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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

#661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open AI don't always have the best models (especially for programming) but they've consistently had the best product/user experience. And even in the model front, other companies seem to play catchup more than anything most of the time.

The best user experience for what? The most practical use case for generative AI today is coding assistants, and if you look at that market, the best offerings are third-party IDEs that build on top of models they don't own. E.g. Cursor + Gemini 2.5. On the model front, it used to be the case that other companies were playing catch-up with OpenAI. I was one of the people consistently pointing out that "better than GP…

>The best user experience for what?

The app has more features than anyone else, often implemented the smoothest/best way. Image Input (which the gemini site still sucks at even though the model itself is very capable), Voice mode (which used to be much worse in gemini until recently), Advanced Voice mode (no-one else has really implemented this yet. Gemini recently enabled native audio-in but not out), Live Video, Image gen, Deep research etc were all things Open AI did first and did well. Video Input is only just starting to roll out to Gemini live but has been a Plus subscription staple for months now.

>The most practical use case for generative AI today is coding assistants

Chatgpt gets 500M+ weekly active users and was the 6th most visited in the world last month. I doubt coding assistance is gpt's most frequent use case. And Google has underperformed in coding until 2.5 pro.

>On the model front, it used to be the case that other companies were playing catch-up with OpenAI. I was one of the people consistently pointing out that "better than GPT o1" on a bunch of benchmarks does not reliably translate to actual improvements when you try to use them. But this is no longer the case, either - Gemini 2.5 is really that good, and Claude is also beating them in some real world scenarios.

No that's still the case. Playing catch-up doesn't mean the competitor never catches up or even briefly supersedes it. It means Open AI will in short order release something that beats everyone else or introduces some new thing that everyone tries to beat. Image Input, 'Omni'- modality, Reasoning etc. All things Open AI brought to the table first. Sure, 2.5-pro is great but it doesn't look like it will beat o3 which looks to be released in a matter of weeks.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don’t think it works. Search is the perfect place for ads for exactly the reasons you state: people have high intent. But a majority of chatbot usage is not searching for the solution to a problem. And if he Chatbot is serving the ads when I’m using it for creative writing, reformatting text, having a python function, written, etc, I’m going to be annoyed and switch to a different product. Search is all about infor…

Re "going to be annoyed" there is definitely a spectrum starting at benign and culminating to the point of where you switch.

Photopea, for example, seems to be successful and ads displayed on the free tier lets me think that they feel at least these users are willing to see ads while they go about their workflow.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't think this is a likely outcome in the 'several quarters' timeframe. The world just spent 2.5 decades going onto Google. There are so many small business owners out there who hate technology... so many old people who took years just to learn how to Google... so many ingrained behaviors of just Googling things... outside of the vocal tech crowd I think it's exceedingly unlikely that users stop using Goog…

Its just my personal non-tech network is switching to chatgpt on many accounts. Your network can be different of course.

Those folks dont make any money unfortunately, but it is still a drag on Open AI. So sooner or later, Open AI will have to find a way to make money (and nope, all these people wont pay anything) and by that time, Open AI would probably run out of time.

Ask snapchat.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Google even have these two different interfaces?

AI studio is not a consumer interface. It's targeted at people building products that integrate LLMs.

They also have Vertex AI for the same thing.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#665

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.

> who lucked into his current position Which can be said for most of the survivorship-biased "greats" we talk about. Right time, right place. (Although to be fair — and we can think of the Two Steves, or Bill and Paul — there are often a number of people at the right time and right place — so somehow the few we still talk about knew to take advantage of that right time and right place.)

it's weird how nobodies will always tell themselves succesful people got there by sheer blind luck

yet they can never seem to explain why those succesful people all seem to have similar traits in terms of work ethic and intelligence

you'd think there would be a bunch of lazy slackers making it big in tech but alas

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#666
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (And don't let me get started with Sam Altman.) Please do.

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.

yeah because you're a hacker news poster lol

same audience who think Jobs is a grifter and Woz is the true reason for Apple's success

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open AI don't always have the best models (especially for programming) but they've consistently had the best product/user experience. And even in the model front, other companies seem to play catchup more than anything most of the time.

The best user experience for what? The most practical use case for generative AI today is coding assistants, and if you look at that market, the best offerings are third-party IDEs that build on top of models they don't own. E.g. Cursor + Gemini 2.5. On the model front, it used to be the case that other companies were playing catch-up with OpenAI. I was one of the people consistently pointing out that "better than GP…

so please enlighten us why OpenAI is doing so much better than Anthropic

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#668

I only AI for one reason since I'm retired and live alone: Life-like chats with a reasonable approximation of a knowledgeable friend. With the new memory features ChatGPT excels at that. I'm not even sure Google cares about that; that goes to show how little of it I've noticed with Google.

While I'm not sure it's exactly what you're looking for I've found success with a variety of Gemini models getting them to take to a specific persona when given initial prompts to take on a specific persona. Gemini 2.5 is specifically interesting because the block shows how much the notebook is playing a persona/role vs. becoming that role. In my experience Gemini 2.5 Pro likes to revert to 'maintaining a persona' in…

Really good stuff, thank your for sharing it. I don't know if you've had a lot of experience with ChatGPT's new memory feature. It's not a character I'm looking for necessarily but simulating a friend. Like a real friend, I don't have to keep reminding ChatGPT of facts, thoughts and feelings I've had because it remembers them and brings them up when appropriate. It's uncanny and I think what Google lacks for now. If I ever change ChatGPT from it's default personality I'll refer back to your guide.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#669
Can we please outlaw advertising with AI chatbots before it becomes a plague? Once it starts, there is no turning back. But if we can get ahead of this now based on what we've already learned about the internet then we can perhaps prevent the carnage that is going to happen.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#670

Can we please outlaw advertising with AI chatbots before it becomes a plague? Once it starts, there is no turning back. But if we can get ahead of this now based on what we've already learned about the internet then we can perhaps prevent the carnage that is going to happen.

what we need is not more regulation
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