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Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

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Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#291

Post by mrcwinn »

I could not believe Sundar and the team around him for a simple unforced error:

"That’s why we re-oriented the company around AI six years ago"

I suppose this was meant to reframe the conversation around Google being a leader, but I think it has the opposite effect. It comes off as defensive and of course, quite honestly, if you planted the flag so much earlier, why don't you have a product to show for it in the way that OpenAI does?

What's perhaps more interesting though: does Google have an innovator's dilemma here?

Google built a flywheel that drives its ads business: sites are hungry for traffic so they structure in such a way that attracts Google's attention, and that structure in turn helps Google serve relevant ads. People tend to click on the first link (the most relevant link).

In the context of a chat interface, what happens if there is no link? Or only one result (the perfect answer)? What if there is much less traffic going directly to websites? And yet without that long tail of websites, how do you train your language model to know the answer?

Fascinating times!

Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#292

Post by Veen »

npalli wrote: post #241
tastyminerals2 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. I am somewhat in disbelief about the level people here downgrade the recent Bing upgrade. The chatbot feature is a such a time saver for jobs where you need to write tons of abstract surface-level content. Just yesterday, I tried compiling a monthly teachers working plan for some local school in Ukrainian language. What it spawned in a minute was at least a day of typing work for a human. This is especially use…

At this point, we don't know how useful it will turn out to be. While we are trading anecdotes, here's mine. I asked chatGPT who the Exec team of a medium sized company I knew, was. It confidently stated seven names. Turns out three of them it categorized under a different title and another three never even worked at the company! I would hardly call this a bootstrappble result. In your example, if I told that at rand…

I think of these tools as "first draft writers". You can't rely on OpenAI's GPT models to do your research for you or replace knowledge of a particular domain, but they significantly accelerate the initial content drafting process. Then you edit and fact-check and adapt, as you would anyway, but you've cut out much of the time-consuming grind of getting words on the page.

Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#293

Post by AceJohnny2 »

cutenewt wrote: post #281
ignoramous wrote: post #270

When Sundar doesn't react fast enough: Google's gone. They no longer have the ship-fast mentality of an upstart. Perfect is the enemy of the good. The ethics lords have taken over Google Brain. Google needs a war-time CEO. When Sundar reacts fast enough: Google's gone. The product was rushed. It is no where close to perfect. Could it be Google's been bluffing about its AI. What a knee-jerk reaction. Google needs a wa…

One CEO (and company) has joy. The other one does not. I know which one I'd rather join.

At this point, I'm curious which you think is which.

Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#294

Post by htrp »

Left out of this is that Google is trying to promose a perfect product, and trialing it out only internally

Microsoft shipped someone else's product to the world and is getting the results to iterate on for their next version.

The fumbled response by Google distracts from the fact that you're going to need exponential amounts of training data and only one of the companies is in a position to collect it.

Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#295

Post by tapoxi »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #192
dragontamer wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple came after Blackberry. Dell came after Commodore / Amiga. Facebook came after MySpace. Google came after Altavisa and Yahoo. Verizon came after AOL. Alternating Current came after Direct Current. Microsoft Word came after WordPerfect. Chrome came after Netscape Communicator. Python came after Perl. Nintendo came after Atari. I feel like first movers advantage is a myth.

> Apple came after Blackberry. Apple and specifically Jony Ive started the development of a handheld computer in the early 90s. Apple was definitely not a second comer to that market. https://www.businessinsider.com/jony-ives-first-apple-design...

Well the Newton was the second attempt by Apple, first they spun off General Magic and then pivoted when GM built hype and Apple remained a minority owner.

Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#296

Post by LesZedCB »

npalli wrote: post #241
tastyminerals2 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. I am somewhat in disbelief about the level people here downgrade the recent Bing upgrade. The chatbot feature is a such a time saver for jobs where you need to write tons of abstract surface-level content. Just yesterday, I tried compiling a monthly teachers working plan for some local school in Ukrainian language. What it spawned in a minute was at least a day of typing work for a human. This is especially use…

At this point, we don't know how useful it will turn out to be. While we are trading anecdotes, here's mine. I asked chatGPT who the Exec team of a medium sized company I knew, was. It confidently stated seven names. Turns out three of them it categorized under a different title and another three never even worked at the company! I would hardly call this a bootstrappble result. In your example, if I told that at rand…

with lang-chain and tooling, these problems will likely quickly shrink.

imagine where we'll be just two papers down the line!

Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#297

Post by smachiz »

ericlewis wrote: post #174
dragontamer wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple came after Blackberry. Dell came after Commodore / Amiga. Facebook came after MySpace. Google came after Altavisa and Yahoo. Verizon came after AOL. Alternating Current came after Direct Current. Microsoft Word came after WordPerfect. Chrome came after Netscape Communicator. Python came after Perl. Nintendo came after Atari. I feel like first movers advantage is a myth.

Apple came after blackberry, but as the parent comment states... you have to be much better and by all accounts the iPhone was much better at things consumers cared about. Dell made better computers. Facebook was nicer than myspace in UI/UX. Google returned superior results. So their point stands. They have to be much better. And all of these were.

Yes, basically, when you stop innovating and are only doing incremental improvement, someone is going to come and eat your lunch.

Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#298

Post by smachiz »

SoftTalker wrote: post #280
alex_sf wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They usually don't win in the long-run because someone comes along with > better design, cheaper price, better range, better reliability That doesn't mean the first mover advantage doesn't exist.

First movers are the first to hit the innovater’s dilemma. They are trapped by the decisions they made as first movers, while later incumbents have freedom to create improvements without worry about the installed base. Apple is one company that never seemed to fall into that trap. They just tell the installed base “fuck you, buy the new thing” and somehow get away with it.

They're also very very rarely the first mover.

Apple comes in and innovates against something that existed but was user hostile.

It actually did happen to Apple over a long enough horizon, they cornered the paid digital music market by perfecting it, and upended it, and didn't innovate/upend again, and along came Spotify to upend it for them.

Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#299

Post by cheeze »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #293
cutenewt wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One CEO (and company) has joy. The other one does not. I know which one I'd rather join.

At this point, I'm curious which you think is which.

I'm with you. I honestly have no idea which one the commenter is talking about.

Re: Google employees criticize CEO for “dumpster fire” response to ChatGPT

#300

Post by cheeze »

oofta-boofta wrote: post #228
AlbertCory wrote: post #216

Xoogler here. I'll ignore the AI and "has Google lost its way?" threads, not that they're not interesting. Rather, Sundar: he's the inevitable product when you hire a CEO based on his longevity and whether everyone likes him. In the military they distinguish between a "barracks general" and a "combat general." He's the former. He looks good when nothing bad is happening.

Whew boy you hit the nail on the head. Google just seems to be aimless at this point, and now with the layoffs (despite their immense profitability) they're going to have a much tougher time hiring and retaining top talent.

Where is the top talent going to go? Seems like a vast majority of FAANG* ended up laying folks off.
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