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Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

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61–70 of 252 posts

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#61

The AI brand fragmentation at Google is not yet a problem because everyone is pretending: x There are so-called “SOTA” or “frontier” models that are more effective than the other ones (independent of harnessing and routing) x OpenAI and Anthropic have all the SOTA models and lead all the innovation x Google’s moat is its search bread/butter (it’s the only reason they’re relevant) All 3 operating assumptions are - I t…

> Google is search.

Implicit to that is "find". Their AI integration into search has really hit its stride for me. They have that search box (or speech prompt) hard wired into people and they are finally iterating and crafting AI into that experience. They really failed hard initially.

I know others have worse experiences than me but Google knows a lot about me so maybe that affects my results. YMMV

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#62
post #42
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is in their business interest to ignore Firefox.

Hot take: Google keeps Mozilla/Firefox alive through the default search engine placement (which makes Mozilla millions each year) so they don't get designated as a monopoly with their browser.

And of course they're doing the same for Apple/Safari, which wouldn't survive without the $20 million default search engine placement deal.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because Anthropic and OpenAI really want there to be an arms race justifying the outsized investment, doesn't mean the optimal play is to build larger, more expensive, models. The capital infusion the frontier labs have received has gotten to a size where many believe it may not be possible to recoup this investment without some very unrealistic things happening. I think it's reasonable to not completely drain o…

Google paid for 3.5 Pro training. They just didn't release it. They never gave an official answer as to why, so I'll let you draw your own conclusions. They did not decide it wasn't worth spending the money to train. They absolutely spent the money.

I work there. I have zero internal knowledge about the model. Opinion my own, etc. I don't think it is worth fighting to win on a month to month time horizon. When you step back and look an inch above this market, Gemini Pro 3.1 as a product was released in February. 6 months. It feels like forever and that Google is behind, but on a 2-3 year horizon? The models are going to stay similar.

Also, look at Flash 3.5 to 3.7. Flash 3.7 is a genuinely decent Sonnet 5 class model. Flash 3.7 is quite efficient too. Also, whatever was spent training 3.5 pro is probably not wasted. However, as a strategy, when I see models like Kimi K3, Fable, Sol. If you discard "because the model sucked" what other alternatives or potential options might exist?

I thought of a quite a few and they are far more compelling and interesting to me.

(Also Gemini models tend to be pretty decent at more than just programming. Enterprise AI use is more than just software eng / programming)

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because Anthropic and OpenAI really want there to be an arms race justifying the outsized investment, doesn't mean the optimal play is to build larger, more expensive, models. The capital infusion the frontier labs have received has gotten to a size where many believe it may not be possible to recoup this investment without some very unrealistic things happening. I think it's reasonable to not completely drain o…

If the Chinese labs can compete on a shoestring budget with access to much less powerful hardware, Google should be able to compete as well. They're becoming almost irrelevant for agentic coding right now.

AI / LLM is about more than agentic coding. It is one of the least interesting use cases to me, thinking more broadly. HN may be over-indexed on it.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#65
post #13
post #7

Prompt engineering tip for Google employees: just add "P.S. Make sure the page works in Firefox too."

It is in their business interest to ignore Firefox.

Google is so internally fractured, and the factions individually are so powerful, that it's really only the chrome people who care about chrome.

If anything FF gets left out because usage is so low.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#67
It certainly makes for easy demos, but I always struggle with the practical application. As in, what work or enjoyment does someone actually get from this? Ads and media pre production seem plausible, but it fails the 'how can this enrich life' in a way most other AI tools don't. Maybe for them that's not a consideration, if their only interest is the other meaning of enrich that might flow from ads and numbing rivers of slop.

Why do we look at art, watch videos/movies? Is that replicable as a function of text, other existing media, and 3-30 cents of compute per second? I'm pretty functionalist about these things, and at some point it probably won't be possible to tell the difference. But until then, at which point we might just say 'death of the author', it seems like a category error.

I do work with artists that use video and image generation models to create stuff, but from what I can tell they're interested in faster iteration and controlling a lot of intermediate steps (their graphs can get pretty labyrinthine).

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#68
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many screen and voice actors are unionized, and the unions have been striking and bargaining specifcially over these points. For example: https://sites.suffolk.edu/jhtl/2025/10/30/game-over-for-unau... Software developers, unfortunately, have been convinced that they don't need to unionize, so have no collective bargaining power for dealing with situations like this.

it's hilarious to see some people here go on about how they're proud to work so that they can be replaced I think too many just expect that they can get by like before because they're a 10x engineer or whatever

What options do you have? If you're the 10x engineer you'll be a 100x one and do just fine. Otherwise what can you do besides holding on as long as you can or start searching for a new career.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#69
post #24

Interesting that OpenAI abandoned Sora entirely but Google are continuing to invest heavily in their own video generation. Maybe because they see video generation as key to developing "world models"?

Google has always been committed to multimodal.

And, Veo and omni simply were better than Sora

And, Youtube is huge both as a place where video contents goes and where can be trained from. Microdramas are starting to become a real category--14 Billion USD, 90% of it made with AI.

Chinese video models can be more immediately impressive, but none of them come close to beat the value of Google's Flow. Especially when you are throwing away a lot of generations as part of the creative process. Which is what you have to do to make longer content with any video model.

OpenAI needed to be able to focus. Google can walk and chew gum, and they're not going to run out of money to buy chewing gum.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#70
post #23
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many screen and voice actors are unionized, and the unions have been striking and bargaining specifcially over these points. For example: https://sites.suffolk.edu/jhtl/2025/10/30/game-over-for-unau... Software developers, unfortunately, have been convinced that they don't need to unionize, so have no collective bargaining power for dealing with situations like this.

Personally, I just can’t find it in me to be that self-interested. It’s how other people oppose buildings near them because it blocks their view. I really don’t want to stop other people from writing software. If they want to use AI to do it so be it. That’ll be somewhat detrimental to me perhaps (which isn’t certain), but that’s okay. I’d rather attempt to adapt to a changing world.

> Personally, I just can’t find it in me to be that self-interested.

Yes, exactly. Do not advocate for yourself and your colleagues by joining them in a united front. Your voice does not matter. You will continue to adapt to widening wage disparities.

You will accept a pay cut and increased productivity goals and be happy to continue adapting as your cost of living keeps on climbing.

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