT is winning either, but they are less user-hostile in the sense that they aren't dependent on advertising (another word for "psychological warfare" and "dragnet corporate surveillance"), and I also appreciate their pro-developer innovations.
junofan 3y ago
I think Apple (especially under Jobs) had it right that customers don’t really give a shit about how hard or long you’ve worked on a problem or area.
bufferoverflow 3y ago
They do not make Openai look like kids. If anything, it looks like they spent more time, but achieved less. GPT-4 is still ahead of anything Google has released.
tahoeskibum 3y ago
I thought that Google was based out of Silcon Valley/California/USA
- Matl 3y ago
  They're talking about DeepMind specifically.
foruhar 3y ago
From afar it seems like the issues around Maven caused Google to pump the brakes on AI at just the wrong moment with respect to ChatGPT and bringing AI to market. I’m guessing all of the tech giants, and OpenAI, are working with various defense departments yet they haven’t had a Maven moment. Or maybe they have and it wasn’t in the middle of the race for all the marbles.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jahsome 3y ago

That statement isn't really directed at the people who care about the scientific or tech-focused capabilities. I'd argue the majority of those folks interested in those things already know about DeepMind. This statement is for the mass market MBA-types. More specifically, middle managers and dinosaur executives who barely comprehend what generative AI is, and value perceived stability and brand recognition over bleeding edge, for better or worse. I think the sad truth is an enormous chunk of paying customers, at least for the "enterprise" accounts, will be generating marketing copy and similar "biz dev" use cases.

roguas 3y ago

Oh it's good they working on important problems with their ai. Its just openai was working on my/our problems (or providing tools to do so) and that's why people are more excited about them. Not because of cultural differences. If you are more into weather forecasting, yeah it sure may be reasonable to prefer google more.

faramarz 3y ago
That’s what makes Altman a great leader. He understands marketing better than many of these giants. Google got caught being too big. Sure they will argue that AI mass release is a dangerous proposition, but Sam had to make a big splash otherwise he would be competing with incumbent marketing spendings far greater than OpenAI could afford. It was a genius move to go public with a simple UI. No matter how stunning the tech side is, if human interaction is not simple, the big stuff doesn’t even matter.
- confused_boner 3y ago
  Google got Google Fiber'd
dimask 3y ago
Stuff like alphafold has and will have huge impact in our lives, even if I am not into spending time folding proteins myself. It is absurd to make this sort of comparisons.

freetanga 3y ago

While you are spot on, I cannot avoid thinking of 1996 or so. On one corner: IBM Deep Blue winning vs Kasparov. A world class giant with huge research experience. On the other corner, Google, a feisty newcomer, 2 years in their life, leveraging the tech to actually make something practical. Is Google the new IBM?

behnamoh 3y ago
google is the new IBM. apple is the new Nokia. openai is the new google. microsoft is the new apple.
- brandall10 3y ago
  How is MS the new Apple? Apple has always been a product company, not seeing MS ever being that.
  - jboy55 3y ago
    Apple is the new Sony might be better. I'm trying to figure out who is the upcoming premium tech product company... not thinking of any. I think Tesla wants to be
    - bozhark 3y ago
      They can’t even get panels to line up right. Still.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      The issue with new premium tech is that you can't over-the-top existing ecosystems (Android, iOS). It's difficult to compete with an excellent product if whether you have a blue bubble in iMessage is more important.
    - sebastiennight 3y ago
      Humane definitely wants to be.
  - 3y ago

shutupnerd0000 3y ago

Nobody said he's wrong. Just that it's a bad look.

xipho 3y ago

> and Google has untouchable resources such as all the books they've scanned (and already won court cases about) https://www.hathitrust.org/ https://www.hathitrust.org/ has that corpus, and its evolution, and you can propose to get access to it via collaborating supercomputer access. It grows very rapidly. InternetArchive would also like to chat I expect. I've also asked, and prompt manipulated chatGPT to estimate the total books it is trained with, it's a tiny fraction of the corpus, I wonder if it's the same with Google?

notpachet 3y ago
> I've also asked, and prompt manipulated chatGPT to estimate the total books it is trained with Whatever answer it gave you is not reliable.
- zlg_codes 3y ago
  How does this not extend to ALL output from an LLM? If it can't understand its own runtime environment, it's not qualified to answer my questions.
  - amputect 3y ago
    That's correct. LLMs are plausible sentence generators, they don't "understand"* their runtime environment (or any of their other input) and they're not qualified to answer your questions. The companies providing these LLMs to users will typically provide a qualification along these lines, because LLMs tend to make up ("hallucinate", in the industry vernacular) outputs that are plausibly similar to the input text, even if they are wildly and obviously wrong and complete nonsense to boot. Obviously, people find some value in some output of some LLMs. I've enjoyed the coding autocomplete stuff we have at work, it's helpful and fun. But "it's not qualified to answer my questions" is still true, even if it occasionally does something interesting or useful anyway. *- this is a complicated term with a lot of baggage, but fortunately for the length of this comment, I don't think that any sense of it applies here. An LLM doesn't understand its training set any more than the mnemonic "ETA ONIS"** understands the English language. **- a vaguely name-shaped presentation of the most common letters in the English language, in descending order. Useful if you need to remember those for some reason like guessing a substitution cypher.

michaelt 3y ago

> They do make OpenAI look like kids in that regard. Nokia and Blackberry had far more phone-making experience than Apple when the iPhone launched. But if you can't bring that experience to bear, allowing you to make a better product - then you don't have a better product.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tavavex 3y ago
The thing is that OpenAI doesn't have an "iPhone of AI" so far. That's not to say what will happen in the future - the advent of generative AI may become a big "equalizer" in the tech space - but no company seems to have a strong edge that'd make me more confident in any one of them over others.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  OpenAI has all of the people using ChatGPT.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    A big advantage if this was a product with strong network externalities like social media networks, or even somewhat mobile phones with platform-biased communication tools. But I don't see generative AI as being particularly that way.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      Training data. Use begats feedback begats improvement.
    - nateburke 3y ago
      GenAI does not have network effects, correct. There was a time last year when consumer search was still on the table, and I can see how MSFT winning share there might have conferred network effects for genAI, but it didn't happen. Now it's all about the enterprise, which is to say isolated data, which pretty much rules out network effects.

scotty79 3y ago

> They do make OpenAI look like kids in that regard. It makes Google look like old fart that wasted his life and didn't get anywhere and now he's bitter about kids running on his lawn.

jazzyjackson 3y ago

Damn I totally forgot Google actually has rights over its training set, good point, pretty much everybody else is just bootlegging it.

chatmasta 3y ago

Great. But school's out. It's time to build product. Let the rubber hit the road. Put up or shut up, as they say. I'm not dumb enough to bet against Google. They appear to be losing the race, but they can easily catch up to the lead pack. There's a secondary issue that I don't like Google, and I want them to lose the race. So that will color my commentary and slow my early adoption of their new products, but unless everyone feels the same, it shouldn't have a meaningful effect on the outcome. Although I suppose they do need to clear a higher bar than some unknown AI startup. Expectations are understandably high - as Sundar says, they basically invented this stuff... so where's the payoff?

utopcell 3y ago
Why don't you like Google?
- chatmasta 3y ago
  The usual reasons, evil big corp monopoly with a user-hostile business model etc. I still use their products. But if I had to pick a company to win the next gold rush, it wouldn't be an incumbent. It's not great that MSFT is winning either, but they are less user-hostile in the sense that they aren't dependent on advertising (another word for "psychological warfare" and "dragnet corporate surveillance"), and I also appreciate their pro-developer innovations.

junofan 3y ago

I think Apple (especially under Jobs) had it right that customers don’t really give a shit about how hard or long you’ve worked on a problem or area.

bufferoverflow 3y ago

They do not make Openai look like kids. If anything, it looks like they spent more time, but achieved less. GPT-4 is still ahead of anything Google has released.

tahoeskibum 3y ago

I thought that Google was based out of Silcon Valley/California/USA

Matl 3y ago
They're talking about DeepMind specifically.

foruhar 3y ago

From afar it seems like the issues around Maven caused Google to pump the brakes on AI at just the wrong moment with respect to ChatGPT and bringing AI to market. I’m guessing all of the tech giants, and OpenAI, are working with various defense departments yet they haven’t had a Maven moment. Or maybe they have and it wasn’t in the middle of the race for all the marbles.