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I'm afraid this is going to be another Everyday Robots or Boston Dynamics. Google is ruled by managers, not visionaries. Strategy is 'try and see if it works i

I'm afraid this is going to be another Everyday Robots or Boston Dynamics. Google is ruled by managers, not visionaries. Strategy is 'try and see if it works in 4 years. if not cancel'. They followed it in many cases. So, DeepMind's cancellation is long overdue. A couple of years back one of Google's top managers talking about AGI said it's most likely to happen in DM. But current LLM boom happened elsewhere. Likely managers are disappointed in DM.

aborsy 2y ago
To fair, Google invented transformers and contributed a lot of basic research. OpenAI made it bigger.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  And Xerox invented the GUI and Kodak the digital camera, and look at them today. Inventing things is no guarantee of success.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Yes, but look at the previous comment. How does "inventing transformers" marry with "Google has managers not visionaries"?
    - jsjohnst 2y ago
      Just because a company is 99% one thing, doesn’t mean that the 1% remaining don’t have moments of real genius. What it does mean however is that when those real genius moments happen, the company isn’t in a good position to capitalize on it (ala Xerox or Kodak mentioned previously, but there are so many more).
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      Because that's the hallmark of business-minded people being at the helm and not engineers, which has been an issue for Google for a long time: the greatest inventions ever seen will be squandered in terms of the org itself because management can't see beyond the next few quarters and won't invest properly in it.
  - FactKnower69 2y ago
    ??? Xerox and Kodak are immortal household names that dominated their niches for decades, what level of "success" would satisfy you? what are you lamenting, that they didn't completely enshittify their products while they were on top and torch their brands to the ground for a little more revenue?
    - moritzwarhier 2y ago
      He said that Xerox was not commercially successful with software or GUIs, and Kodak wasn't successful with digital cameras. In spite of Xerox labs having pioneered the windowed OS GUI with mouse and Kodak having built the first portable mass-market digital camera. They wouldn't have needed to enshittify or degrade their products to be successful with that, they just failed for other reasons.
- jsemrau 2y ago
  Transformers != Modern LLMs. It is 100% an important invention, but other important tech like hidden markov chains existed long before.
  - woodson 2y ago
    Well, strictly speaking modern LLMs are transformers (not counting state space models like Mamba, for the moment). Not sure what hidden Markov chains have to do with modern LLMs.
TaylorAlexander 2y ago
Well, LLMs are not AGI. They have serious limitations [1] and honestly my fear is that it’s too soon. I agree Google is ruled by managers (that’s why I hated it), and my fear is that the managers have FOMO and want to push to productize asap even tho the tech isn’t ready yet. Look what happened when Google tried to throw an LLM in to search. Absolute shitshow. That’s not ready to become any kind of product! If they kill R&D now to focus on productizing something that is half baked, they will fail to develop those new inventions which might get us to AGI. When I worked at Google X Robotics I was hired on to the remnants of the last research team, which was dissolved six months after I started (I was moved to hardware test engineer). Our subteam really wanted to research multi-finger grippers but we got overruled, so the robot had to do everything with a two finger pinch gripper. Which is fine for research but absolutely unsuitable for real world tasks. It couldn’t even operate a spray bottle without special attachments and they thought it was going to clean people’s homes! [1] I am sharing this one a lot lately but I’m very moved by Yann LeCun’s arguments about the limits of autoregressive approaches here. As a robotics engineer I have been dismayed at all the attention LLMs are getting despite serious limitations that make them generally unsuitable to solve some of the most important problems in robotics. https://youtu.be/1lHFUR-yD6I https://youtu.be/1lHFUR-yD6I
- ignoramous 2y ago
  btw, Sustkever is on record that Transformers are enough to achieve AGI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW0SLbtGMcg&t=33s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW0SLbtGMcg&t=33s
  - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    Okay. Well he’s not omniscient. He gives a pretty weak argument by analogy, while LeCun makes multiple detailed arguments which I find compelling.
    - ignoramous 2y ago
      > weak analogy tbf, Ilya was on a VC podcast not at a tech conf. > Well he’s not omniscient. Neither is Yann (who has since proposed a different architecture / vision which is yet to take off), but my comment was meant to highlight a recent claim from another accomplished researcher in the field.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

aborsy 2y ago

To fair, Google invented transformers and contributed a lot of basic research. OpenAI made it bigger.

Rinzler89 2y ago
And Xerox invented the GUI and Kodak the digital camera, and look at them today. Inventing things is no guarantee of success.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Yes, but look at the previous comment. How does "inventing transformers" marry with "Google has managers not visionaries"?
  - jsjohnst 2y ago
    Just because a company is 99% one thing, doesn’t mean that the 1% remaining don’t have moments of real genius. What it does mean however is that when those real genius moments happen, the company isn’t in a good position to capitalize on it (ala Xerox or Kodak mentioned previously, but there are so many more).
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    Because that's the hallmark of business-minded people being at the helm and not engineers, which has been an issue for Google for a long time: the greatest inventions ever seen will be squandered in terms of the org itself because management can't see beyond the next few quarters and won't invest properly in it.
- FactKnower69 2y ago
  ??? Xerox and Kodak are immortal household names that dominated their niches for decades, what level of "success" would satisfy you? what are you lamenting, that they didn't completely enshittify their products while they were on top and torch their brands to the ground for a little more revenue?
  - moritzwarhier 2y ago
    He said that Xerox was not commercially successful with software or GUIs, and Kodak wasn't successful with digital cameras. In spite of Xerox labs having pioneered the windowed OS GUI with mouse and Kodak having built the first portable mass-market digital camera. They wouldn't have needed to enshittify or degrade their products to be successful with that, they just failed for other reasons.
jsemrau 2y ago
Transformers != Modern LLMs. It is 100% an important invention, but other important tech like hidden markov chains existed long before.
- woodson 2y ago
  Well, strictly speaking modern LLMs are transformers (not counting state space models like Mamba, for the moment). Not sure what hidden Markov chains have to do with modern LLMs.

TaylorAlexander 2y ago

Well, LLMs are not AGI. They have serious limitations [1] and honestly my fear is that it’s too soon. I agree Google is ruled by managers (that’s why I hated it), and my fear is that the managers have FOMO and want to push to productize asap even tho the tech isn’t ready yet. Look what happened when Google tried to throw an LLM in to search. Absolute shitshow. That’s not ready to become any kind of product! If they kill R&D now to focus on productizing something that is half baked, they will fail to develop those new inventions which might get us to AGI. When I worked at Google X Robotics I was hired on to the remnants of the last research team, which was dissolved six months after I started (I was moved to hardware test engineer). Our subteam really wanted to research multi-finger grippers but we got overruled, so the robot had to do everything with a two finger pinch gripper. Which is fine for research but absolutely unsuitable for real world tasks. It couldn’t even operate a spray bottle without special attachments and they thought it was going to clean people’s homes! [1] I am sharing this one a lot lately but I’m very moved by Yann LeCun’s arguments about the limits of autoregressive approaches here. As a robotics engineer I have been dismayed at all the attention LLMs are getting despite serious limitations that make them generally unsuitable to solve some of the most important problems in robotics. https://youtu.be/1lHFUR-yD6I https://youtu.be/1lHFUR-yD6I

ignoramous 2y ago
btw, Sustkever is on record that Transformers are enough to achieve AGI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW0SLbtGMcg&t=33s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW0SLbtGMcg&t=33s
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  Okay. Well he’s not omniscient. He gives a pretty weak argument by analogy, while LeCun makes multiple detailed arguments which I find compelling.
  - ignoramous 2y ago
    > weak analogy tbf, Ilya was on a VC podcast not at a tech conf. > Well he’s not omniscient. Neither is Yann (who has since proposed a different architecture / vision which is yet to take off), but my comment was meant to highlight a recent claim from another accomplished researcher in the field.

deleted 2y ago

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