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Google is winning on every AI front

thealgorithmicbridge.com

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Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#421

Post by tim333 »

viraptor wrote: post #186
throw1223323 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on his interview with Joe Rogan, he has absolutely no imagination about what it means if humans actually manage to build general AI. Rogan basically ends up introducting him to some basic ideas about transhumanism. To me, he is a finance bro grifter who lucked into his current position. Without Ilya he would still be peddling WorldCoin.

There's weirdly many people who touch on the work around transhumanism but never heard the word before. There's a video of geohot basically talking about that idea, then someone from the audience mentions the name... and geohotz is confused. I'm honestly surprised.

The transhumanists tended to be philosopher types, the name coming from this kind of idea of humanism:

>Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. (wikipedia)

Whereas the other lot are often engineers / compsci / business people building stuff.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#422

Post by singhrac »

remoquete wrote: post #5

I was a loyal Claude user until I decided to try Gemini 2.5. "After all", I thought, "I already use a Pixel phone, so it's integrated with Android. And with Google Drive. And I can get it through my Google One subscription." And now that I'm on it, I don't think I'm going back. Google did it again.

Can you choose a model via the Gemini app? I can on the webapp (finally), but on the mobile app it won’t let me choose.

Using Gemini via Google Workspace.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#423

Post by Lerc »

gcanyon wrote: post #317

Several people have suggested that LLMs might end up ad-supported. I'll point out that "ad supported" might be incredibly subtle/insidious when applied to LLMs: An LLM-based "adsense" could: 1. Maintain a list of sponsors looking to buy ads 2. Maintain a profile of users/ad targets 3. Monitor all inputs/outputs 4. Insert "recommendations" (ads) smoothly/imperceptibly in the course of normal conversation No one would…

LLMs should be legally required to act in the interest of their users (not their creators).

This is a standard that already applies to positions of advisors such as Medical professionals, lawyers and financial advisors.

I haven't seen this discussed much by regulators, but I have made a couple of submissions here and there expressing this opinion.

AIs will get better, and they will become more trusted. They cannot be allowed to sell the answer to the question "Who should I vote for?" To the highest bidder.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#425

Post by b112 »

fernandopj wrote: post #347
ximeng wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google aren’t interested in <1bn USD businesses, so it’s hard for them to build anything new as it’s pretty guaranteed to be smaller than that at first. The business equivalent of the danger of a comfortable salaried job.

Google is very good at recognizing existential threats. iOS were that to them and they built Android, including hardware, a novelty for them, even faster than mobile incumbents at the time. They're more than willing to expand their moat around AI even if that means multiple unprofitable business for years.

In tech, Android's acquisition by Google is ancient history. It has zero relevance to today's Google.

When was it, 2006? Almost 20 years ago, back when the company was young.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#426

Post by jxjnskkzxxhx »

JLO64 wrote: post #385
jxjnskkzxxhx wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Jax quite a bit and it's so much better than tf/pytorch. Now for the life of me, I still haven't been able to understan what a TPU is. Is it Google's marketing term for a GPU? Or is it something different entirely?

TPUs (short for Tensor Processing Units) are Google’s custom AI accelerator hardware which are completely separate from GPUs. I remember that introduced them in 2015ish but I imagine that they’re really starting to pay off with Gemini. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_Processing_Unit

Believe it or not, I'm also familiar with Wikipedia. It reads that they're optimized for low precisio high thruput. To me this sounds like a GPU with a specific optimization.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#427

Post by ACCount36 »

levocardia wrote: post #51

Google is winning on every front except... marketing (Google has a chatbot?), trust (who knew the founding fathers were so diverse?), safety (where's the 2.5 Pro model card?), market share (fully one in ten internet users on the planet are weekly ChatGPT users), and, well, vibes (who's rooting for big G, exactly?). But I will admit, Gemini Pro 2.5 is a legit good model. So, hats off for that.

Trust is important, and Google has a big rep for killing its projects. As well as making the most moronic braindead decisions in handling what they don't kill off.

No one is going to build on top of anything "Google" without having a way out thought out in advance.

Not that important for LLMs, where drop-in replacements are usually available. But a lot of people just hear "by Google" now and think "thanks I'll pass" - and who can blame them?

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#428

Post by eitally »

fragmede wrote: post #282
dash2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can just plug the google.com web page into their AI. They already do that.

but because users are used to doing that for free, they can't charge money for that, but if they don't charge money for that, and no one's seeing ads, then where does they money come from?

Well, it clearly affects search ads, but in terms of revenue streams Google is already somewhat diversified:

1. Search ads (at risk of disintermediation) 2. Display ads (not going anywhere) 3. Ad-supported YouTube 4. Ad-supported YouTube TV 5. Ad-supported Maps 6. Partnership/Ad supported Travel, YouTube, News, Shopping (and probably several more) 7. Hardware (ChromeOS licensing, Android, Pixel, Nest) 8. Cloud

There are probably more ad-supported or ad-enhanced properties, but what's been shifting over the past few years is the focus on subscription-supported products:

1. YouTube TV 2. YouTube Premium 3. GoogleOne (initially for storage, but now also for advanced AI access) 4. Nest Aware 5. Android Play Store 6. Google Fi 7. Workspace (and affiliated products)

In terms of search, we're already seeing a renaissance of new options, most of which are AI-powered or enhanced, like basic LLM interfaces (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc), or fundamentally improved products like Perplexity & Kagi. But Google has a broad and deep moat relative to any direct competitors. Its existential risk factors are mostly regulation/legal challenge and specific product competition, but not everything on all fronts all at once.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#429

Post by tim333 »

olalonde wrote: post #393
codelord wrote: post #31

As an Ex-OpenAI employee I agree with this. Most of the top ML talent at OpenAI already have left to either do their own thing or join other startups. A few are still there but I doubt if they'll be around in a year. The main successful product from OpenAI is the ChatGPT app, but there's a limit on how much you can charge people for subscription fees. I think soon people expect this service to be provided for free an…

Do you think Sam will follow through with this? > Therefore, if a value-aligned, safety-conscious project comes close to building AGI before we do, we commit to stop competing with and start assisting this project. We will work out specifics in case-by-case agreements, but a typical triggering condition might be “a better-than-even chance of success in the next two years.”

That feels like it came from a past era. (I looked it up - it was 2019).

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#430

Post by panarky »

istjohn wrote: post #419
netcan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's a limit on how much you can charge people for subscription fees. I think soon people expect this service to be provided for free and ads would become the main option to make money out of chatbots. So... I don't think this is certain. A surprising number of people pay for the ChatGPT app and/or competitors. It's be a >$10bn business already. Could maybe be a >$100bn business long term. Meanwhile... making mo…

> No guarantees that Google discover a meaningful business model here... I don't understand this sentiment at all. The business model writes itself (so to speak). This is the company that perfected the art of serving up micro-targeted ads to people at the moment they are seeking a solution to a problem. Just swap the search box for a chat bot. For a while they'll keep the ads off to the side, but over time the ads wi…

> chatbots ... provided for free ... ads

Just because the first LLM product people paid for was a chatbot does not mean that chat will be the dominant commercial use of AI.

And if the dominant use is agents that replace knowledge workers, then they'll cost closer to $2000 per month than $20 or free, and an ad-based business model won't work.

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