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Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

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Re: Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

#92

Not a great impression to have your demo video demonstrate how one of your 'most advanced' AI models loses to the most common check-mate pattern in all of chess.

For an LLM, just being able to play an entire game of chess without illegal moves and without inventing pieces that aren't on the board is an achievement. Even more so for a live model. Then again, who knows how much the harness helped here

Re: Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

#93

I have been looking for a model that's good for GUI testing. Original computer use isn't right because it's a slow screenshot loop, which doesn't capture transition and animation. Docs says this one does up to 1 FPS. That might be fast enough. If not now, we must be within a few months of high enough sample rates to do it.

I find just letting a model record a video it can read frame by frame later works fine, Gemini 3.8 flash would be solid for that

Re: Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

#94

Gemini is underrated in that it produces the only prose that is somewhat bearable to read.

For heavyweight work I have been using Astra, but for rabbit holes and brain storming Gemini is far more enjoyable to interact with. I'm worried in their push to catch up on the SOTA front, it's going to lose that natural sounding touch it currently has.

Is Google still chasing frontier? Seems like they haven't had a "Pro" model in forever. I think a good niche for them would be right where they are now.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

#95
post #9

I wonder when/if we’ll see Gemini beating Fable and Astra. Last year I would have confidently bet Google will overtake the others just because they have the data, the hardware (TPUs) and a fat advertising money pipe and yet they are still behind. Anyone anonymous at Google want to hint when Gemini 4 will be out?

I’m wondering if they even see a coding agent as a valuable prize. It’s a competitive market in a race to the bottom economically, hard to establish consistent differentiation and virtually zero switching cost for customers.

I think they’ve made a shrewd move in focusing on search integration and everyday users (Gemini app) vs software power users. They have their corner and nobody is really competing with them, plus it feeds directly into their existing revenue stream.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

#96
post #9

I wonder when/if we’ll see Gemini beating Fable and Astra. Last year I would have confidently bet Google will overtake the others just because they have the data, the hardware (TPUs) and a fat advertising money pipe and yet they are still behind. Anyone anonymous at Google want to hint when Gemini 4 will be out?

For coding models? I don't think Google is motivated to fight in that market. There's no incentive for them. Ask yourself, how does Google -- a company that famously does everything -- benefit from SWEs outside of Google having access to powerful coding models? They would just be competition. Famously, Google just eventually discards almost all businesses that don't have the same fire hose of revenue that ads does. S…

Also: Google has like a 20% stake in Anthropic, and a very fat cloud partnership

Re: Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

#97
post #9

I wonder when/if we’ll see Gemini beating Fable and Astra. Last year I would have confidently bet Google will overtake the others just because they have the data, the hardware (TPUs) and a fat advertising money pipe and yet they are still behind. Anyone anonymous at Google want to hint when Gemini 4 will be out?

As an "everyday mans AI" I'd say 3.8 Flash definitely already has. Smart enough for the vast swath of people, and only slightly eeked out by Astra(Max) on vision capabilities, like the kind of "Point your camera at something and ask questions" that non-tech people like to do. It's crazy fast and very compute light, so not getting bogged down constantly. I can't think of a better general purpose model than 3.8 flash r…

I was thinking about coding specifically. Also, see all these math and physics breakthroughs, it's usually not Gemini but Fable and Astra.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

#98
post #9

I wonder when/if we’ll see Gemini beating Fable and Astra. Last year I would have confidently bet Google will overtake the others just because they have the data, the hardware (TPUs) and a fat advertising money pipe and yet they are still behind. Anyone anonymous at Google want to hint when Gemini 4 will be out?

For coding models? I don't think Google is motivated to fight in that market. There's no incentive for them. Ask yourself, how does Google -- a company that famously does everything -- benefit from SWEs outside of Google having access to powerful coding models? They would just be competition. Famously, Google just eventually discards almost all businesses that don't have the same fire hose of revenue that ads does. S…

> Ask yourself, how does Google -- a company that famously does everything -- benefit from SWEs outside of Google having access to powerful coding models? They would just be competition.

Bragging rights to say they have a SOTA model. I guess that was more like Google of 10 years ago with moonshot projects. Nowadays, yeah, perhaps if it's not helping sell ads, it doesn't make sense.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

#99

Gemini is underrated in that it produces the only prose that is somewhat bearable to read.

Try Gemini live in a multi lingual environment. It can pick out speakers and live translate to you. Truly underrated for its capabilities.

I actually did (was going to travel internationally), and it wasn't as useful as you'd think. I would be talking to someone, and in the background someone else would be talking, and it would translate both people.

Only worked in a 1:1 in a quiet place. Still, can't complain for free.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

#100
post #9

I wonder when/if we’ll see Gemini beating Fable and Astra. Last year I would have confidently bet Google will overtake the others just because they have the data, the hardware (TPUs) and a fat advertising money pipe and yet they are still behind. Anyone anonymous at Google want to hint when Gemini 4 will be out?

For coding models? I don't think Google is motivated to fight in that market. There's no incentive for them. Ask yourself, how does Google -- a company that famously does everything -- benefit from SWEs outside of Google having access to powerful coding models? They would just be competition. Famously, Google just eventually discards almost all businesses that don't have the same fire hose of revenue that ads does. S…

> Ask yourself, how does Google -- a company that famously does everything -- benefit from SWEs outside of Google having access to powerful coding models?

Catch is, even Googlers internally do not have access to top-tier models. (or did not until recently, when apparently Claude was made accessible to the SWEs internally).

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