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Why did Google Brain exist?

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Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#91

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

temac wrote: post #29
dekhn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google never talked much about it externally, but Google Research (the predecessor to Brain) had a single project which almost entirely funded the entire division- a growth-oriented machine learnign system called Sibyl. What was sibyl used for? Growing youtube and google play and other products by making the more addictive. Sibyl wasn't a very good system (I've never seen a product that had more technical debt) but i…

Seems to be quite evil though.

Every business is essentially in the business of making people addicted to their products in some way.

You're an oil company - you want people to drive as much as possible.

You're an airline company - you want people to fly all over the world as much as possible.

You're a fashion company - you want people to buy new clothes constantly.

You're a beverage company - you want people drinking your drink all the time instead of water.

You're an Internet advertising company - you want people's eyeballs on your products as much as possible (to blast them with ads).

It's just business.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#92

Post by kgwgk »

selimthegrim wrote: post #90
kgwgk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they don’t need “ML people”? Computational biology has been a thing for a while.

Well they had a whole suite of presentations at NeurIPS that suggests they hired a bunch.

They could afford them then…

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#93

Post by gscott »

khazhoux wrote: post #59

> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…

The check cleared!

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#94

Post by ShamelessC »

khazhoux wrote: post #59

> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…

That's a very optimistic take on how new generations perceive the ethics surrounding confidentiality. Are you really _baffled_ by this? I understand that it's a common position, but it's a position that is so clearly tainted by the conflicts of interest between employer and employee. And a keen awareness of those conflicting interests _only_ serves to better an employee's ability to serve themselves best in a capitalist economy.

I'm not saying you are wrong per se. But if you don't see why employees are willing to act in this way, you don't see how employees feel about being trapped in a system where no matter how much you are paid - you are ultimately making someone else more.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#95

Post by asdfman123 »

snapcaster wrote: post #63
asdfman123 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has very good LLMs. It just let OpenAI beat them to the punch by releasing them earlier. As an established business, Google felt it had a lot to lose by releasing "unsafe" AI into the world. But OpenAI doesn't have a money printing machine, and it's sink-or-swim for them.

I keep hearing this, but Bard sucks so badly when i've tried to use it like GPT-4 or compare results its like night and day. What makes you so confident they have "secret" LLMs that are superior?

Have you tried PaLM?

I work for Google and have been playing with it. It’s pretty good.

The decision to release Bard, an LLM that was clearly not as good as ChatGPT, struck me as reactive and is why people think Google is behind. I’d think so too if I had just demoed Bard.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#96

Post by cmavvv »

kevviiinn wrote: post #71
selimthegrim wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I think the issue is more of if you’re Genentech and you need ML people and can’t afford to pay them you’re probably better off retraining chemistry PhDs.

I think you missed my point. Genentech, AFAIK, was not doing research on machine learning as in the principles of how machine learning works and how to make it better. They do biotech research which uses applied machine learning. You don't need a PhD in ML to apply things that are already known

As a PhD student working on core ML methods with applications in chemistry, I second this. During my PhD, I read very few papers by chemists that were exciting from a ML perspective. Some work very well, but the chemists don't even seem to always understand why they made the right choice for a specific problem.

I don't claim that the opposite is easy either. Chemistry is really difficult, and I understand very little.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#98

Post by choppaface »

khazhoux wrote: post #82
choppaface wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really baffled by how many people think a job is more than a job and there's some ownership over the employee's critical thinking capabilities during the job and after it ends. While I agree the OP is "going for internet brownie points" (or probably a bit butthurt from being laid off from a certifiably top-5 cushiest job in the United States) the article doesn't include anything even remotely trade secret and is…

> a company has to pay extra Part of my problem is that Google (and similar companies) are already paying insane (in the best way possible) amounts of money, and when you sign the agreement to take said money, you explicitly promise you won't talk about company internals. To me this is quite simple: if you accept what winds up being millions of dollars in cash+equity, and you give your word that you'll keep your mout…

You keep your mouth shut about material property of Google. E.g. don't post code, and probably don't give details about code that hasn't been made public. Sure, this area is not clear and can also depend on one's internal position in the company, but it's important to separate moral hazard from legal hazard.

As far as one's opinions go, and in particular how the company made you feel, that's not paid for. A severance agreement might outline some things, but again that's legal hazard and not moral hazard. There are certainly some execs and managers who will only want to work with really, really loyal people, who throw in a lot more for the money. And some execs will pay a lot more for that... e.g. look at how much Tesla spends on employee litigation.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#99

Post by jeffbee »

snapcaster wrote: post #63
asdfman123 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has very good LLMs. It just let OpenAI beat them to the punch by releasing them earlier. As an established business, Google felt it had a lot to lose by releasing "unsafe" AI into the world. But OpenAI doesn't have a money printing machine, and it's sink-or-swim for them.

I keep hearing this, but Bard sucks so badly when i've tried to use it like GPT-4 or compare results its like night and day. What makes you so confident they have "secret" LLMs that are superior?

Bard is in full-scale production to all U.S. users for free. GPT-4 costs $20/month. Rather a big difference in the economics of the situation. Also it's pretty clear that even the $20 is highly subsidized. Microsoft is willing to incinerate almost any amount of money to harm Google.

Re: Why did Google Brain exist?

#100

Post by khazhoux »

ShamelessC wrote: post #94
khazhoux wrote: post #59

> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…

That's a very optimistic take on how new generations perceive the ethics surrounding confidentiality. Are you really _baffled_ by this? I understand that it's a common position, but it's a position that is so clearly tainted by the conflicts of interest between employer and employee. And a keen awareness of those conflicting interests _only_ serves to better an employee's ability to serve themselves best in a capital…

I totally get why people act this way. Because it's Very Important That Everyone Knows What I Think.

But there is no inequity or conflict of interest here. None of that about being trapped in a capitalist economy is to the point here. He has probably a couple million dollars in his bank account that wasn't there before, and the deal was to not talk publicly about internals (which includes promotions process, internal motivations and decision-making, etc).

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