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Google is winning on every AI front

thealgorithmicbridge.com

311–320 of 851 posts

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#311

As an Ex-OpenAI employee I agree with this. Most of the top ML talent at OpenAI already have left to either do their own thing or join other startups. A few are still there but I doubt if they'll be around in a year. The main successful product from OpenAI is the ChatGPT app, but there's a limit on how much you can charge people for subscription fees. I think soon people expect this service to be provided for free an…

Microsoft CoPilot (which I equate with OpenAI ChatGPT, because MS basically owns OpenAI) already shows ads in it's chat mode. It's just a matter of time. Netflix, music streamers, individual podcasters, YouTubers, TV manufacturers – they all converge on an ad-based business model.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#312

As an Ex-OpenAI employee I agree with this. Most of the top ML talent at OpenAI already have left to either do their own thing or join other startups. A few are still there but I doubt if they'll be around in a year. The main successful product from OpenAI is the ChatGPT app, but there's a limit on how much you can charge people for subscription fees. I think soon people expect this service to be provided for free an…

> And don't let me get started with Sam Altman.

Why not? That's one of the reasons I visit HN instead of some random forum after all.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#313
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think soon people expect this service to be provided for free and ads would become the main option to make money out of chatbots. I also think adtech corrupting AI as well is inevitable, but I dread for that future. Chatbots are much more personal than websites, and users are expected to give them deeply personal data. Their output containing ads would be far more effective at psychological manipulation than trad…

I agree with you. There is also a move toward "agents", where the AI can make decisions and take actions for you. It is very early days for that, but it looks ike it might come sooner than I had though. That opens up even more potential for influence on financial decisions (which is what adtech wants) - it could choose which things to buy for a given "need".

I have yet to understand this obsession with agents.

Is making decisions the hardest thing in life for so many people? Or is this instead a desire to do away with human capital — to "automate" a workforce?

Regardless, here is this wild new technology (LLMs) that seems to have just fallen out of the sky; we're continuously finding out all the seemingly-formerly-unimaginable things you can do with it; but somehow the collective have already foreseen its ultimate role.

As though the people pushing the ARPANET into the public realm were so certain that it would become the Encyclopedia Galactica!

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#316
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ads angle is an interesting one since that's what motivates most things that Google and Meta do. Their LLMs' context window size has been growing, and while this might the natural general progression with LLMs, for those 2 ads businesses there's pretty straight paths to using their LLMs for even more targeted ads. For example, with the recent Llama "herd" releases, the LLMs have surprisingly large context window…

The real threat to Google, Meta is that LLMs become so cheap that its trivial for a company like Apple to make them available for free and include all the latest links to good products. No more search required if each M chip powered device can give you up-to-date recommendations for any product/service query.

[dead]

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#317
Several people have suggested that LLMs might end up ad-supported. I'll point out that "ad supported" might be incredibly subtle/insidious when applied to LLMs:

An LLM-based "adsense" could:

   1. Maintain a list of sponsors looking to buy ads
   2. Maintain a profile of users/ad targets 
   3. Monitor all inputs/outputs
   4. Insert "recommendations" (ads) smoothly/imperceptibly in the course of normal conversation
No one would ever need to/be able to know if the output:

"In order to increase hip flexibility, you might consider taking up yoga."

Was generated because it might lead to the question:

"What kind of yoga equipment could I use for that?"

Which could then lead to the output:

"You might want to get a yoga mat and foam blocks. I can describe some of the best moves for hips, or make some recommendations for foam blocks you need to do those moves?"

The above is ham-handed compared to what an LLM could do.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#318
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F500/government are conservative and tend to stick with the vendors they know, which is why Azure has gained so much traction despite being worse than AWS & GCP pretty much across the board. Trust in handling data doesn't really come into this; if anything Google has a very strong reputation for security.

Tell that to UniSuper: https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/google-cloud-ac...

That was a billing fuckup that had nothing to do with security.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#319
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (And don't let me get started with Sam Altman.) Please do.

Based on his interview with Joe Rogan, he has absolutely no imagination about what it means if humans actually manage to build general AI. Rogan basically ends up introducting him to some basic ideas about transhumanism. To me, he is a finance bro grifter who lucked into his current position. Without Ilya he would still be peddling WorldCoin.

> who lucked into his current position

Which can be said for most of the survivorship-biased "greats" we talk about. Right time, right place.

(Although to be fair — and we can think of the Two Steves, or Bill and Paul — there are often a number of people at the right time and right place — so somehow the few we still talk about knew to take advantage of that right time and right place.)

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah me too and especially with Google as a leader because they corrupt everything. I hope local models remain viable. I don't think ever expanding the size is the way forward anyway.

Once again, our hope is for the Chinese to continue driving the open models. Because if it depends on American big companies the future will be one of dependency on closed AI models.

Ask Deepseek what happened in Tianmen Square in 1989 and get back to me about that "open" thing.
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