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Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

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Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#81

Post by berdario »

danpalmer wrote: post #15
PessimalDecimal wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have done that before. But they have also laid off 12,000 employees without doing that as well. Do we know which today's announcement resembles?

From what I saw in the UK, the Jan 2023 layoffs (the 12k) had a lot of people redeployed. Of the 3 people I knew personally impacted by it, 2 were redeployed elsewhere in the business (1 eng, 1 HR). I know it happened extensively in at least one other country too.

I also personally knew about 9 people affected in the UK. Of those, only one managed to find another team before the end of the garden leave.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#82

Post by modeless »

razodactyl wrote: post #42
modeless wrote: post #21

I don't use any feature of Google Assistant that wasn't present in the original Android voice search feature over a decade ago. And the few features I do use haven't improved in any way that I've noticed. In fact I feel like reliability has regressed. Google could have fired almost the whole team years ago and my user experience would not be different today. I consider voice assistants to be a failed experiment. It's…

I think your last paragraph contrasts and slightly contradicts itself but I agree with the failure part. If we consider a real-life PA performing tasks on our phone for us the question can be asked if it makes much sense or if it would be an interesting novelty. Basic functionality has always been the key winner with this tech. Calling, setting reminders etc. nothing too complex.

I just think the new LLM-based agents are in a different category. I don't see them as a continuation of the Siri/Alexa/etc lineage.

I do think a human personal assistant who had unlimited access to my data and could perform any task my phone or desktop could do would be exceedingly useful, even if the only interaction possibility was voice. And I think that AI agents will approach that level of usefulness within a decade or two.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#83

Post by trashtester »

rsanek wrote: post #47
matrix_overload wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High interest rates. If Fed dropped them to 0 overnight, everyone on the list would have happily hired everyone back. But then the grocery prices would start growing faster than SPX.

The timing is surprising if this was the main motivation. Rates have been flat for nearly a half year and are projected to come down later in 2024 -- https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch...

Rough guess is that these companies saw the need to downsize in Q3, but didn't want the optics of doing it directly before the holiday season.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#84

Post by happyopossum »

necheffa wrote: post #7
haswell wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be careful not to conflate criticality with complexity. The TCP/IP stack is extremely well defined and covers a finite problem space. Products higher up the software stack tend to balloon in complexity as they reach into concrete use cases. I’m sure there are plenty of overweight teams, but most products can’t survive with 4-6 people.

TCP/IP is so well defined because the engineers on these small teams are the ones publishing the standards. It isn't like they are simply reading a spec out of an existing document and coding up a conformant program.

> standards. It isn't like they are simply reading a spec out of an existing document and coding up a conformant program.

Err, yes - that’s what 98% of modern TCP/IP development work is. There aren’t frequent new RFCs for TCP - it is established, standardized, and stable.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#85

Post by chucksmash »

rwc wrote: post #34
aspectmin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would counter that voice assistants are not a failed experiment. I would suggest that Amazon and Google’s execution of said experiments have failed. I am extremely excited about the potential of projects like the Rabbit R1 and Humane.

Things don't seem to be going well at Humane, either: https://www.fastcompany.com/91008117/ai-pin-humane-layoffs

No horse in the race, but the layoff is only ten people from a 250 person company that is still hiring. I'm a little surprised it even merited an article.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#86

Post by JKCalhoun »

googlelayoff24 wrote: post #44
PessimalDecimal wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This link seems broken.

I created a thoraway account, maybe I can't post yet?

Maybe post the link in your reply here (not the link the the HN submission, but to what the submission was supposed to link to).

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#87

Post by modeless »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #71
modeless wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I just think these new projects based on LLMs should be considered a different category, AI agents or something. The traditional grammar-based voice assistant architecture used by Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, Bixby, etc is an abject failure, and not for lack of trying.

I think many parts of the architecture can be reused - in Alexa terms, all of the “skills” that integrate the assistant with various other services. IMO one of the main problems with assistants is that I don’t know what skills are available or how to invoke them. It’s like I’m a wizard who has to memorize all the spells I could be casting. It never happens because I don’t care enough. I think LLM’s could potentially…

"Skills" will be obsolete very soon. AI agents will use the same software tools and services that humans do. They won't need special separate AI-only interfaces.

I'm not excited about the Rabbit R1 as a hardware device but their software vision is exactly right and there are new startups coming out of stealth seemingly every day now attacking this problem.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#89

Post by kohbo »

lgleason wrote: post #14

I have both Nest Mini's and Alexas strewn throughout my house hooked up to my home automation etc.. Over time I've found that Alexa works better and that the google assistant progressively gets worse. This will probably not help things. Makes me wonder if they are slowly stepping away from Google assistant.

Agreed. The quality in not only GAs responses but also its ability to understand intent has seemingly been on a downward trend for at least a couple of years now.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#90

Post by JKCalhoun »

wilg wrote: post #38
neilv wrote: post #22

So what's a good employer now, now that Google has been losing the reputation for treating employees well? (Multiple rounds of laying off people isn't treating only those people poorly, but also increasing stress for the people who remain, knowing they can suddenly be laid off as well.)

In your opinion what is the proper way to do a layoff? Or if any layoff is a problem, how do you prevent companies from hiring too quickly or whatever?

I had an interesting thought: what if hiring were like bringing a child into your family. No, no layoffs ever. It's the equivalent of disowning your own child.

If the company begins to sink, so be it, the whole family goes down together (or flee as they see fit).

It would make a company hesitant to hire — they would have to think very long term making a decision like that. Perhaps companies would train (re-train) their employees if the jobs or company evolve.

Interesting though that, in the U.S. at least, the relationship we have with our employer is perhaps 180 degrees from that of the relationship we have with our family. That seems a little sad.

(Reminded suddenly of Tim's speech at the end of The Office (U.K.) — pass me a hanky. https://youtu.be/5AlZ-ZYbbPU)

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