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Google Pulls Olympics AI Ad 'Dear Sydney'

24 points by kjhughes 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
31337Logic 2y ago
This (and the Apple "crush" ad) are perfect examples of people fighting back, and winning, against stupid moves by Big Tech. Yeah, we get it Google. We're aware of you. But that doesn't mean we're happily gonna eat all the shit you're feeding us. How incredibly tone deaf?!: the little black female athlete needs help composing a fan letter? Way to set the clock back 50 years, Google.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Big companies make mistakes like this, it's nothing new. Remember the talking Barbie "math is hard" debacle? Companies get in such a zeal to sell that they lose perspective on what they are saying.
mlsu 2y ago
Because so much money has been invested into LLM tech, they have to at least try to shove it into everything. There already is substantial consumer backlash forming, because a bunch of nerds just got too excited & made too many promises to capital. Now they're going to try to dig themselves out of the $600b hole. That's what this ad is. What bothers me so much about the whole situation is that the tech is actually so cool. It's incredibly valuable to pay $20/mo to a service to give me feedback on code I'm writing or a draft of an email. But $20/mo, across ten million consumers like me, is simply not enough at bigtech scale. It must be inserted into every part of life.
- lawlessone 2y ago
  I wouldn't blame the nerds so much as business people that needed to see immediate profit.
  - mlsu 2y ago
    Maybe. Nerds saying "agi just around the corner" and doing demos of humanoid robots "powered by AI"? that ain't helping.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  And while $20/month is not too much to pay as a professional using the technology (should actually be priced much closer to your own hourly rate if it's really that good), it's still too much for most consumers to pay for what amounts to a novelty. People are already being nickel-and-dimed to death with so many things moving to a subscription model. In my everday/non-work life, ChatGPT (or Gemini) doesn't do anything I'd pay even $20/month for.
  - mlsu 2y ago
    Yes. But with so much competition between foundational models out there, there's no way any of these companies will be able to charge more than that. Llama is out there for the electricity cost of FLOPS. On top of that. It's sad to say, but a huge number of people out there are functionally illiterate, and have absolutely no use whatsoever for this technology. Most people simply never voluntarily read or write anything at all unless they are compelled to, ever, their entire lives. It's something they have to do in school and once they're done doing it they are done forever. The value of a text based assistant is zero or negative to them.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Now the question is, how much will Python be affected by yet another AI Winter wave cycle.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mvdtnz 2y ago
What an utterly appalling ad.
atonse 2y ago
There are a million things they could've done that shows great use of these tools. The coaching part was a bit interesting. They can even show olympic athletes from different countries trying to commiserate about how it feels to be in their first olympics (or more humorously even trash talk) with the help of a translate app, or any number of such things. That would have a feel-good message that no matter what language we speak, athletic performance and dedication is the same. How about Gemini helping people figure out the daunting olympic schedule? Gemini, I really enjoyed watching swimming, tennis, and blah. Can you help me figure out when I'd need to watch my favorite events? Anyway, I gotta agree that having an AI write a letter to a kid's hero felt very dystopian.
josefritzishere 2y ago
On a fundamental level... they do not get it.
crtasm 2y ago
Please could they drop the NFTs next? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-official-olympics-game-ditched-mario-sonic-in-favour-of-mobile-pc-but-its-also-pushing-nfts https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-official-olympics-game-... https://olympics.com/ioc/news/officially-licensed-olympic-nft-pins-announced https://olympics.com/ioc/news/officially-licensed-olympic-nf...

24 points by kjhughes 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

This (and the Apple "crush" ad) are perfect examples of people fighting back, and winning, against stupid moves by Big Tech. Yeah, we get it Google. We're aware of you. But that doesn't mean we're happily gonna eat all the shit you're feeding us. How incredibly tone deaf?!: the little black female athlete needs help composing a fan letter? Way to set the clock back 50 years, Google.

SoftTalker 2y ago
Big companies make mistakes like this, it's nothing new. Remember the talking Barbie "math is hard" debacle? Companies get in such a zeal to sell that they lose perspective on what they are saying.

mlsu 2y ago

Because so much money has been invested into LLM tech, they have to at least try to shove it into everything. There already is substantial consumer backlash forming, because a bunch of nerds just got too excited & made too many promises to capital. Now they're going to try to dig themselves out of the $600b hole. That's what this ad is. What bothers me so much about the whole situation is that the tech is actually so cool. It's incredibly valuable to pay $20/mo to a service to give me feedback on code I'm writing or a draft of an email. But $20/mo, across ten million consumers like me, is simply not enough at bigtech scale. It must be inserted into every part of life.

lawlessone 2y ago
I wouldn't blame the nerds so much as business people that needed to see immediate profit.
- mlsu 2y ago
  Maybe. Nerds saying "agi just around the corner" and doing demos of humanoid robots "powered by AI"? that ain't helping.
SoftTalker 2y ago
And while $20/month is not too much to pay as a professional using the technology (should actually be priced much closer to your own hourly rate if it's really that good), it's still too much for most consumers to pay for what amounts to a novelty. People are already being nickel-and-dimed to death with so many things moving to a subscription model. In my everday/non-work life, ChatGPT (or Gemini) doesn't do anything I'd pay even $20/month for.
- mlsu 2y ago
  Yes. But with so much competition between foundational models out there, there's no way any of these companies will be able to charge more than that. Llama is out there for the electricity cost of FLOPS. On top of that. It's sad to say, but a huge number of people out there are functionally illiterate, and have absolutely no use whatsoever for this technology. Most people simply never voluntarily read or write anything at all unless they are compelled to, ever, their entire lives. It's something they have to do in school and once they're done doing it they are done forever. The value of a text based assistant is zero or negative to them.
pjmlp 2y ago
Now the question is, how much will Python be affected by yet another AI Winter wave cycle.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mvdtnz 2y ago

What an utterly appalling ad.

atonse 2y ago

There are a million things they could've done that shows great use of these tools. The coaching part was a bit interesting. They can even show olympic athletes from different countries trying to commiserate about how it feels to be in their first olympics (or more humorously even trash talk) with the help of a translate app, or any number of such things. That would have a feel-good message that no matter what language we speak, athletic performance and dedication is the same. How about Gemini helping people figure out the daunting olympic schedule? Gemini, I really enjoyed watching swimming, tennis, and blah. Can you help me figure out when I'd need to watch my favorite events? Anyway, I gotta agree that having an AI write a letter to a kid's hero felt very dystopian.

josefritzishere 2y ago

On a fundamental level... they do not get it.

crtasm 2y ago

Please could they drop the NFTs next? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-official-olympics-game-ditched-mario-sonic-in-favour-of-mobile-pc-but-its-also-pushing-nfts https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-official-olympics-game-... https://olympics.com/ioc/news/officially-licensed-olympic-nft-pins-announced https://olympics.com/ioc/news/officially-licensed-olympic-nf...