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I strongly disagree. Research is how you stay ahead of your competitors, yes even silly sounding research like training RL agents to play Qwop! Research is how
by aprilthird2021 2y ago
I strongly disagree. Research is how you stay ahead of your competitors, yes even silly sounding research like training RL agents to play Qwop!
Research is how Google invented the transformer that underlies so many current Gen AI models.
Pivoting research to products is exactly the kind of short term thinking consultants or mercenaries would propose, get promoted off of, and leave just before the consequences start rearing their head
- hot_gril 2y agoThey did research for years, but they didn't stay ahead of their competitors. They gave transformers away for free.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoThey did stay ahead of their competitors. In a lot of ways they still are. In a "making profit from AI" way, they're not. But that's what you hire product people for. They had the SOTA translation system of the entire world for a literal decade and didn't monetize it enough to blow their competition to dust. That's not the fault of researchers, and research shouldn't halt or be redirected to profit as a result. Rather, Google should get some better managers / product people to turn the magic their researchers create into profits.
- hot_gril 2y agoThey aren't ahead even in terms of AI tech now. A lot of those researchers got hired away to other companies, and ChatGPT has been ahead continuously.
- aprilthird2021 2y agoThey are ahead in terms of AI infra and capacity. Research it's not as easy to tell. They are behind in terms of shipping products. Yes a lot of researchers got hired away, but they still up there in the race