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Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

nytimes.com

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Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#41

Post by ignoramous »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #24

> Google announced it’s laying off more than 12,000 employees and focusing on AI as a domain of primary importance. I have had an Android phone since Froyo. I liked it when the functionality was simple and didn't try to inject too much suggestions / AI. Now, Google Photos app is trying to suggest things to print, the Settings app is trying to predict when and how to charge my battery (I just want it 80%, all the time…

tbf, TFA points out that among some "20 AI products" Google intends to release this year are mostly in response to OpenAI: DALL-E (image creator and editor), Copilot, ChatGPT, and OpenAI APIs (low-code, browser-based).

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#42

Post by waterhouse »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #36
grumpyprole wrote: post #21

I've played with ChatGPT and see it as (at best) just complimentary to existing approaches. Unfortunately, I also see it as a vector of misinformation and potentially harmful. It appears highly knowledgeable on topics that I know little about, but otherwise it's replies are often riddled with errors and inaccuracies. It also seems unable to quote sources or references for such information. It seems reasonable to use…

I think this is called Knoll's law of media accuracy [0] or wikipedia [1] - "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge". Interestingly enough, I tried asking ChatGPT what it was before googling it, and it confidently told me I was asking about "Confirmation Bias." But then when I told it what I was talking about was indeed Knoll'…

Approximately the same phenomenon is also known as the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. It comes up on HN a lot, but for those who haven't encountered it before:

> You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

> In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#43

Post by waterhouse »

grumpyprole wrote: post #21

I've played with ChatGPT and see it as (at best) just complimentary to existing approaches. Unfortunately, I also see it as a vector of misinformation and potentially harmful. It appears highly knowledgeable on topics that I know little about, but otherwise it's replies are often riddled with errors and inaccuracies. It also seems unable to quote sources or references for such information. It seems reasonable to use…

Never tried it myself, but a question comes to mind: Can you ask it to state how confident it is in the truth of its answer? Is it well-calibrated in that sense? If so, perhaps that'd make it more useful.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#44

Post by roenxi »

> The demo for the chatbot search says Google will prioritize “getting facts right, ensuring safety and getting rid of misinformation,”

This goes to the chaotic problem which is still to be decided. There is no consensus position on what facts are, what is safe and what is misinformation. Part of the success of modern democracy hinges on being able to switch the leadership out with people who have a different frame on life than the old group. Yesterday's misinformation can become tomorrows facts (consider, famously, the impact Snowden had on the conversation).

Can a company as large as Google do this without splitting their own market along various political boundaries? Will they be forced to take religious, political and moral positions? Will they be out-competed by more neutral or more partisan chatbots? If chatbots become a big deal, will the target audience scale like search did or is it fundamentally fragmented?

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#45

Post by spiffytech »

dan-robertson wrote: post #25
clumsysmurf wrote: post #24

> Google announced it’s laying off more than 12,000 employees and focusing on AI as a domain of primary importance. I have had an Android phone since Froyo. I liked it when the functionality was simple and didn't try to inject too much suggestions / AI. Now, Google Photos app is trying to suggest things to print, the Settings app is trying to predict when and how to charge my battery (I just want it 80%, all the time…

Apple still do plenty of AI, no? Eg the whole horse-detection thing. Maybe it’s something more specific that you dislike?

I'm with the OP. I sometimes like AI capabilities, but I don't like my phone making AI decisions or predictions on my behalf.

E.g., if I open the share menu, whatever contacts and apps Google guesses are always wrong, and a simple list of whoever I've last shared with would be better.

I also don't want any "smart" contextual behavior (widgets changing out throughout the day, etc.). The phone simply doesn't have enough context to know what I want from it at any given moment. I'd rather just tell it how to behave using my own judgement.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#46

Post by Adverblessly »

rightbyte wrote: post #22
kossTKR wrote: post #17

After trying out their adwords platform for a year combined with the fact that search in general has plummeted in quality i can't wait for them to crash completely. Adwords is such a scummy endeavour that squeezes more or less all companies using it, but more so smaller players. They are not a friendly company. They are a MegaCorp that is so monopolistic and dark (design) in its behaviours it's incredible that it's l…

> dark design I wonder how much of Google's revenue is from Foobarbazz Corp buying ads for Foobarbazz searches. The conversion rate for those searches is probably really high since the consumer was going there anyway. It is like a silent agreement between marketing folks and Google to pretend it is value for money.

> I wonder how much of Google's revenue is from Foobarbazz Corp buying ads for Foobarbazz searches.

I don't know if it is a common practice or just an excpetion, but not that long ago we had this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34218340 where two competitors of (the FOSS) Kdenlive tried to advertise on "Kdenlive" on various search engines and it seems like "They had them on Google too, but we complained and they were removed.". That made me wonder if it really is true that you must advertise on your own keywords or if you can just complain and get it removed from Google like they were able to do.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#47

Post by lnsru »

Google is getting worse and worse. Today I searched for exact term “boat skipper b”. Google threw ton of trash at me. Ended looking through Bing results and found what I needed. 2/3 of my Google searches are not usable to me. Some advertisement and shady websites as results.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#48

Post by SanjayMehta »

dan-robertson wrote: post #25
clumsysmurf wrote: post #24

> Google announced it’s laying off more than 12,000 employees and focusing on AI as a domain of primary importance. I have had an Android phone since Froyo. I liked it when the functionality was simple and didn't try to inject too much suggestions / AI. Now, Google Photos app is trying to suggest things to print, the Settings app is trying to predict when and how to charge my battery (I just want it 80%, all the time…

Apple still do plenty of AI, no? Eg the whole horse-detection thing. Maybe it’s something more specific that you dislike?

Apple's AI is on your phone. It unobtrusive. Recently I needed to quickly find a company's QR code which I had photographed and Photos search found it in an instance.

It even finds text inside images.

Am sure Android has these features but I don't know if they work offline.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#49

Post by lancesells »

tacker2000 wrote: post #14
imoverclocked wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has privacy in the forefront of its ecosystem.

Oh come on, Apple has had numerous privacy issues as well. What about uploading every photo to their server to check for child porn? What about uploading every binary you run to their server to check if its “approved”? People really need to put down their “sheeple” glasses. Apple is a huge public company like all the others, beholden to profit their shareholders and thats it. All that virtue signalling that they do i…

> What about uploading every photo to their server to check for child porn?

I don't believe that's true. If you use iCloud it goes to their server but if you aren't backing up to their service they are not checking. What was controversial was they were going to check on the device itself so even if you didn't use iCloud your phone was getting scanned.

Re: Google calls in help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. fight

#50

Post by lukan »

fragmede wrote: post #39
clumsysmurf wrote: post #24

> Google announced it’s laying off more than 12,000 employees and focusing on AI as a domain of primary importance. I have had an Android phone since Froyo. I liked it when the functionality was simple and didn't try to inject too much suggestions / AI. Now, Google Photos app is trying to suggest things to print, the Settings app is trying to predict when and how to charge my battery (I just want it 80%, all the time…

Apple does the same horseshit with battery charging guessing. Just give me a toggle setting for stop at 80% full.

"Just give me a toggle setting for stop at 80% full."

And another toggle for 100% when I do need full charge, because I go somewhere. Why such basic functionality is not avaiable, is a bit frustrating.

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