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Bard and new AI features in Search

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Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#481

Post by greg7mdp »

Hermel wrote: post #447
xnx wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Google has dealt with a similar problem early in its history. In the early 2000's Google's PageRank values had to be calculated all at once (approximately monthly). Later they were able to move to a continuous/incremental/rolling update.

Exactly, so Page and Brin might think that they can pull the same trick again.

Page and Brin's original crawler had the issue, but they were unable to fix it, and it was Jeff Dean and Sanjay Gupta that rewrote the crawler so that it and the index storage would be hardware fault tolerant.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#482

Post by rchaud »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #72
andrewstuart wrote: post #60

Lotus 123, Borland and Wordperfect were at the top of the software world. They failed to make the transition to GUIs/Windows. Microsoft missed the arrival of the web. Microsoft also missed the mobile revolution and ended up with zero mobile operating system market share. Internet Explorer, having vanquished Netscape, declared "job done" and stopped developing the web browser further, only to be cast to irrelevance fo…

Google was already next when they missed the social media boat. That said, Microsoft is still the second most valuable company in the world a decade after missing out on mobile, so it doesn't really seem like a big deal.

How did they miss the boat when they have YouTube? I assume by 'social media' you mean "user-generated content that we can slap ads on".

Facebook doesn't make any money when people talk to each other, they make it when people click ads. Same goes for Google. "Social Media" is just another ad vector.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#484

Post by baron816 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #304

Question for AI experts out there: ChatGPT is awesome, but it is obviously hamstrung by the fact that it crawled the web at the end of 2021, so all of its data is essentially "frozen" and it doesn't "know" of any topics that occurred after 2021. Seems to me like the next "holy grail" in large language models is building a model that can be continually updated. If Google can achieve that, I think they could leapfrog O…

edit: removing comment. I don’t think what I wrote was confidential, but I don’t want to find out the hard way.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#485

Post by dougmwne »

dzdt wrote: post #462

How many parameters? The LaMDA paper describes 2B, 8B, and 137B parameter variations. Sundar says "We're releasing initially with our lightweight model version of LaMDA. This much smaller model..." So it sounds like the 2B or 8B model variations, compared to GPT3's 175B. [edit: corrected] I can't imagine such a smaller model coming across as anything near as impressive as ChatGPT. So the announcement today is for a m…

Yeah, I think you’re onto something here. Clearly we won’t know till we can use them side by side, but there’s lots of hints that Google is a ways off from matching ChatGPT. A small model, a closed beta, a press release annd mock-up instead of a link, chest pounding about how they invented it all anyway.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#486

Post by Eduard »

killjoywashere wrote: post #267
wiremine wrote: post #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…

I don't think most people realize how much infrastructure separates something like ChatGPT from Google-scale deployment. OpenAI isn't suddenly building transoceanic fiber and datacenters near most major population centers. They aren't signing production-ready contract vehicles with most major OEMs and governments. And in the gap it would take a new entrant to acquire 10% of those assets, Google has 100,000 engineers…

> I don't think most people realize how much infrastructure separates something like ChatGPT from Google-scale deployment. OpenAI isn't suddenly building transoceanic fiber and datacenters near most major population centers.

This feels like "thinking inside the box" to me. None of these things are necessary requirements for being a "Google killer".

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#487

Post by pleadthefifth »

wiremine wrote: post #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…

Branding is one thing. "Google" has been a commonplace verb for a long time, which alone is worth billions to them. ChatGPT is the first time something has come close to stealing that spotlight, since for the time being, it's answer a lot of queries far better than Google would. So even if Google makes something technically better later, it might be too late to replace ChatGPT as the AI king.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#488

Post by tiborsaas »

joe_the_user wrote: post #474
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #304

Question for AI experts out there: ChatGPT is awesome, but it is obviously hamstrung by the fact that it crawled the web at the end of 2021, so all of its data is essentially "frozen" and it doesn't "know" of any topics that occurred after 2021. Seems to me like the next "holy grail" in large language models is building a model that can be continually updated. If Google can achieve that, I think they could leapfrog O…

Broadly, yes. Current AIs (LLMs etc) haves succeeded as brute-force prediction at it's lowest level. Of course there are many refinements here but this basic situation has meant that adaptive learning, updating, doesn't really work for this particular approach (as others mention). The thing about this is if competition forces Google and Microsoft to offer a full ChatGPT style interface, they are going to be using a v…

> they are going to be using a vast amount of cpu cycles and thus energy. This is going to be costly and potentially environmentally destructive

How much CPU do you think Google currently utilize? OpenAI is a relatively small company compared to Google and they can keep their services (barely) afloat. AI at scale is indeed server intensive, but probably nothing like what we already have.

Also, new chips designs might significantly decrease power requirements in the future, so I wouldn't worry about the environmental issues.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#489

Post by kolinko »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #406
samwillis wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is on a collision course with regulators over search. If they are seen to be taking yet more content and knowledge from websites and "republishing" it they are going to find themselves with large fines and sanctions. I think they are too "big" to really push AI, it needs smaller companies willing to take a higher risk.

It's an interesting conundrum because facts aren't copyrightable, but in a world with intelligent language models that can ingest facts and spit them back out in whatever phrasing or format is most useful to the user, facts are also the only valuable part of such websites. On the flip side, trying to make facts copyrightable seems like a terrible idea for all sorts of reasons. For example, if facts were copyrightable…

In case of Google it’s not as much about facts as about antitrust.

They can break antitrust laws if they go too much in a direction of delivering outright replies instead of redirecting to websites.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#490

Post by wnolens »

foooobaba wrote: post #280
londons_explore wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long till they open it up to your private data stored in Google? Eg. User: What should I be doing today? AI: You have a court appearance at 9am. Prioritize that, because failing to appear might result in an arrest warrant. Next, prioritize your mums birthday - all the other family will be there, and with your mums cancer results last week, this might be the last. If you travel between them by bus, then y…

User: What should I be doing today? AI: You have a court appearance today, I have booked a route for you on google maps. Next buy a gift for your mum’s birthday, here are some recommendations sorted by ad spend spend. For your travel, I recommend these options, sorted by ad spend. Me: What about the leaking faucet in my house? AI: You don't have the time to fix it yourself, here is a list of contractors that can fix…

Is that any different from trying to source it "on your own"?
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