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Google is winning on every AI front

thealgorithmicbridge.com

701–710 of 851 posts

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how familiar you are with the internal situation... But from my experience think it's safe to say that TPU basically multiplies Google's computation capability by 10x, if not 20x. Also they don't need to compete with others to secure expensive nvidia chips. If this is not an advantage, I don't see there's anything considered to be an advantage. The entire point of vertical integration is to secure full contr…

They must very much compete with others. All these chips are being fabbed at the same facilities in Taiwan and capacity trades off against each other. Google has to compete for the same fab capacity alongside everyone else, as well as skilled chip designers etc. > The revenue delta from this is more than enough to pay off the entire investment history for TPU. Possibly; such statements were common when I was there to…

> They must very much compete with others. All these chips are being fabbed at the same facilities in Taiwan and capacity trades off against each other.

I'm not sure what you're trying to deliver here. Following your logic, even if you have a fab you need to compete for rare metals, ASML etc etc... That's a logic built for nothing but its own sake. In the real world, it is much easier to compete outside Nvidia's own allocation as you get rid of the critical bottleneck. And Nvidia has all the incentives to control the supply to maximize its own profit, not to meet the demands.

> Possibly; such statements were common when I was there too but digging in would often reveal that the numbers being used for what things cost, or how revenue was being allocated, were kind of ad hoc and semi-fictional.

> Regardless the question is not whether some ads launches can pay for the TPUs, the question is whether it'd have worked out cheaper in the end to just buy lots of GPUs.

Of course everyone can build their own narratives in favor of their launch, but I've been involved in some of those ads quality launches and can say pretty confidently that most of those launches would not be launchable without TPU at all. This was especially true in the early days of TPU as the supply of GPU for datacenter was extremely limited and immature.

More GPU can solve? Companies are talking about 100k~200k of H100 as a massive cluster and Google already has much larger TPU clusters with computation capability in a different order of magnitudes. The problem is, you cannot simply buy more computation even if you have lots of money. I've been pretty clear about how relying on Nvidia's supply could be a critical limiting factor in a strategic point of view but you're trying to move the point. Please don't.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#703
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the HN crowd widely overestimates how many people are even passingly familiar with the LLM landscape much less use any of the tools regularly.

Sadly it’s become common for many mediocre employees in corporate environments to defer to ChatGPT, receive erroneous output and accept it as truth. There are now commonly corporate goon squads whose job is to drive AI adoption without care for actual impact to results. Usage of AI is the KR.

I don’t understand why this is happening. Why is everyone buying into this hype so strongly?

It’s a bit like how DEI was the big thing for a couple years, and now everyone is abandoning it.

Do corporate leaders just constantly chase hype?

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I think you might have it backward. Luck here implies starting with exactly the same work ethic and abilities as millions of other people that all hope to one day see their numbers come up in the lottery of limited opportunities. It's not to say that successful people start off as lazy slackers as you say, but if you were to observe one such lazy slacker who's made a half-assed effort at building something that even just accidentally turned out to be a success, you might see that rare modicum of validation fuel them enough that the motivation transforms them into a workhorse. Often time, when the biography is written, lines are slightly redrawn to project the post-success persona back a few years pre-success. A completely different recounting of history thus ensues. Usually one where there was blood, sweat, and fire involved to get to that first ticket.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Obviously, an LLM is in a perfect position to decide whether an add can be "injected" into the current conversation. If you're using it for creative writing it will be add free. But chances are you will also use it to solve real world problems where relevant adds can be injected via product or service suggestions.

"ad" is short for advertisement. That's the word you're looking for here.

Add is a verb meaning to combine 2 things together.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly it’s become common for many mediocre employees in corporate environments to defer to ChatGPT, receive erroneous output and accept it as truth. There are now commonly corporate goon squads whose job is to drive AI adoption without care for actual impact to results. Usage of AI is the KR.

I don’t understand why this is happening. Why is everyone buying into this hype so strongly? It’s a bit like how DEI was the big thing for a couple years, and now everyone is abandoning it. Do corporate leaders just constantly chase hype?

Yes corporate leaders do chase hype and they also believe in magic.

I think companies implement DEI initiatives for different reasons than hype though. Many are now abandoning DEI ostensibly out of fear due to the change in U.S. regime.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#707
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't see why scientists should be more trustworthy than business people.

In theory, one seeks knowledge, the other money. In practice, people are people and there are probably variance in both camps, but it's easy to see why one would by default trust a business person less

> In theory, one seeks knowledge, the other money.

There's nothing wrong with either in my books, especially if you seek money by serving your fellow humans.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#708
post #137

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…

The business model question applies to all of these companies, not just Google.

A lack of workable business model is probably good for Google (bad for the rest of the world) since it means AI has not done anything economically useful and Google's Search product remains a huge cash cow.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#709
post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

There are already web sites that do this for products like insurance (example: [1]). What I need is something to troll through the garbage Amazon listings and offer me the product that actually has the specs that I searched for and is offered by a seller with more than 50 total sales. Maybe an AI agent can do that for me? [1]: https://www.policygenius.com/

> There are already web sites that do this for products like insurance

You didnt get the point, instead of going to such website for solving the insurance problem, going to 10 other websites for solving 10 other problems, just let one AI agent do it for you.

Re: Google is winning on every AI front

#710
post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

The same argument can be made for social network and chat App yet Google could not succeed at both of them.
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