[HN Gopher] From Google: Why we focus on AI (and to what end)
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       From Google: Why we focus on AI (and to what end)
        
       Author : pissedgenes
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2023-01-17 13:37 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ai.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ai.google)
        
       | nh23423fefe wrote:
       | This means nothing. AI will invade any space it can. Any use case
       | found by any company will immediately be x-copied, and the mvp
       | mass deployed, by competitors. The idea of responsible profit
       | maximization is absurd. This is a shitty attempt to explain the
       | lack of progress.
       | 
       | > We are so focused on safety/diversity/risk/equity/wtf that we
       | forgot to make cool profitable stuff.
        
         | dougmwne wrote:
         | To me it looks like Google never intended to turn its AI
         | research into products. It probably sees these LLMs, that it
         | itself was instrumental in inventing as a competitor to search
         | and nothing that could ever get green lit as a product due to
         | internal politics. I see OpenAI as an intentional effort to
         | free this tech from the smothering of Google led by SV insiders
         | in the know on what Google was sitting on.
        
       | belval wrote:
       | Nice PR/buzzword soup they got there, the article is almost
       | entirely devoid of substance.
       | 
       | The part on "Responsible AI" reminds me of the "Tethics" episode
       | of Silicon Valley, brought to you by the people who own ~30% on
       | the online ad market.
        
       | foolproofplan wrote:
       | "Google orkspace"? So many eyes and no QA?
        
       | oars wrote:
       | Let's see what actions they take in the coming years, instead of
       | just words.
        
       | RigelKentaurus wrote:
       | Purely reactive response to ChatGPT dominating the AI
       | conversation lately. However, I'm excited to see what Google will
       | release in AI this year.
        
       | pissedgenes wrote:
       | Interesting response from Google, signed off by all the top dogs,
       | including Sundar -- hard to not read between the lines as this
       | being a rebuke to OpenAI and StabilityAI for letting the public
       | have relatively unfettered access.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ronsor wrote:
         | Google has chosen to designate itself as the moral guardian and
         | insists that other companies do similar.
        
         | causalmodels wrote:
         | It is a lot easier to issue rebukes than it is to actually ship
         | products.
        
       | ddmma wrote:
       | The elephant in the room have a press release
        
       | mark_l_watson wrote:
       | If you read past the public relations material, that is
       | interesting stuff.
       | 
       | I was invited to work at Google in 2013 and it is an interesting
       | place.
       | 
       | I ran a deep learning team at Capital One and I believe DL truly
       | is transformative.
       | 
       | Anyway I appreciate Google, Microsoft, etc. for what they do.
        
       | vagabund wrote:
       | You'd think the experience of ChatGPT would have taught them that
       | the average person isn't blindly worshipping the output of LLMs,
       | and has the requisite critical thinking skills to keep the useful
       | bits and discard the rest. Instead we get this belittling
       | rebuttal highlighting the immense danger of letting the public
       | use a service that may, occasionally, be wrong, as though humans
       | don't encounter and discriminate incorrect information throughout
       | every day of their lives (not least on google's own existing
       | services). Instead of pontificating about "earning the public
       | trust", maybe stop positioning yourself as the unassailable
       | source of truth and give people tools that will materially
       | improve their lives today, if you really want to follow through
       | on your mission.
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-17 23:02 UTC)