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Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

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Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#111

Post by jackdoe »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #108
arjie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the first time I've heard someone argue that unionizing is a self-interested pursuit. It's called "collective bargaining" for a reason; workers who cooperate in negotiations with their employers have more leverage than those who negotiate individually. The entire point is to work together for the betterment of the group!

their point is while the 'group' wins, the rest of the world loses.

localized gains, distributed loss.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#112

Post by mianos »

guilhermeasper wrote: post #18

Google does anything except launch a new version of Gemini Pro.

I have a pro subscription, I think they have just given up. Likely because when they test their new models against the other frontier models they are so bad, they just pull it back. This leads them to try and innovate in other areas where there is currently less competition so they can compete. Not a bad play.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#113

Post by cube00 »

Draft videos more efficiently in 360p

While it sounds great you're quickly disappointed after you run the same prompt at standard resolution only to get a different result because it's non deterministic.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#114

Post by sib »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #108
arjie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the first time I've heard someone argue that unionizing is a self-interested pursuit. It's called "collective bargaining" for a reason; workers who cooperate in negotiations with their employers have more leverage than those who negotiate individually. The entire point is to work together for the betterment of the group!

See current situation where the Carpenters' Union in California is pushing hard against an initiative that would make it much easier to build more housing in the state because it would also reduce requirements for union labor.

Unions are very much an in-group vs out-group phenomenon (and in many cases, the benefits are specifically to the more senior union members vis a vis the less senior ones.)

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#115

Post by epolanski »

lambda wrote: post #4
petcat wrote: post #2

I heard a radio spot recently and I wondered if the voice was a real person or AI. It makes we wonder how such industries are dealing with this gen-AI revolution. We spend a lot of time here thinking about how it affects software developers, but I hardly ever see any commentary on how it is affecting screen and voice actors.

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.

Because software developers enjoyed scarcity for most of the fields existence and could barter themselves better conditions instead of falling back to unionized fixed incomes.

In any case, the overwhelming majority of jobs is non-unionized and I don't think that software developers can stop technological changes by unionizing.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#116

Post by computerliker »

jackdoe wrote: post #111
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time I've heard someone argue that unionizing is a self-interested pursuit. It's called "collective bargaining" for a reason; workers who cooperate in negotiations with their employers have more leverage than those who negotiate individually. The entire point is to work together for the betterment of the group!

their point is while the 'group' wins, the rest of the world loses. localized gains, distributed loss.

as an art enjoyer, i do not feel that having less media written, drawn, or voiced by a computer is a loss.

a computer can never be sad or horny or have taste. it can only make product. i also think artists should be paid living wages with good working conditions.

thank you SAG-AFTRA, WGA, IATSE, AEMI and Teamsters.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#117

Post by epolanski »

mianos wrote: post #112
guilhermeasper wrote: post #18

Google does anything except launch a new version of Gemini Pro.

I have a pro subscription, I think they have just given up. Likely because when they test their new models against the other frontier models they are so bad, they just pull it back. This leads them to try and innovate in other areas where there is currently less competition so they can compete. Not a bad play.

You can tell you live in the HN/tech bubble.

In the real world out there, Google and Microsoft are absolutely dominating enterprise customers.

Every single non-tech office worker I know is writing Gemini "gems" (sort of claude prompts/skills) or prompting Copilot to help drafting board meeting notes, insurance contracts updates that reflect changes in regulations, make quick loan feasibility assessments before passing them to the relevant office, presentations, etc, etc.

I'm talking insurance, banking, consultancy, manufacturing, etc, etc.

Why? Because Google and Microsoft already were in these companies, all they had to do is "oh, you also have AI now with your plans". Procurement and data compliance are the first thing businesses have to sort out. They were already sorted out.

Google doesn't need to have the best coding model or triumph in meaningless benchmarks, it only needs their models to get better and cheaper while serving them to their existing customer base.

They are playing a different game.

And Microsoft, doesn't even need to care about models at all, they can provide whatever open or closed AI with their services and have to focus on the harness in Excel or Github/Azure Copilot or whatever.

E.g. while developers in most of my clients use whatever they prefer or the company pays for, the remaining 90% uses either Google or Microsoft products.

Not a single one has incentives into venturing into OpenAI or Anthropic or Z.Ai lands because they might be better at some benchmark that is completely irrelevant to their tasks of updating powerpoints or summarizing incoming emails.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#118

Post by lambda »

boredatoms wrote: post #33
lambda wrote: 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.

No one has offered a union to join at any workplace Ive been at

Yeah, the problem is, someone has to start the union. It takes work. You have to get the whole workforce to vote on it. A lot of software engineers believe (or believed) that they were too smart and professional to need a union. And of course, if management gets wind of it while you are working on setting up the vote, they may do all kinds of trickery, legal or illegal, to block it.

It is possible. But it's quite uncommon in this industry in the US.

And given the current administration, it is hard to trust you'd get fair enforcement of labor laws if the company did illegal things to block unionization.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#119

Post by dbbk »

SimianSci wrote: post #30
guilhermeasper wrote: post #18

Google does anything except launch a new version of Gemini Pro.

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…

All Google has to do is build a model that works good enough for the Gemini app and for Spark. And they have it.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#120

Post by dbbk »

gbriel wrote: post #103
SimianSci wrote: post #30

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 doesn't have a good coding model. This is a HUGE problem. They don't need "larger more expensive models", they need a good coding model because it's a competitive advantage.

Competitive advantage why? Will it really make them more money? They already have Google Cloud.
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