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

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481–490 of 518 posts

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

#481

I think the OpenAI argument is overblown. While I do agree that AI is going to bring a huge shake up to the search market, I still believe that Google is in the best position to fight this battle. Realistically, given how fast the AI field improves month after month, do we think it will take long for Google to replicate a product similar to ChatGPT? I don't think so. And then they are the company that's best suited t…

> Realistically, given how fast the AI field improves month after month, do we think it will take long for Google to replicate a product similar to ChatGPT? I don't think so.

Users who use ChatGPT do not see either Google's search page or any linked pages. Instead, the user gets a summary answer from ChatGPT that currently shows zero ads from Google (or anyone else). This summary is the obvious place for ads; Google knows this. And Google also knows that if it is not the default summary provider for most users (in the same that it is for search currently), then its ad business is definitely at risk.

In terms of addressing the risk, it's not so much a technical challenge [-1]; it is instead that Google's business model is largely based on embedding ads in millions of web pages (in a way that MS's is not). The problem with this is that they now have to figure out what an alternative business model (that puts ads in summaries) looks like, then shift their entire enterprise and their partners in the wider ad industry over to using it before ChatGPT becomes dominant [0]

It's an enormous challenge, and it is easy to see why Sundar has sensibly signalled a code red and is reaching for as much help as possible.

[-1] As observed, Google are very technically capable.

[0] Realistically, if they cannot provide a competitive offering before MS push ChatGPT into Word, Excel, Bing etc., history says it will be hard, verging on impossible, to ever get those users back.

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

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re literally off by an order of magnitude. Each query costs around 1 cent from every article I’ve seen. > but high enough that I don't ever see regular humans pay for it for day-to-day tasks. And “640K ought to be enough for anyone”. Of course this will get cheaper over time as compute gets cheaper and the cloud providers design custom chips optimized for it.

"Query" is ambiguous, because ChatGPT runs on "tokens", not "queries". In real life you will want an order of magnitude more tokens if you're generating something useful and not just testing/playing. Compute doesn't get cheaper over time, it gets more expensive. This isn't 1993 anymore.

It's only getting more expensive because we've let AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure own all the machines.

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No arguments there. They're still trying; just not hard enough.

They're still trying; really really hard. But they are just not good enough. Maybe like Zuck they are / were a one trick pony. Perhaps becoming a multi billionaire is not proof that you can invent and monetize something anytime anywhere in any industry on demand.

I think in some ways its the scale of the problems Google X / Other Bets / Alphabet went after being rather hyperbolic.

Apple / Microsoft just take what they are good at to move into adjacent spaces in consumer/office tech. Apple has made some failed forays into corporate while Microsoft has not done terrible well in consumer other than gaming and maintaining their existing Windows base.

I wonder if Apple leaks about stupid stuff we never see like their car and their AR is just to put other less well disciplined firms onto the trail of expensive dead ends.

If you think of automakers and their "concept car" approach in which they present beautiful improbable vehicles they never ship.. Apple seems to LEAK "concept cars" they never ever preview, while Google goes all-in trying to actually ship a "concept car" no one wants, like Google glass.

Apple is the result of judicious application of the word "no". Google looks like a lot of "yes" with weak knees that quickly turn into "no".

I still don't understand what Google's strategy is in almost any space - messaging, social, home automation, audio, AR/VR, other than "yes... actually, no".

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did they try though? it seemed all scattershot, unfocussed, repetitive (how many chat/video apps) and quickly taken out back and shot.

it's not ALL scattershot. GMail and Docs for enterprises are a pretty sustained effort. Cloud is pretty sustained. YouTube is unkillable. But in general you're right.

YouTube may be unkillable, but how much money do they make? Especially, what does the RoI look like compared to Twitch and TikTok?

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

#485
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has something similar to Shortcuts, called Action Blocks.

Doesn't provide automation (actions must be manually triggered) or extendability (app developers being incentivized to add custom actions for their apps). Seems to be just another case of a half-assed Google product which is destined to die on https://killedbygoogle.com/ in a few months / years, sadly.

Of course there are third party apps like Tasker that are much more capable than both action blocks and shortcuts.

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

#486

"In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete." Transcribing this profound insight of Buckminster Fuller to the current debate: You cannot out-do google by inventing "smarter" search. You need to create a new business model that makes the old one obsolete. Is there any evidence that all this algorithmic magic…

Google beat their original competitors — Altavista, Excite, Yahoo!, and so on — with an incremental improvement, not a new model. At the time (2000-2003), their search was better and faster, certainly, but not several orders of magnitude better. In fact, Google was something of a reactionary model at the time, by rejecting the push for bloated, captive "web portals" and going back to the simpler, stripped-down user e…

It wasn't just incremental. It was a massive improvement! I still remember how floored I was with the quality of results compared to AltaVista which was my main search engine at the time

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

#487
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case I imported my Rdio history so it’s possible that something went wrong with a difference between loading albums & seeding the recommendation engine. It was really weird because I was expecting better based on most of the other users I knew.

Talking about Discover Weekly playlist: I think the recommendation engine is mostly based on what you actually listen to. When I listen for a week to emo rap, I get emo rap recommended in the next one. I think song/album radio is not exactly based on your taste, but on what spotify considers similar. Try making a playlist with your favorite songs and press "enhance" or "playlist radio" to see recommendations based on…

I used it for a couple of months and it never got better. I ended up switching to Apple Music but I would hope that they've fixed it by now.

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

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is only "truthy", however. The algorithm will happily give you information that sounds true, but is actually wrong. And if it's wrong even 1% of time, you will still need some way to verify its claims.

Agree with everything you said, but I want to dig into why I don't find the critique compelling. In short, I see a need for us all to inherently distrust anything single thing we read -- everything needs to be verified and checked out across multiple (hopefully diverse) sources of information before it can be considered "truth" in any sense. I do develop trust in certain sources over time, but meta-sources like an AI…

"Similar example (I tend to look into copyright, trademark, and patent issues a lot): I got into a discussion with another HNer about IP law, and they cited an article written by an actual lawyer[4] on a site called "The National Law Review" that's simply wrong about IP law to defend their position"

The problem with "citation, please" is it only works if the person you are engaging with is acting in good faith.

If I type in "Can intellectual property rights expire if not litigated?" That web site (national law review) doesn't appear in the top 10 results. So I'd question where did they get that link?

Not so long ago I got in a debate with someone here whether muscle exercises can lead to long term increases in testosterone levels.

The person I debated with provided a link to an abstract of a study that didn't look quite right. There was no link to the actual study.

Instead of engaging with them I confirmed that, within a minute or two, I was able to locate a high quality, free to read, medical literature review on the topic.

Maybe my ability to type keywords into a search engine is superior, but instead I came to the conclusion the other poster was half assedly looking for search results to "win the argument" rather than engaging due to intellectual curiosity.

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

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that I’d lost all autonomy when it came to finding new music for myself Music discovery is the best feature for me in spotify. Especially if you listen to more unpopular genres like french/german techno, old school hard trance. I found plenty of great artists there which have <5k monthly plays.

got any french/german techno? I would really appreciate it.

Sure. I'll post some artists with my favorite songs as youtube links, as I know that not everyone on this site has a spotify subscription.

On a sidenote: Looks like techno had massive growth in the last 1-2 years. I discovered most of these artists when they were much smaller. Now most of them have 3x to 10x more monthly listeners. Seems like Spotify is indeed a great platform for discoverability. For monetizing probably not though.

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French:

KASST - Hell on Earth (the most popular on this list. 430k monthly listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwi1qgSaxZY

Trudge - страсть (this dude has many decent tracks, check out "Sway over the Void" and "Self Love Club" out): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx-zzugl-P0

BXTR - Reboot my soul (40k monthly listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruxTTzO3yTI

RAUMM - Perdue Dans Le Noir - BXTR remix (Has French lyrics. 38k monthly listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-xkLnJUvDQ

Automates - Meta (French lyrics too, 29k monthly listeners. One of my overall favorites): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il0_Pcj4nho

Any another production one from RAUMM, which is more like a 16-minute experience with beautiful lyrics with a lot of trance influence. I'm uncertain if this still counts as techno; I don't think so. But I really love sitting down on the couch and putting this on a loud volume and just relaxing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b-KUdT5bU8

I Hate Models - Daydream (pretty famous; 500k monthly listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjCb4CB-hdw

Anetha ft Sugar - Candy from Strangers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofOPhZvnVF4

Trym - Millenium Pain (ナルト Mix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INwOGDbQFmQ

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German:

In Verruf - Let Out (80k monthly listeners): https://youtu.be/pc_Pp0kObxQ?t=1

Parallx - Red Clouds (30k monthly listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEX5xJOuxAM

Inhalt der Nacht - Die Liebe (25k monthly listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVu6UBYuq80

Klangkünstler - Ihr Werdet Weinen (Pretty famous; 500k monthly listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFIiveXMxyI

Introversion - Dystopa (50k monthly listeners): https://youtu.be/KRXuatwFhIE?t=2

B2 - Destiny (64k monthly listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXaqpT323DQ

Kobosil - Rigid (Kobosil 44 Rush Mix)(Fastest growing Technio Producer in Germany, 500k monthyl listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf1MLglK3fc

AKKI - The Ocean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD5GrfTy9Ac // Into Your Mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWWAGoZmx9A

rezystor - alice (this isn't on spotify unfortunately; rezystor has https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcGa15wEalE

David Strasser - Trust the Process (17k monthly listeners): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY9T6mdg2wo

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I had to snuck a track from two Italians in here because they only have like 1k monthly listeners on Spotify and make good music:

Anticyclone - Ruins Of Las Vegas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFquUsnXKuw

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