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Let’s see. OpenAI acquired 100 million users and was the fasted growth in history, partners with Google’s biggest competitor Microsoft. They have since integrat
by happytiger 3y ago
Let’s see. OpenAI acquired 100 million users and was the fasted growth in history, partners with Google’s biggest competitor Microsoft. They have since integrated ChatGPT into Bing and announced a raft of new products. Amazon has launched their competitors as well. Tons of other companies are throwing their hats in the ring too, but their big cloud competitors (the platform of platforms) are already launched and looking competitive.
Google, on the other hand, was late to introduce a product competitive to ChatGPT and mostly fumbled the announcement when it did.
Google is coming from behind in their execution after being outmaneuvered by OpenAI and a very weak early showing with Bard.
Google didn’t deliver a chat-powered generative A.I. product despite working on one for years. They just didn’t have the risk taking culture where releasing it into the wild imperfectly was something Google was willing to do. This was a profound misstep, and dethroned them. At one point they had the largest and most talented assembly of AI researchers in the world and virtually unlimited research budgets, but they didn’t ship.
This puts them in a position where they have something to prove. To investors. To developers. To cloud customers. And to themselves.
Their entire business is about being a trusted place for people to find information, and they didn’t feel they were ready, and then they missed the boat.
It's the reason, when it finally rushed a product out the door, *they called it Bard.* They didn't call it Google AI.
They talked AI up to the point of ridiculousness at I/O. Two words they drove home in every talk: responsible and helpful.
This is why they need to establish a position of leadership and avoid weak delivery like this labs launch (maybe it’s not a launch, maybe it just needs to be relaunched — I’m making an assumption). Because it’s not super on point in delivering their brand promise for AI or even explaining what it is in a clear way.
People can’t even tell what it is, not a gigantic corporate delivering early stage experiments at the cutting edge of helpful and responsible AI.
I’m open to being wrong about any of this, but this is how I generally see it.
- mikhael28 3y agoDo you work at Google or Something?
- happytiger 3y agoNo but in full disclosure I have worked with Google before.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hashtag-til 3y agoAt the same OpenAI keeps things to the basics. Look how clean the app is? Not some convoluted list of unclear, disjoint models coming out of google. Maybe a lesson for google to learn.
- happytiger 3y agoIf it’s a killer app it doesn’t need promotion. We have the evidence of 100 million instant users backing up that claim at OpenAI.
- vineyardmike 3y ago> Google didn’t deliver a chat-powered generative A.I. product despite working on one for years. Don’t forget that Google translate has been out for years and used the GPT structure they invented. Also I think Google missing the ball on the GenAI chat will go down as one of the biggest AI and tech fumbles, even if the fads around LLMs fade. They beat OpenAI to creating a chat interface- but they had all that drama last summer of some crazy religious employee getting spooked at it being sentient, so they locked it down. That’s probably what gave OpenAI the idea to ship ChatGPT honestly. Also this labs page clearly looks like a vanity marketing site to remind people (?) that Google Does AI (tm).
- rollcat 3y ago> They beat OpenAI to creating a chat interface- but they had all that drama last summer of some crazy religious employee getting spooked at it being sentient, so they locked it down. It sounds absolutely hilarious, and highlights everything that's wrong about this bubble. Do you have a source on this?
- true_religion 3y agohttps://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/23/google-fires-software-engineer-who-claims-ai-chatbot-is-sentient https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/23/google-fi... Summary: one of their engineers started to think they had achieved AGI and went to the media to save the “life” of the chat bot.
- omneity 3y agoI "interviewed" that engineer recently, especially about GPT-4 and how it compares to LaMDa: https://twitter.com/OmarKamali/status/1726431417163206900 https://twitter.com/OmarKamali/status/1726431417163206900 (take the answers with a grain of salt, some people I know at Google had very different assessments of LaMDA)
- drumhead 3y agoThat's about right, another massive fumble from Google. Bard was and still is pretty hopeless and unless they pull their finger out it's going to be another market lost to them that they basically invented. They need to come out with something that's a blockbuster of a product and then just give it away for free or at low cost to win back market and mind share.