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Bard and new AI features in Search

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Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#421

Post by s3p »

stcroixx wrote: post #392

They burned a bridge already and it's too late now. People will be less likely to use whatever AI they release as we'll just assume it's trying to financially exploit us like they did with search and gmail. Mass adoption will never happen because of their spoiled reputation. Google will not be at the center of the AI future. Watch them get even more user hostile as they realize this and cling to their ad business eve…

Which planet are you on? Google commands the market in search. Its browser is the most popular one in the world. Its operating system, Android, has the most users in the world. I agree they are not a trustworthy company, but if everyone else is as distrustful as you say then these statistics simply do not add up.

Google is at the center of nearly every industry they operate in, and, in my opinion, AI will be no different. They weren't first to market, but they won't be an insignificant player.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#422

Post by nicoburns »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #417
shawntan wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the earlier responses said, if it is retrieving information from an external data source, that would be a much easier way to update things. REALM ( https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.08909 ) comes to mind as an example of active work in this area. Updating a monolithic LLM seems like a harder problem at the moment, and probably would fall under the umbrella of "continual learning", though that sub-field would have their…

> Like the earlier responses said, if it is retrieving information from an external data source I was under the impression it went through like a multi-month long ultra expensive training process involving many GPUs on terabytes of data "snapshotted" point in time. Is it possible to do this at a smaller scale once a day at the end of the day with "all new content scraped from the Internet nightly"?

I think the idea might be to effectively provide it with the result of a google search (or other datasource) as part of the prompt.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#423

Post by leobg »

xen2xen1 wrote: post #337
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…

Because sitting at a computer or a phone is, in fact, unnatural. We are trained to do that. Asking a question of another person is natural. If you can get Alexa or Google assistant to reliably, without lying, answer questions, that could be huge. Caveats, but so much $ is put into those things and they suck. Also, if you could get a Google AI to be like a real assistant, context and understanding of what you're doing…

Not sure if this is accurate. Voice interaction is very slow, and low bandwidth. Visual interaction is much faster. Hence people love their spreadsheets.

Even if a voice assistant allowed you to interrupt it, to make fast course corrections, it would still be much slower than, say, interacting with the filters on Google Flights.

And I am saying this after having built for myself a bi directional voice interface to ChatGPT. There are certainly situations where it is great to use it, such as while driving, or perhaps in the kitchen while having your hands full. And probably on mobile, where screen real estate is scarce. But those doing information, work, or even just online shopping, probably won’t be giving up their screens anytime soon.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#424

Post by fredoliveira »

Willish42 wrote: post #376
peyton wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the busy mock-up in TFA I don’t think it’ll take 100,000 engineers to beat them.

What is TFA in this context? Does anyone have a link to to said "busy mock-up"?

TFA would be "the f*cking article", in this case.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#425

Post by kerpotgh »

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 use google in confluence with chatGPT. When I’m researching something, chatGPT gets me started and points me in the right direction but then I use google to find first hand sources/more detail/images/videos etc.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#426

Post by tboughen »

alex7734 wrote: post #405
criddell wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversational interfaces seem ideally suited to voice assistants. When you ask "hey google, what's the default password for my router?" does it make you sit through a 30 second ad before saying "the default password is password ".

That sounds like a complete nightmare. At least in a web page I can at least look away from the ad.

It may be worse than that if this Sony patent is any guide... https://www.techradar.com/news/sony-patent-would-have-you-ye...

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#427

Post by kerpotgh »

alain94040 wrote: post #388
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 c…

Why would keywords disappear? Wouldn’t you just use keywords that appear in the user input and response to serve ads?

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#428

Post by notahacker »

antonvs wrote: post #374
xen2xen1 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Google, how big is Maine? G: It's xxx big. Person: Do I know anyone there ? G:No one is in your address book. P: What's the closest person I know to Maine? G:Bob. G: Is this about your asking about Maple Syrup last night? There are closer places to get fresh Maple Syrup, how about Michigan? Contrived, but not impossible.

I think anyone who's used ChatGPT seriously could tell you that this isn't the same thing, at all. You're giving "assistant"-like questions, but the problem with those assistants has always been how shallow their responses have been, which significantly limits their usefulness. GPT's responses are still shallow in an absolute sense, but relatively speaking they're the Mariana Trench compared to Google's little creek.

Depends what the objective is.

If I want to be amused by a Hacker News comment in the style of the Bible, draft a conclusion for my essay or a engage in a long and superficially appealing conversation about philosophy, I'm not using Google's publicly-viewable AI products

Then again, Google - with and without a conversational interface - will do just fine with what the capital of Maine is, much better with what the weather is like in Maine tomorrow, and there's a lot more usefulness and revenue in associating it with stuff in my address book and selling me flight tickets to Maine which is... some way outside ChatGPT's wheelhouse.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#429

Post by woeirua »

How long before the major news publishers band together and sue Google to put a stop to this? It already happened once with Google News, and Google's response was to pull article snippets. As the number of "no-click" searches increases with Bard the publishers are 100% going to sue over lost revenue.

Re: Bard and new AI features in Search

#430

Post by joshuamorton »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #341
sethbannon wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They should have had the courage to weather through that noise. Or do something like Microsoft and acquire after release. These are just excuses tbh

Acquire what after release?

The point GP is making is that Google's technology has been (at least to a non-expert) on-par with the external things. Why would they acquire something they already have?

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