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Bard and new AI features in Search

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Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#381

Post by nebula8804 »

hidelooktropic wrote: post #225
oars wrote: post #198

I was able to see LaMDA in action about 1.5 years ago. It was just as awe-inducing as ChatGPT. Google is not behind in this race. They're simply slower to roll out new functionality. And maybe rightly so? Some of the things I saw ChatGPT say would have been multi-day international bad headlines for Google, if a Google AI had said them instead of an upstart startup.

Why is there an almost identical comment right below this one from a different user?

Sometimes people on poor connections click the send button twice and it registers as two separate messages

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#382

Post by [deleted] »

killjoywashere wrote: post #267
wiremine wrote: post #232

I agree this is bland corporate speak. But it reminded me of a question that's been floating around: A number of pundits, here on HN and elsewhere, keep referring to these large language models are "google killers." This just doesn't make sense to me. It feels like Google can easily pivot its ad engine to work with the AI-driven chat systems. It can augment answers with links to additional sources of information, be…

I don't think most people realize how much infrastructure separates something like ChatGPT from Google-scale deployment. OpenAI isn't suddenly building transoceanic fiber and datacenters near most major population centers. They aren't signing production-ready contract vehicles with most major OEMs and governments. And in the gap it would take a new entrant to acquire 10% of those assets, Google has 100,000 engineers…

[deleted]

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#383

Post by JPKab »

btown wrote: post #331
theropost wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love for this to be true. I bought into the Google ecosystem in a huge way, but it seems like they have been more focused on the data collection, and advertising end of things, rather than the innovation, and productivity enablement one. Their ecosystem has consitently been a let down in many regards, and they have lost a lot of forward momentum. I hope they can super charge this stuff, but I feel their corporate…

One thing's for sure - it's much easier to quantitatively define an OKR for growing advertising mindshare (especially when you operate the exchanges that measure that mindshare!), than it is to, say, define an OKR for how a project loosely contributes to Google leading the mindshare in the movement towards generative AI outputs as they redefine practically every job in the world. And I'm certain that however much Goo…

So gross, and so true. I get bouts of nausea every time I hear "OKR" now.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#384

Post by dougmwne »

jjcon wrote: post #273
brap wrote: post #206

I’m curious to hear why Google isn’t going to win in this AI arms race. The way I see it, Google: * is effectively the gateway to the internet, owning the most popular website in the world, mobile OS, and browser * has infinite LIVE data, both unstructured and structured (knowledge graph) * has infinite compute resources * employs the world’s best AI scientists and invests heavily in AI * has decade(s) of experience…

That may all be the case but then why has Google been failing to innovate and also maintain anything the past few years? The past fews years we’ve seen Google products die and deteriorate. Search has gotten worse, they’ve killed dozens of products and services (even ones that they promised would be around for the long haul). GPhotos is no longer free (after putting most competitors out of business). Google lack any i…

Search is so very bad. I tried to figure out what the largest MicroSD card was and was served ads and real results to buy fake 2tb cards from Amazon. Several searches were useless packed with ads and SEO spam. Only Reddit could tell me that the largest currently available card is 1tb.

It left me pretty shocked at how bad it’s gotten.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#385

Post by arnvald »

wiremine wrote: post #232

I agree this is bland corporate speak. But it reminded me of a question that's been floating around: A number of pundits, here on HN and elsewhere, keep referring to these large language models are "google killers." This just doesn't make sense to me. It feels like Google can easily pivot its ad engine to work with the AI-driven chat systems. It can augment answers with links to additional sources of information, be…

I think Google is in a tough position, because for them ads (both in search and other websites) are a huge portion of their business, and they need to find a way to monetize LLMs without killing its own cash cow.

Microsoft has a lot of advantages here - they can introduce LLM to search at a much smaller scale (order of magnitude), which means its cheaper, and they have plenty of other products making tons of money, so they can take their time to figure it out (also they're already adding ChatGPT to tolls like Teams and possibly Office, so they'll be able to increase revenue from these products).

Google is also seen as a bit of a dinosaur - they struggle to introduce new products, and recently we've been hearing more about products they kill rather than huge successes. It seems that as a company they lost their innovative spirit, and that's why people don't believe they'll evolve quickly enough.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#386

Post by skybrian »

I tried Kagi's summarizer [1], and it's okayish but misses one important point:

> Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, has announced the release of Bard, an experimental conversational AI service powered by Google's Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA). Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of Google's large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Bard is initially being released with a lightweight model version of LaMDA, which requires significantly less computing power and will allow for more feedback. Google is also working to bring its latest AI advancements into its products, starting with Search, and will soon be onboarding individual developers, creators and enterprises to try its Generative Language API. Google is committed to developing AI responsibly and will continue to be bold with innovation and responsible in its approach.

The point missed is that is that they're starting to test Bard with "trusted testers," their closed beta program, so it's not really "released" yet.

The context is that they had to announce it now because it's likely to leak anyway; trying to get outside testers to keep it confidential would be difficult and not worth it.

[1] https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#387

Post by w0mbat »

"Everybody else is just copying us. We are miles ahead of our competitors who are cheating by shipping actual products instead of our ground-breaking vaporware. Our revolutionary AI never gives the wrong answer because it never ships."

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#388

Post by alain94040 »

wiremine wrote: post #232

I agree this is bland corporate speak. But it reminded me of a question that's been floating around: A number of pundits, here on HN and elsewhere, keep referring to these large language models are "google killers." This just doesn't make sense to me. It feels like Google can easily pivot its ad engine to work with the AI-driven chat systems. It can augment answers with links to additional sources of information, be…

Those new language models are "Google killers" because they reset all the assumptions that people have made about search for several decades. Imagine that people start using those chat bots massively as a replacement for Google search. Then the notion of keyword disappears. Google AdSense becomes mostly irrelevant.

Of course, Google is a giant today with a history of machine learning innovation. So they have a good chance of being successful in that new world. But the point is that many other companies get a chance again, which hadn't happened in 20 years. You couldn't displace Google in the old search/keyword/click business model. Now everyone gets a fresh start.

Who knows what the economics will be. Just like page rank early on, it was expensive to compute. But the money in advertising made it worth it, and Google scaled rapidly. Which language model do you run? The expensive one, or the light one (notice how Google in this announcement mentions they will only offer the significantly smaller model to the public). Can you make this profitable?

Other fun questions to answer if the industry moves to chat vs. search, in a 5-10 year horizon. What is the motivation to write a blog post by then? Imagine no one actually reads web sites. Instead a blog post to share an opinion, I'll probably want to make sure my opinion gets picked up by the language model. How do I do that? Computed knowledge may render many websites and blogs obsolete.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#389

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

relaxing wrote: post #346
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess a couple of reasons: 1) Because it is disruptive. Things may get shook up, and Google may not end up in as exclusive position as they are currently in. There's risk. 2) Because it's not obvious how advertising would fit in with a conversational interface. Google may stay as #1 search/answer engine, but would revenue be adversely affected?

Banner, sidebar, in-line, interstitial, modal… what advertising modes wouldn’t work on conversational interface?

Well, those are ways you could try to do it, but whether they would "work" (attract click-thrus, not alienate users) is another question.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#390

Post by coliveira »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #304

Question for AI experts out there: ChatGPT is awesome, but it is obviously hamstrung by the fact that it crawled the web at the end of 2021, so all of its data is essentially "frozen" and it doesn't "know" of any topics that occurred after 2021. Seems to me like the next "holy grail" in large language models is building a model that can be continually updated. If Google can achieve that, I think they could leapfrog O…

Why do you think it can't update its dataset? The only reason I think they're using a 2021 dataset is because they tested it throughly. In the next few weeks they will be releasing more up to date databases.
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