Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI” • Hacker News Board

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#381

Post by seydor » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:17 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #319

It seems like everyone is so focused on LLMs are magic smartness machines that there isn't much analysis of them as better search (maybe "search synthesis"). And original search was a revolutionary technology, LLM as just better search are revolutionary. Like original search, the two application aspects are roughly algorithm and interface. Google years ago won by having a better interface, an interface that usually g…

Google search seems to optimize for "What?" (... is the best phone) and the list of results allows some variation, while GPT chats seem to answer "How?" , and tend to give the same average, stereotypical answer every time you ask.

Maybe google has an advantage because it can answer "What?" with ads, but i haven't used chatGPT for any product searches yet

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#382

Post by joshbert » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:18 PM UTC

reissbaker wrote: post #368

tikkun wrote: post #81

The part of the post that resonates for me is that working with the open source community may allow a model to improve faster. And, whichever model improves faster, will win - if it can continue that pace of improvement. The author talks about Koala but notes that ChatGPT is better. GPT-4 is then significantly better than GPT-3.5. If you've used all the models and can afford to spend money, you'd be insane to not use…

GPT-4 is so much better for complex tasks that I wouldn't use anything else. Trying to get 3.5 to do anything complicated is like pulling teeth, and using something worse than 3.5... Oof. TBH this feels like cope from Google; Bard is embarrassingly bad and they expected to be able to compete with OpenAI. In my experience, despite their graph in the article that puts them ahead of Vicuna-13B, they're actually behind..…

I don't feel sorry for Google, nor the big amounts of PR nonsense they're putting out there in order to try to spin their being too slow to move LLM tech to the side of the consumer. Get better or get out.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#383

Post by int_19h » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:18 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #142

tikkun wrote: post #81

The part of the post that resonates for me is that working with the open source community may allow a model to improve faster. And, whichever model improves faster, will win - if it can continue that pace of improvement. The author talks about Koala but notes that ChatGPT is better. GPT-4 is then significantly better than GPT-3.5. If you've used all the models and can afford to spend money, you'd be insane to not use…

If you think you can use GPT-4 then you don't know what you're talking about. API access is on waitlist. UI has limit of 25 messages in 3 hours. If you think big, known companies can get ahead of the waitlist and use it - short answer is no, they can't because of their IP. Nobody is going to sign off leaking out all internal knowledge to play with something. ClosedAI seems to have big problem with capacity. Those poe…

Big, known companies are already getting their GPT-4 fix via Azure OpenAI Service, where they can get meaningful guarantees for their data, and even on-prem if they really want it.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#384

Post by ineedasername » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:18 PM UTC

reissbaker wrote: post #368

tikkun wrote: post #81

The part of the post that resonates for me is that working with the open source community may allow a model to improve faster. And, whichever model improves faster, will win - if it can continue that pace of improvement. The author talks about Koala but notes that ChatGPT is better. GPT-4 is then significantly better than GPT-3.5. If you've used all the models and can afford to spend money, you'd be insane to not use…

GPT-4 is so much better for complex tasks that I wouldn't use anything else. Trying to get 3.5 to do anything complicated is like pulling teeth, and using something worse than 3.5... Oof. TBH this feels like cope from Google; Bard is embarrassingly bad and they expected to be able to compete with OpenAI. In my experience, despite their graph in the article that puts them ahead of Vicuna-13B, they're actually behind..…

Yes, I'd readily pay for GPT-4 access, though not the limited 25 requests per 3 hours version. I ponied up $20 for a month of usage to check it out, and it performs head & shoulders above 3.5 in its ability to comprehensively address more complex prompts and provide output that is more nuanced than ChatGPT.

I'll also point out that paid api access to 3.5 (davinci-03) is frequently better than ChatGPT's use of 3.5. You get many fewer restrictions, and none the "awe shucks, I'm just a little 'ol LLM and so I couldn't possibly answer that".

If you're frustrated by having to go to great lengths to prompt engineer and ask ChatGPT to "pretend" then it's worth it to pay for API access. I'm just frustrated that I can't use the GPT-4 API the same way yet (waitlist)

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#385

Post by murtio » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:19 PM UTC

I agree that both Google and OpenAI are losing the race to open-source in AI research. However, a more critical issue to Google is their struggle to compete with OpenAI in LLM-based search engines. Google's entire business model mostly relies on ads (77.6% in Q4 2022). OpenaAI is developing LLM-based products that people apparently love (100M users in 2 months) and seem to use it as search engines. This poses a greater risk to Google than just losing ground in research since it could ultimately lead to the loss of their ad-generated income.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#386

Post by opportune » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:22 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #141

ChaitanyaSai wrote: post #86

This is easily among the rare highest quality articles/comments I've read in the past weeks, perhaps months (on LLMs/AI since that's what I am particularly interested in). And this was for internal consumption before it was made public. Reinforces my recent impression that so much that's being made for public consumption now is shallow and it is hard to find the good stuff. And sadly, increasing so even on HN. As I w…

Well yes, generally in the business world all the "good stuff", the really smart analysis, is extremely confidential. Really smart people are putting these things together, but these types of analyses are a competitive advantage, so they're absolutely never going to share it publicly. This was leaked, not intentionally made public. And it all makes sense -- the people producing these types of business analyses are wo…

Agreed, I have some expertise in a couple software topics, and there is nowhere in public media that would pay me to write about it.

The only exception would be if my name were super recognizable/I had some legitimacy I could “sell” to publish something that did have commercial value, like some shitty CIO-targeted “article” about why XYZ is the future, in which case it’s not really going to be interesting content or actually sharing ideas.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#387

Post by jononor » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #369

tikkun wrote: post #81

The part of the post that resonates for me is that working with the open source community may allow a model to improve faster. And, whichever model improves faster, will win - if it can continue that pace of improvement. The author talks about Koala but notes that ChatGPT is better. GPT-4 is then significantly better than GPT-3.5. If you've used all the models and can afford to spend money, you'd be insane to not use…

> Linux won in servers and supercomputing, but not in end user computing. It seems just about every computing appliance in my home runs Linux. Then you have Android, ChromeOS, etc. which are also quite popular with end users, the first one especially. It may not have won, but I think it is safe to say that it is dominating.

Appliances are not end user computing, but embedded computing - the OS is incidental and under full control of the manufacturer. Some might argue that even mobile phones are not sufficiently under the control of end users to qualify.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#388

Post by opportune » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

summerlight wrote: post #18

This looks like a personal manifesto from an engineer who doesn't even attempt to write it on behalf of Google? The title is significantly misleading.

99% of media coverage like “Tech employee/company says ” are exactly like that.

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#389

Post by dahwolf » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

The current paradigm is that AI is a destination. A product you go to and interact with.

That's not at all how the masses are going to interact with AI in the near future. It's going to be seamlessly integrated into every-day software. In Office/Google docs, at the operating system level (Android), in your graphics editor (Adobe), on major web platforms: search, image search, Youtube, the like.

Since Google and other Big Tech continue to control these billion-user platforms, they have AI reach, even if they are temporarily behind in capability. They'll also find a way to integrate this in a way where you don't have to directly pay for the capability, as it's paid in other ways: ads.

OpenAI faces the existential risk, not Google. They'll catch up and will have the reach/subsidy advantage.

And it doesn't end there. This so-called "competition" from open source is going to be free labor. Any winning idea ported into Google's products on short notice. Thanks open source!

Re: Google “We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI”

#390

Post by biesnecker » Thu, May 04, 2023, 8:25 PM UTC

karmasimida wrote: post #373

reissbaker wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT-4 is so much better for complex tasks that I wouldn't use anything else. Trying to get 3.5 to do anything complicated is like pulling teeth, and using something worse than 3.5... Oof. TBH this feels like cope from Google; Bard is embarrassingly bad and they expected to be able to compete with OpenAI. In my experience, despite their graph in the article that puts them ahead of Vicuna-13B, they're actually behind..…

GPT-4 is a must if tool using is your goal. GPT-3.5, I think it is mostly suitable for: 1. Quick documentation lookup for non-essential facts 2. Lightweight documents writing and rewriting 3. Translation Other use cases should go straightly to GPT-4

I use GPT-3.5 for a lot of terminology lookup, and it's generally pretty great.

"In the context of [field I'm ramping up in], what does X mean, and how is it different than Y" -- it's not as good as GPT4 but it emits so much quicker and it normally gets me where I needed to go.