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Bard and new AI features in Search

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Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#231
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say google is scrambling when they have been working on AI stuff just as impressive as OpenAI, which you could spin differently to say Microsoft “scrambled” to make a partnership with and are now attempting to cram GPT into their tech stack. FWIW I don’t think either company are really scrambling except in the performative sense of making announcements to appease the market.

Because while Google has been researching, OpenAI has been productizing. We will have to judge it once we get access to Bard, but it’s possible Google is years behind on creating a chat model that won’t spew toxic waste, as GPT-3 did when it was first released a few years ago.

I work at google and have used their AI tools and they’re just as impressive as the OpenAI ones (which I use personally, outside of work). Both have been developing products, just google hasn’t released any of them.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#232
I agree this is bland corporate speak. But it reminded me of a question that's been floating around:

A number of pundits, here on HN and elsewhere, keep referring to these large language models are "google killers." This just doesn't make sense to me. It feels like Google can easily pivot its ad engine to work with the AI-driven chat systems. It can augment answers with links to additional sources of information, be it organic or paid links.

But I guess I'm wondering: what am I missing? Why would a chatbot like ChatGPT disrupt Google vs forcing Google to simply evolve. And perhaps make even more money?

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's that clearcut. These AI queries are resource intensive. Google will have to cut a fine line between quality and profit margin. If it's no good people just won't bother and it won't gain traction. The searches we make are already analyzed and all models tend to use billions of parameters anyway, even self generated. Google also are limited by their risk aversion, as seen in this extremely sanitized…

1. ChatGPT have made a decent go of it on a much smaller budget 2. Wall St tends to be very forgiving when the investment is something with a strong a moat as AI. Metaverse is an example of what happens when they don’t believe… 3. With a few exceptions like weather, their current searches provide links to static pages others have built, so much of their understanding and analysis is going to waste. Giving custom resu…

ChatGPT is notorious for being damn sure about absolutely wrong things. If something like that powers the search…

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#234
post #5

It's challenging to take a CEO seriously who lacks enough self-awareness to un-ironically use the term "journey". Similarly, just open it up for everyone to use, I'm using ChatGPT now, ship your product, don't just write a blog post about it.

[deleted]

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#235
post #206

I’m curious to hear why Google isn’t going to win in this AI arms race. The way I see it, Google: * is effectively the gateway to the internet, owning the most popular website in the world, mobile OS, and browser * has infinite LIVE data, both unstructured and structured (knowledge graph) * has infinite compute resources * employs the world’s best AI scientists and invests heavily in AI * has decade(s) of experience…

Couldn’t you write something similar about IBM and early personal computers?

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#236
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say google is scrambling when they have been working on AI stuff just as impressive as OpenAI, which you could spin differently to say Microsoft “scrambled” to make a partnership with and are now attempting to cram GPT into their tech stack. FWIW I don’t think either company are really scrambling except in the performative sense of making announcements to appease the market.

Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI is a years-long affair, not something they're just starting on now. Google should have seen this coming and been able to beat them to release, but they seem to have been caught off guard with some great research projects but no product.

Both companies have been doing AI work for a long time. Do you really think google is behind on AI here just because they haven’t released any products? What do they stand to gain by pushing out half-baked toys? They have nothing to prove.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#237
post #206

I’m curious to hear why Google isn’t going to win in this AI arms race. The way I see it, Google: * is effectively the gateway to the internet, owning the most popular website in the world, mobile OS, and browser * has infinite LIVE data, both unstructured and structured (knowledge graph) * has infinite compute resources * employs the world’s best AI scientists and invests heavily in AI * has decade(s) of experience…

... and yet a good chunk of their revenues is driven by ads. On the other hand Microsoft can deploy ChatGPT tech in all their enterprise products.

Google does have the means and knowledge, but they are not as good at monetizing them. See also the cloud space and Google Cloud vs Azure.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft feels like an outlier on this list. They are thriving right now. Also, there are still many categories of things that ChatGPT-like bots can't help with yet, such as shopping. I think we're still very early in this cycle. That doesn't mean Google will succeed, but it feels premature to be writing their obituary.

Very true. Although, as an aside since you brought it up: I will say shopping on Google has gotten far worse these days days with all the SEO optimized "top 10 best X" pages that are basically just affiliate link spam with extremely limited value / product testing / insight.

That's a fair point about shopping. I was more thinking that I end up googling things that then lead me to ecommerce sites and its unlikely that ChatGPT will replace that any time soon.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#239
post #206

I’m curious to hear why Google isn’t going to win in this AI arms race. The way I see it, Google: * is effectively the gateway to the internet, owning the most popular website in the world, mobile OS, and browser * has infinite LIVE data, both unstructured and structured (knowledge graph) * has infinite compute resources * employs the world’s best AI scientists and invests heavily in AI * has decade(s) of experience…

I do agree that Google search AI will most likely win against Bing search AI due to brand recognition and resources.

But I also think that Microsoft will be a huge winner for enterprise software. They are already integrating GPT into Teams, and no doubt they plan to integrate it into pretty much everything they can think of.

I hope we will see a lot of independent startups making innovative AI products as well. This space has incredible potential, and there could be many winners.

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