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Google is winning on every AI front

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Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#651

Post by int_19h »

sva_ wrote: post #610

It is sort of funny to me how the sentiment about whoever seems to be leading in ML changes so frequently (in particular here on HN.) A couple months ago it felt like people were sure that Google completely fucked it up for themselves (especially due to the fact that they invented the transformer but didn't productize it themselves at first.) For a short while, Claude was the best thing since sliced cheese, then Deep…

The sentiment changes this fast because SOTA changes this fast. E.g. Google models were objectively crappy compared to OpenAI, but Gemini 2.5 really turned the tables (and I'm not talking about synthetic benchmarks here but real world coding).

The state of affairs with local models is similarly very much in flux, by the way.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#652

Post by kibibu »

netcan wrote: post #137
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…

> 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…

What happens when OpenAI introduces sponsored answers?

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#653

Post by int_19h »

logicchains wrote: post #132
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is also terribly paranoid of the LLM saying anything controversial. If you want a summary of some hot topic article you might not have the time to read, Gemini will straight up refuse to answer. ChatGPT and Grok don't mind at all.

Not a fan of Google, but if you use Gemini through AI studio with a custom prompt and filters disabled it's by far the least censored commercial model in my experience.

Most of https://chirper.ai runs on Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite, and it has plenty of extremely NSFW content generated.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#654

Post by int_19h »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #102
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.

I wouldn't even say Gemini Pro 2.5 is the best model. Certainly not when you do multimodal or function calling, which is what actually matters in industry applications. Plain chatbots are nice, but I don't think they will decide who wins the race. Google is also no longer in the mindset to really innovate. You'll hear surprisingly similar POVs from ex-Googlers and ex-OpenAI guys. I'd actually say OpenAI still has an…

I did some experiments with Gemini Pro 2.5 vs Sonnet 3.7 for coding assistants, and, at least as far as code quality and ability to understand complexities in existing codebase goes, Gemini is noticeably stronger.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#655

Post by int_19h »

porphyra wrote: post #256

As long as Google continues to hamstring themselves with censorship for no reason, I can't use their products. The other day I asked gemini 2.5 pro "which british ceo said that his company's products were bad" and the response was > I'm just a language model, so I can't help you with that. https://g.co/gemini/share/cb3afc3e7f78 Chatgpt 4o correctly identified the guy as Ratner and provided the relevant quotes.

The model itself is much more lax about such stuff than ChatGPT and especially Claude. The filters are applied on top of that, but products using it via the API don't suffer this problem.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#656

Post by sumedh »

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…

> OpenAI is an annoyance for Google

Remember Google is the same company which could not deliver a simple Chat App.

Open AI has the potential to become a bigger Ad company and make more money.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#657

Post by sumedh »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #313
jononor wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. There is also a move toward "agents", where the AI can make decisions and take actions for you. It is very early days for that, but it looks ike it might come sooner than I had though. That opens up even more potential for influence on financial decisions (which is what adtech wants) - it could choose which things to buy for a given "need".

I have yet to understand this obsession with agents. Is making decisions the hardest thing in life for so many people? Or is this instead a desire to do away with human capital — to "automate" a workforce? Regardless, here is this wild new technology (LLMs) that seems to have just fallen out of the sky; we're continuously finding out all the seemingly-formerly-unimaginable things you can do with it; but somehow the c…

> Is making decisions the hardest thing in life for so many people?

Take insurance, for example — do you actually enjoy shopping for it?

What if you could just share a few basic details, and an AI agent did all the research for you, then came back with the top 3 insurance plans that fit your needs, complete with the pros and cons?

Why wouldn’t that be a better way to choose?

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#658

Post by sumedh »

falcor84 wrote: post #384
coliveira wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have loyalty, but one day there will be no one else to switch to. So, if you're a loyal user or not is a moot point.

History shows it's a self-defeating victory. If one provider were to "win" and stop innovating, they'll become ripe for disruption by the likes of Deepseek, and the second someone like that has a better model, I'll switch.

> If one provider were to "win" and stop innovating, they'll become ripe for disruption by the likes of Deepseek

Yes but that can take decades, till that time Google can keep making money with sub standard products and stop innovating.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#659

Post by bitpush »

sumedh wrote: post #656
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…

> OpenAI is an annoyance for Google Remember Google is the same company which could not deliver a simple Chat App. Open AI has the potential to become a bigger Ad company and make more money.

Google has so many channels for ad delivery. ChatGPT is only competing against Google Search, which is arguably the biggest. But dont forget, Google has YouTube, Google Maps, Google Play, Google TV and this is before you start to consider Google's Ad Network (the thing where publishers embed something to get ads from Google network).

So nope, ChatGPT is not in even in the same league as Google. You could argue Meta has similar reach (facebook.com, instagram) but that's just two.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#660

Post by bitpush »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #301
jcfrei wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real threat to Google, Meta is that LLMs become so cheap that its trivial for a company like Apple to make them available for free and include all the latest links to good products. No more search required if each M chip powered device can give you up-to-date recommendations for any product/service query.

That is my fantasy, actually.

Meta's models cant be used by companies about a certain threshold, so nope. Apple can wait it out to use a 'free model', but at that point it'll be like picking up an open source database like Postgres - you wont get any competitive advantage.
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