[HN Gopher] AI for developers and Google Workspace
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       AI for developers and Google Workspace
        
       Author : alphabetting
       Score  : 279 points
       Date   : 2023-03-14 13:05 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
        
       | bioemerl wrote:
       | Thank you open AI for breaking the dam on an arms race we could
       | have benefited immensely from five years ago.
        
       | seydor wrote:
       | Such an uninspired use of the term. Google is so used to
       | spreading SEO , now they want to choke every office with well-
       | written noise. This is using AI to make me _waste_ more time, i
       | don 't want that
       | 
       | Instead i want
       | 
       | - Intuitive interfaces to respond to the email with a few clicks
       | and a short laconic email (I don't want to waste other people's
       | time)
       | 
       | - Specialized text generators for legal purposes, which create
       | provably verifiable and consistent documents
       | 
       | - Expert systems that doctors can use and trust
       | 
       | [AI: Expand this to a 70-page diatribe]
        
       | jon-wood wrote:
       | > So if you're a manager onboarding a new employee, Workspace
       | saves you the time and effort involved in writing that first
       | welcome email.
       | 
       | If you really can't be bothered to write the welcome email maybe
       | just don't, rather than throwing some ML generated drivel as the
       | first impression a new hire gets of your management. The
       | direction this is going in is so focused on automating away the
       | hassle of email, with the end state surely being that both sides
       | of an email exchange are ML models churning away at each other.
        
         | throwaw12 wrote:
         | > If you really can't be bothered to write the welcome email
         | maybe just don't
         | 
         | not everyone has good english and corporate writing skills.
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | Except they likely think it isn't generated, like a lot of
         | plagiarism
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | sourcecodeplz wrote:
         | Not exactly. These are your feelings because you know of A.I.
         | and would rather not receive a canned message BUT not all
         | people are the same. There are many who would appreciate that
         | email and welcome it. Ignorance is not bliss.
        
         | balls187 wrote:
         | I ask all new hires to ghost write a short intro.
         | 
         | They would essentially tell me some facts that I would then re-
         | write for them, so why not just use their own words.
         | 
         | If they want to use generative AI, that's on them.
        
         | keraf wrote:
         | It will probably save you time too with layoff emails trained
         | using Google's internal data.
        
         | politician wrote:
         | > with the end state surely being that both sides of an email
         | exchange are ML models churning away at each other.
         | 
         | The end-state is an ML model running on a client device in
         | isolation. Why bother using SMTP?
        
         | barbazoo wrote:
         | True. I thought the same for the other example, writing a job
         | description. I thought "WTF" now job postings are going to be
         | even more useless.
        
         | neilv wrote:
         | That example is so bad, I'm not entirely sure some writer
         | having a bad day didn't put it in as a cynical joke.
         | 
         | Or are they working in an environment so steeped in insincerity
         | that they don't even know what being genuine is, or that one of
         | the most important things for a manager to do with things like
         | a "welcome" is to be setting the tone.
         | 
         | Nothing says welcome, and bring your genuine self, and trust
         | colleagues, and feel intellectual safety, and invest in being a
         | part of the team that's investing in you... than a new hire's
         | manager can't even be bothered to say welcome themselves, and
         | offloads it to a chatbot button instead.
         | 
         | OTOH, this fits the sociopathic culture you'd expect, when you
         | look at their hazing rituals, compensation levels, and
         | promotion criteria. It just doesn't fit the culture some of us
         | techies envisioned when that company was started.
        
         | PaulWaldman wrote:
         | Is this really that different than traditionally delegating
         | tasks to other humans?
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | It's not a problem as long as the sender _reads_ the email and
         | agrees with it before it is sent.
        
         | v3ss0n wrote:
         | Well I wrote onboarding message, guidelines and policies all in
         | ChatGpt
        
         | elicash wrote:
         | Can we not pretend people weren't already googling sample
         | emails for this?
         | 
         | It's just more efficient now to grab the same starter email
         | that you then customize. Admittedly, google shouldn't be
         | pretending otherwise, either. But what they also did was make
         | it so you can get the starter email without having to see their
         | ads.
         | 
         | Edited to add: I think a better argument on this could he made
         | about the "draft a thank you note to the team" example they
         | give in the video. That's more the type of thing that should be
         | personal and probably not from a starter template, googled or
         | AI-generated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DaJVZBXETE But
         | even here, the reality is people were googling for these
         | starter emails already.
        
           | ChatGTP wrote:
           | Personally never had to Google to help me write the body of
           | an email, if I had to do that, I probably wouldn't have sent
           | the email to begin with.
        
           | neap24 wrote:
           | Some were googling, for sure. But the best ones were not.
        
             | paxys wrote:
             | The best ones hide it well enough.
        
             | elicash wrote:
             | Does it matter to you the extent to which an original
             | template is then transformed?
        
             | melling wrote:
             | Down the rabbit hole with that...
             | 
             | So, the best ones will still write their own and the others
             | will save time.
             | 
             | And by definition, most people aren't the best.
             | 
             | So, we all agree the automation is welcome?
        
               | dymk wrote:
               | The best ones know when to put in effort to show they
               | care for another human being, and know when to automate a
               | task where that doesn't matter. Welcoming somebody to a
               | new job is the former.
        
             | la64710 wrote:
             | And you don't need only the best to run a business.
        
           | bpicolo wrote:
           | I don't really want to read (or "write") a bunch of
           | impersonal junk written by AI.
           | 
           | Can we skip this phase of technology?
           | 
           | Edit: Maybe this will inspire the next wave of tech burnouts
           | turned mushroom farmers
        
             | mupuff1234 wrote:
             | Aren't most corporate communication already impersonal
             | junk?
        
             | monkeynotes wrote:
             | Piles of impersonal junk created by humans at work. People
             | lope through life, especially work life, a lot. If you are
             | doing repetitive welcome emails they are almost guaranteed
             | to be impersonal, I don't think anyone could rinse and
             | repeat personalized emails for hundreds of people without
             | burning out.
        
               | waboremo wrote:
               | Just because lots of people do it, doesn't mean it has to
               | continue to be done.
               | 
               | If you're growing so fast you're sending hundreds of
               | emails in a short time span, then maybe you should
               | replace a pseudo-personal ai-written "welcome email" for
               | new hires with something that scales better and feels
               | personal.
        
             | magicink81 wrote:
             | Whatever gets us to successive waves "tech burnouts turned
             | mushroom farmers" is fine by me!
        
             | VladimirGolovin wrote:
             | Exactly.
             | 
             | I would honestly prefer blunt, straightforward, de-GPTified
             | communication style. I hate the idea of wasting my time on
             | reading substance-free filler, regardless of whether it was
             | written by an AI or not.
        
               | brokenmachine wrote:
               | That's the thing I hate most about talking to call
               | centres. The useless insincere filler talk.
        
             | laurentlb wrote:
             | Well, they also develop AI to summarize the AI-generated
             | text... So we'll end up with this:
             | 
             | Person A: write a thank you note to the team
             | 
             | AI: [long text]
             | 
             | Person B: summarize the text
             | 
             | AI: Person A says thank you.
        
               | notpachet wrote:
               | A perfect two-sided market!
        
           | monkeynotes wrote:
           | Simple answer to this: "Hi, I am company X's AI, I'd like to
           | get to know you because we will be working together here and
           | there <welcome message>."
           | 
           | Basically endource the AI and be clear that it is the thing
           | welcoming you. If you hide the fact an AI is pumping out an
           | automated email it just comes across as if the business
           | thinks of you as a drone.
        
             | startupsfail wrote:
             | If the major contributor of an e-mail (or code) is an AI
             | then it should be attributed to the AI in the
             | signature/attribution fields. Otherwise the work is
             | plagiarized.
        
         | indymike wrote:
         | What was the sci-fi book with "silvers" that were basically AIs
         | that would handle administrata, set appointments and negotiate
         | with each other for their humans?
        
         | cmarschner wrote:
         | This is hilarious. The point of a task like a welcome email is
         | that they _take effort_.
         | 
         | I can't help but think that an example like this shows how far
         | Google has become like Microsoft in the 2000s. A bunch of rich,
         | middle aged managers that have spent too long in the alphabet
         | soup.
        
         | xezpeleta wrote:
         | Google FacePaLM :D
        
         | jsharf wrote:
         | At the end of the day, you're still responsible for reading the
         | email before you send it. I don't think it matters how the
         | email was written. I think the final content matters more.
         | There's many ways to prompt an AI, both carelessly and with
         | extreme attention to detail.
         | 
         | For example, I typed this message. But I'm sure with careful
         | massaging, I could get an AI to write the same thing, word-for-
         | word. The laziness you're referring to probably happens even if
         | the manager is typing the email out themselves.
        
         | SergeAx wrote:
         | Onboarding email should be just a template. Or, even better, a
         | small template with a link to bigger template. As a manager,
         | you should demonstrate your empathy in a welcome 1:1 meeting.
        
         | shapefrog wrote:
         | Are you a new employee? Not sure how to reply to your welcome
         | email your Manager sent?
         | 
         | Workspace saves you the time and effort involved in writing
         | that first welcome reply email.
        
           | noduerme wrote:
           | Well, since you never have to go into the office, you and the
           | HR person can just hang out on your couches and let the AI
           | assistants talk to each other. It's like the Jetsons, except
           | hopeless and stoned.
        
           | egman_ekki wrote:
           | For just $3.99 per month, we can reply also to all the
           | subsequent emails from your manager within 30 minutes! Just
           | give us access to your private inbox and the emails will
           | include your own personal style.
        
           | neap24 wrote:
           | Are you a manager whose new hire just sent a reply to your AI
           | generated welcome email? Don't have time to read it?
           | Workspace auto-hides the text and just shows you a simple
           | three-word summary.
        
             | avereveard wrote:
             | premium version will show the manager just the prompt
             | without the blurb.
        
             | siva7 wrote:
             | You're joking but we all know here too well that exactly
             | this will happen.
        
         | Veen wrote:
         | In an ideal world, it would be lovely if managers wrote
         | copperplate welcome notes on the finest perfumed paper, but
         | they don't. They copy and paste a template or use a tool like
         | Text Expander. This just makes the process slightly more
         | convenient.
        
         | adverbly wrote:
         | Seriously!
         | 
         | If the content of your email could have been generated using an
         | AI trained on publicly available information, it necessarily
         | must not include anything private.
         | 
         | Which means you are spam messaging your new hires with messages
         | that contain zero actual information!
         | 
         | Noise is a word that does not even properly capture the
         | uselessness of such communications. I swear, many humans seem
         | to just want filler text to put places, and they just keep
         | shoving it there.
         | 
         | Anyone read blindsight by Peter Watts? Spoiler alert: an entire
         | science fiction book written around the fact that sending
         | useless information to hyperintelligent beings could be
         | interpreted as an intentional distraction and therefore a
         | threat.
        
           | Maxion wrote:
           | I recommend trying out GPT3 and now the new released GPT4.
           | Using them to collaboratly write correspondence is eye
           | opening.
           | 
           | You use ai as a tool, you prompt it, change its results and
           | feed it back.
           | 
           | A little work gives you impressive results way faster than if
           | you wrote the whole thing yourself
        
         | nashashmi wrote:
         | We are going to hear a lot more of this kind of behavior from
         | super talented and experienced people.
         | 
         | But for the less experienced, AI is a starting point. And
         | depending on the kind of person you are, the kind of upbringing
         | you have, and the kind of education you got, you will be
         | motivated to edit and improve what the AI gives you.
         | 
         | The other thing I think this will help improve upon are those
         | idiots and scumbags who give commands that are not very well
         | thought out and then yell at talented people for not following
         | instruction because they filled in the blanks with their own
         | ideas. Giving it to an AI will show ridiculous their commands
         | were. (sorry, end rant)
        
         | DeathArrow wrote:
         | >with the end state surely being that both sides of an email
         | exchange are ML models churning away at each other
         | 
         | One can just hope that the ML entities won't start insulting
         | each other. :)
        
           | RobotToaster wrote:
           | They'll just start getting progressively more passive
           | aggressive. "Per my last e-mail"
        
             | DeathArrow wrote:
             | Until they escalate to ML Manager.
        
         | Buttons840 wrote:
         | The middle manager thinks, "the _time and effort_ I spend on my
         | job can be automated, yay! ", never considering the second
         | order effects.
        
           | brokenmachine wrote:
           | I would be ecstatic if I could automate my entire job!
        
           | reaperducer wrote:
           | _The middle manager thinks, "the time and effort I spend on
           | my job can be automated, yay!", never considering the second
           | order effects._
           | 
           | This is why when a cashier at the supermarket tells me that
           | instead of waiting in line I can use the self check-out
           | lanes, I tell her "I don't want to help a robot take away
           | your job."
           | 
           | Usually they don't understand. But sometimes you can see them
           | start to think about what's happening.
        
             | babyshake wrote:
             | I do want a robot to take their job. I also want us to
             | ensure that everyone does have a fulfilling, non-robotic
             | job available to them. I think those cashiers would
             | happier, say, painting a mural on the wall of the grocery
             | store.
             | 
             | Of course, this gets into UBI territory and making sure
             | that as a society we are not just replacing menial jobs to
             | then abandon the people who would have had those jobs.
        
             | phphphphp wrote:
             | The cashier would rather you leave them in peace than hit
             | them with the same tiresome self-congratulatory remark they
             | hear day in day out. Please use the self checkouts instead.
        
               | zamnos wrote:
               | You mean to tell me that my joke that I should get the
               | item for free when it doesn't ring up; you mean to tell
               | me I'm not hilarious and that the cashier's heard it
               | before?
        
               | paganel wrote:
               | Please don't use the checkout, why should corporations
               | worth billions and tens of billions (I guess that's what
               | Walmart is worth) get to outsource some of their work
               | onto their clients?
        
               | pixl97 wrote:
               | This is nearly getting to the point of "don't use
               | shovel's, think of all the ditch diggers we'll put out of
               | work"
               | 
               | I find places with scan as you shop apps way better than
               | waiting in a checkout line. I get a running total of what
               | I have in the cart, and when I'm done, I just leave
               | without a line.
        
               | dymk wrote:
               | I can do self-checkout about 5x faster than the clerk can
        
               | rayusher wrote:
               | I saw on tiktok (yeah I know) where a lawyer says they
               | never use it because you can be liable for stealing for
               | anything you forgot scan. I never use it cause
               | occasionally the cashier will let you know that there is
               | a coupon for something you are purchasing.
        
               | bharathyes wrote:
               | also why benefit large corporations by walking around
               | long aisles comparing and choosing items, carying them
               | around and walk back to the entrance?
               | 
               | get those good old shopkeepers to do it while you stand
               | with your list out front.
        
               | skidd0 wrote:
               | As a client, using the self-checkout is (usually) a
               | choice I get to make. I choose to use the self-checkout
               | because it is often faster than waiting in a line. I am
               | thankful for the opportunity to put in my own effort in
               | exchange for faster completion and reduced prices.
        
               | noduerme wrote:
               | it's only faster because they fired half the employees
               | and the other lanes are backed up.
        
               | triceratops wrote:
               | I remember reading a study somewhere that the self-
               | checkout isn't actually faster. It feels faster because
               | you're busy instead of passively standing in line.
        
               | yencabulator wrote:
               | That depends on the implementation. E.g. Sam's Club lets
               | you scan items as you put them into your cart and just
               | walk past the registers.
               | 
               | In the local grocery store at rush hour, cashier lines
               | are long and self-checkout tends to be quicker for buying
               | 3 items. Taking a whole cart into self-checkout is slower
               | than a cashier, because the self-checkout has like a 5%
               | chance per item of going into "assistance needed" mode.
        
               | adrianmonk wrote:
               | What's important to me is my time. I don't care whether
               | it's spent scanning things myself or waiting in line for
               | someone else to scan them. I also don't care about
               | punishing Walmart, so whether they "get to" do something
               | is totally uninteresting to me.
               | 
               | I just want to pay for my items and get out of the store,
               | in whatever way works.
        
               | danaris wrote:
               | At least 9 times out of 10, the self-checkout is a better
               | experience for me. I can scan things at my own pace, pack
               | them in my bags the way I like, and listen to my D&D
               | podcast rather than having to interact with a stranger,
               | unless the system acts up.
               | 
               | As pxl97 said, I _preferred_ being able to scan things as
               | I shopped and not have to stop at the checkout except to
               | pay, but the one place around here that had that
               | discontinued it a few months ago.
               | 
               | We need to push back hard against the idea that
               | automation is "stealing" people's jobs; the promise of
               | automation has always been that of more money for less
               | work. We need to remind everyone of that, and reverse the
               | trend of automation simply putting more and more money in
               | the pockets of the already-wealthy at everyone else's
               | expense.
        
           | zamnos wrote:
           | Fortunately for middle and line managers, the vaunted 1:1
           | hasn't been automated yet, nor does it scale, so the
           | technology doesn't allow managers to have more than, say, 60
           | direct report effectively. Meeting with each of them for 1
           | hour every other week only leaves 20 hours every other week
           | for work that isn't a 1:1. I think middle management will be
           | safe for a little while longer.
        
             | yencabulator wrote:
             | Just wait until employees are told to do their 1:1 with a
             | chatbot...
        
               | siva7 wrote:
               | Pshht, don't feed them with more such ideas.
        
               | Maxion wrote:
               | Heh that might even be a better experience
        
             | indymike wrote:
             | Why is meeting with direct reports needed every other week?
        
               | Swizec wrote:
               | Less frequent than that and people start forgetting the
               | gripes and inconveniences they need help with.
               | 
               | Managers are supposed to work on the system, at least in
               | theory. 1on1's are for the manager like server metrics
               | are for the SRE. An early warning system of future
               | problems. Ideally you can fix issues before the problem
               | blows up into an alarm.
        
               | PascLeRasc wrote:
               | A professional midwestern 1-on-1 starts with the
               | assumption that no work was performed since the last one
               | and it falls on the underling to prove otherwise during
               | this time.
        
               | indymike wrote:
               | > 1on1's are for the manager like server metrics are for
               | the SRE.
               | 
               | I'm not sure that is accurate. As a manager, I have a
               | bunch of production metrics on my people. I can tell
               | who's getting work done, who isn't, who has high defect
               | rates in their work, who makes fewer defects, who is
               | positive ROI, and who is not paying their keep. Where the
               | one on ones are useful is when they are informed by the
               | metrics, and those conversations don't take anywhere near
               | one hour every two weeks. They take 10 minutes - 15
               | minutes, max.
        
               | andrewmutz wrote:
               | > I can tell who's getting work done, who isn't, who has
               | high defect rates in their work, who makes fewer defects,
               | who is positive ROI, and who is not paying their keep
               | 
               | I've been doing engineering management for ten years and
               | I've never seen a set of metrics that can tell you these
               | things.
               | 
               | What software engineering metrics tell you who has
               | positive ROI?
        
               | scottyah wrote:
               | This is an interesting take, and one that directly
               | contradicts most leadership books. Are you aware of that,
               | and how did you come upon this management style?
        
               | Swizec wrote:
               | Ok sure but there's more to people than raw output
               | numbers. Where do you get info on how they're doing as
               | people? Whether they're pulling 12 hour days and that's
               | why the output looks good or they're happy as a clam
               | living their best life and that's why output is great?
               | 
               | Sometimes you gotta kick people to go take a vacation
               | lest their mind/body takes an unplanned vacation for
               | them. Even if the raw numbers are looking great. You'd
               | prefer to have a planned outage wouldn't you?
               | 
               | And hey, if you don't need a full hour, it's okay to make
               | 1on1s shorter! Few people will complain about getting
               | more time back in their lives.
               | 
               | But be warned: The good stuff usually comes out 5min
               | before the end of a meeting when an employee says _"Oh
               | yeah one more thing that's been on my mind ..."_. It
               | takes time to relax into that area of concern that's a
               | little scary to bring up.
        
               | indymike wrote:
               | I agree with you that there's more to people than
               | numbers. But it's a lot easier to surface that when you
               | have a frame of reference and some consistency in how you
               | measure:
               | 
               | "so, last week you had a -23.5% contribution... You
               | usually are on the positive side, so what's up?" and the
               | employee tells me that their lead stuck them on a project
               | where they hand no experience, and didn't have time to
               | learn how to do x or y before getting thrown at a
               | ticket... or, "I'm having some issues with <personal>..."
               | 
               | Stuff as a manager you can sometimes help a lot with...
               | and other times, well, you can be supportive. Just
               | because numbers are involved does not mean we have to be
               | cold and heartless... At the same time, I've found
               | managing without numbers to just lead to cliqe-y
               | political culture where people's ability to schmooze is
               | rewarded more than their contribution to the team and
               | that drives away the most effective contributors.
               | 
               | > And hey, if you don't need a full hour, it's okay to
               | make 1on1s shorter!
               | 
               | Agree... I think I just realized that the exception
               | should be a long 1 on 1. Just because I schedule 15
               | minutes doesn't preclude taking more time if there's
               | something in the 1 on 1 that should take longer.
        
               | sethhochberg wrote:
               | Longtime manager of technical people here and can confirm
               | the "oh yeah one more thing" is where so much of the
               | really good stuff comes up.
               | 
               | No matter how explicitly you state it, ask for it,
               | overcommunicate that you're approachable even if
               | seemingly busy... people are averse to the impression
               | that they're interrupting their management even when they
               | have something important to discuss. When you create the
               | space and have even that quick 10 to 15 minute chat every
               | couple of weeks, you're creating space for your people to
               | have your attention without worrying about getting your
               | attention. And people often take advantage of that path
               | of least resistance.
               | 
               | So many of the most important conversations to have with
               | the team are less about their output and more about
               | things they've got going on or need to know _despite_
               | their output. All the standard sprint metrics are just
               | one piece of the puzzle.
        
               | bleuchase wrote:
               | If you're only talking to your directs for 10-15 minutes
               | every two weeks you are neglecting your duties as a
               | manager. The standard is 30 minutes 1x week with every
               | direct report.
        
               | siva7 wrote:
               | Maybe the idealised standard but certainly not what is
               | going on at most companies
        
               | bleuchase wrote:
               | Perhaps. That's my standard for my team and the managers
               | that report to me.
        
               | PascLeRasc wrote:
               | In manager speak, because the meeting was created by
               | someone higher on the org chart, it doesn't stand to
               | reason that we can find fault with it.
        
           | IMTDb wrote:
           | And the good middle manager (yes, they exist ! and yes, they
           | are useful !) thinks "the not very useful part of my job can
           | be automated, yay more time for the actually
           | interesting/useful thing !"
        
             | babyshake wrote:
             | Realistically, the middle manager thinks, "the part of my
             | job where it looks like I'm doing something can be
             | automated, yay more time for 3-4 day weekends!"
        
         | mrtksn wrote:
         | Maybe the manager AI and Employee AI can generate each other
         | responses and the actual humans can have a 1:1 free of the
         | formalities?
         | 
         | Humans are amazing in breaking the system for convenience and
         | profit.
        
         | 101008 wrote:
         | This. One million times this.
        
           | Kiro wrote:
           | Upvote instead of posting noise like this.
        
             | pelasaco wrote:
             | but you don't earn karma from upvoting. People coming from
             | reddit, do it all the time :)
        
             | ihateyouall123 wrote:
             | [flagged]
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | Imagine someone made a slight mistake and receive: "Welcome to
         | Google [Employee name] it's nice to meet you
        
           | derivagral wrote:
           | I've gotten templated recruiting emails with this bug. I
           | wonder if an AI would spit this out, or something weirder as
           | the name.
        
           | Kiro wrote:
           | You don't need to imagine. It's enough to have a LinkedIn to
           | receive unprocessed templates like this where I would guess
           | their scraper failed or something. On the contrary I don't
           | think an AI would make the same mistake as easily.
        
           | laurentlb wrote:
           | It sounds like gmail should have a filter to detect this kind
           | of problem (just like they have the detection for missing
           | attachments).
           | 
           | Use AI to solve problems caused by AI.
        
       | ReptileMan wrote:
       | > and at Google, we've been responsibly developing large language
       | models so we can safely bring them to our products
       | 
       | So you are getting a gelding. I really miss the old SV - make it
       | fun and powerful.
       | 
       | Usually the most interesting things come out of unsanctioned uses
       | of technology.
        
       | ukuina wrote:
       | Golly, can you just _imagine_ GPT integration in Google Reader?
       | 
       | Overview: "Summarize my tech feed"
       | 
       | In an informative article: "Didn't I Star something similar last
       | week?"
       | 
       | In a news article: "What does website X think about this event?"
       | 
       | The future is bright!
        
         | cloudking wrote:
         | Build it!
        
         | tantalor wrote:
         | @conesus add to NewsBlur!
        
       | tbruckner wrote:
       | I swear, if Google says "select developers" or "trusted testers"
       | one more time, they'll have lost all credibility in launching
       | something so important to their business and it will totally be
       | on them.
        
         | JonChesterfield wrote:
         | The previous run of killing projects wasn't sufficient to warn
         | you off?
        
       | carlycue wrote:
       | Can't wait for Google to add ChatGPT-like features to Chrome and
       | their suite of Web Apps so I can finally ditch Microsoft Edge
       | with it's ChatGPT integration. The UI of Edge is god awful. It
       | has the same issue as Explorer in Windows where Microsoft thinks
       | showing you all UI buttons and other UI elements at once is a
       | great idea. Microsoft can't make compelling consumer facing
       | products to save their life.
        
         | DeathArrow wrote:
         | I actually use Edge because I dislike Google having all my data
         | and I dislike one company having control over web.
         | 
         | Also, Edge on Android allows me to block ads.
        
           | aver4geredditor wrote:
           | > I dislike Google having all my data
           | 
           | Now Microsoft has all of your data, is it actually any
           | better?
           | 
           | > I dislike one company having control over web.
           | 
           | Edge is also based on Chromium, developed and controlled by
           | Google
           | 
           | > Edge on Android allows me to block ads.
           | 
           | You could try Brave (also Chromium-based) or Firefox (Gecko-
           | based) with uBlock Origin, both will block ads and tracking
        
         | newaccount2023 wrote:
         | such a weird take...ChatGPT is thus far just an incredible demo
         | 
         | you've actually switched browsers to have access to it? why???
        
           | zamnos wrote:
           | Because for them it's _already_ providing value and it isn 't
           | just a demo.
        
           | danpalmer wrote:
           | It sounds like it's Bing Chat, not ChatGPT. They are fairly
           | different - ChatGPT being fairly mature but heavyweight, and
           | Bing Chat being truly unhinged.
           | 
           | But yeah, Bing Chat is only available in Edge.
        
             | jxy wrote:
             | To use "the good Bing", you only need to change the user
             | agent of your favorite browser to Edge.
        
             | sebzim4500 wrote:
             | Have you actually used Bing Chat? While there are certainly
             | some very funny conversations floating around where it goes
             | off the rails, that isn't the normal behavior: It's pretty
             | good in practice.
        
         | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
         | What features are you looking/hoping for in a ChatGPT-like
         | integration with Google web apps?
        
         | 1xdevloper wrote:
         | I actually liked Edge and was happy to move away from Chrome.
         | Then they started injecting their content into web pages. And
         | then some shopping feature. I hate seeing the "You can now add
         | extensions from the Chrome..." banner when I'm logged in the
         | Chrome web store. It won't go away even after I closed it
         | multiple times.
         | 
         | I started using Brave.
        
           | bombolo wrote:
           | Remember that firefox exists.
        
       | h34t wrote:
       | "stay tuned for our waitlist soon"
        
         | IanCal wrote:
         | There should be a waitlist to get access to the waitlist.
        
       | sarchertech wrote:
       | So humans are going to enter bullet points, and the AI will
       | generate prose. Then the human on the other end will use an AI to
       | extract bullet points from the prose.
       | 
       | I hope we realize how insanely stupid this is soon.
        
         | Workaccount2 wrote:
         | Sounds like it will fit right in with the stupid song and dance
         | already done in corporate America.
        
         | Maxion wrote:
         | This is literally what humans do in many corporations today
         | without ai.
        
         | ChatGTP wrote:
         | But it's a new feature and big tech has ran out of ideas?
        
       | kin wrote:
       | If this gets added to Google Docs and made free for public,
       | English teachers are going to have a hard time knowing if their
       | students wrote anything
        
         | ec109685 wrote:
         | Flip the classroom. Have them listen to lectures / read at
         | home, write in the classroom.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | How long IBM to rebrand their Watson 2.0 to be using ChatGPT 4.5.
        
         | speedgoose wrote:
         | I think it's unlikely :
         | https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4807:6z...
        
       | skilled wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
         | valine wrote:
         | Maybe evil is mothballing technology that could benefit society
         | because of potential impacts to your ad business.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | I wonder why are we generating so much virtual junk, content that
       | nobody is interesting in and while on that wasting time, effort,
       | energy and money.
        
       | AbrahamParangi wrote:
       | It's notable that at multiple points they sell this service as
       | _safe_
       | 
       | - "easy and safe"
       | 
       | - "all supported by robust safety tools"
       | 
       | when the only things users really care about are quality,
       | latency, and cost. Not sure where their head is at but unless
       | they are oriented around these three things they're never going
       | to catch up.
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | > Not sure where their head is at but unless they are oriented
         | around these three things they're never going to catch up.
         | 
         | But ChatGPT is doing exactly the same. There's more energy
         | spent trying to manipulate the output to be politically correct
         | than actual energy spent making the AI more powerful.
        
           | sebzim4500 wrote:
           | I doubt that's true, they just talk about it more because
           | everything else is kind of a trade secret.
        
           | Karunamon wrote:
           | I get what you're saying here and agree, but there is no
           | world in which openai exists as a continuing concern without
           | making their product overly PC. Remember that their model was
           | trained on a broad swath of the Internet, warts and all. They
           | can either spend the effort making it aligned with the
           | current thing up front, or they can rush to do it after the
           | model outputs something spicy and they have to deal with the
           | resulting PR shitstorm, outrage baiting hit pieces, and
           | otherwise distractions.
        
           | PeterisP wrote:
           | That seems reasonable - if you're trying to create a market
           | for a publicly-available chat-AI, and making a demo freely
           | available for PR/advertising purposes, then the public
           | perception of that demo is critical to your business.
           | 
           | If they had just put up the same model without that attempt
           | to make GPT wear a politically-correct mask, they'd just get
           | another Microsoft Tay event, and only get a buttload of
           | negative publicity for their investment.
           | 
           | For an internal application used for specific practical
           | tasks, sure, focus on making it more powerful; but if you
           | want a demo for general public as a 'pre-sales
           | advertisement'? You bet that political correctness has to be
           | there.
        
             | redox99 wrote:
             | If ChatGPT is useful people are going to use it anyway,
             | even if there is negative publicity because when you bait
             | it with "Is X race superior to Y race?" it gives you a non
             | PC answer.
        
               | PeterisP wrote:
               | ChatGPT isn't the only game in town, and corporate
               | purchasing departments (which are the actual target
               | audience) will then rather buy a similar service from
               | Google or someone else, even if it's slightly worse,
               | rather than have to explain themselves (and risk their
               | personal position) to why they're using the toxic taboo
               | thing that's reviled by the press.
        
       | diimdeep wrote:
       | First reaction: mouthful spam generator built right into
       | gmail[0], way to go google.
       | 
       | [0] https://youtu.be/6DaJVZBXETE?t=33
        
         | valine wrote:
         | Reminds me of the google april fools prank in 2009 where they
         | announced gmail would be able to read and respond to emails for
         | you.
         | 
         | http://hoaxes.org/af_database/permalink/gmail_autopilot
        
       | bg24 wrote:
       | Unless I missed it, only example in the blog:
       | 
       | "So if you're a manager onboarding a new employee, Workspace
       | saves you the time and effort involved in writing that first
       | welcome email."
       | 
       | Some great announcements, could have given more pertinent
       | examples. You save your time elsewhere using AI tools, so you
       | spend time with your valuable newcomer.
        
       | yunohn wrote:
       | I cannot stand the prosaic, repetitive, boringly formal nature of
       | GPT/etc output. I also am tired of the randomly messy-surreal,
       | illogical images generated by DallE/etc output.
       | 
       | HR/PR approved corporate communications are already crappy. From
       | a practical viewpoint, I don't want to wade through pages of
       | bullshit boilerplate and illogical images. The future is bleak
       | and boring...
        
       | dna_polymerase wrote:
       | Yeah cool, I need to write Serial letters using my own fonts.
       | Can't do that with Google Workspace. As an enterprise customer,
       | that is. I have no idea who leads product at Google but they need
       | to get their shit together. I don't need some ChatGPT BS to write
       | my mails for me.
        
       | hdivider wrote:
       | What I find regrettable is how GCP's startup program seems to be
       | entirely geared towards VC-fuelled startups for the higher tiers.
       | 
       | Compare with Microsoft for Startups, which isn't seen as hip and
       | edgy but can get you like $5k+$25k in Azure credits (and some
       | OpenAI credits) without having to go the VC route.
       | 
       | Seems more entrepreneurial to me. Venture-backed is just not the
       | right path for everyone.
        
         | pirsquare wrote:
         | Just go with AWS or Azure. Google Clown Platform is okay until
         | you need to have any form of support.
         | 
         | I'm like you, bootstrapper. Went with GCP for 4 yrs until they
         | shutdown my production servers last fri.
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35133917
        
         | candiddevmike wrote:
         | Skip all of them and use Hetzner, you'll save a ton of money.
         | The startup credits are designed to become handcuffs
         | eventually.
        
       | palebluedot wrote:
       | All of this generative corporate text seems like lossy anti-
       | compression.
        
       | paxys wrote:
       | I really hope the big take away from such developments is that if
       | an AI can rattle out fancy-sounding reports and slide decks in
       | seconds then there was never any value in such content to begin
       | with. It was and still is corporate busy work. Maybe instead of
       | using a text model to convert 5 bullet points into a 3-page
       | report, we should just share the bullet points? But hey they also
       | sell you an AI that summarizes this report back into bullet
       | points so you don't have to read it.
        
         | JustBreath wrote:
         | It's summarizations all the way down.
        
         | ryandrake wrote:
         | As someone who spends some amount of time at work doing stuff
         | like converting 5 bullet points to a 3 page powerpoint
         | presentation, I think everyone already knows it's corporate
         | busy work. The point of it is not that anyone is going to read
         | that 3 page report, it's to show that you've done work and
         | produced some output ("demonstrating toil"). As long as they're
         | insisting that it get done and are willing to pay for it to get
         | done, I'm more than happy to ship that toil off to an AI. If it
         | means I waste 2 minutes writing a good prompt rather than waste
         | 30 minutes copying and pasting content, adding filler
         | narrative, and picking the right font and color, that's more
         | time back to do other things besides this performance art an
         | employer expects of me.
        
           | EForEndeavour wrote:
           | Genuinely curious: what makes you think your employer will
           | let you ship that toil off to an AI instead of just letting
           | you go (or downsizing your team) and shipping off the toil
           | themselves?
           | 
           | The acceptance that you've been doing corporate busywork as
           | your career seems at odds with your confidence that you'll be
           | the one to outsource that busywork to an AI. Doesn't the
           | rapidly increasing capability of automated systems to pull
           | off this busywork imply that careers built on doing that
           | busywork are increasingly at risk? Am I missing something?
        
             | ryandrake wrote:
             | It could always happen, of course, especially now that
             | we're in a bear market.
             | 
             | Most of us techies, at some point in our career, have
             | managed to automate some boring or tedious part of our job.
             | We don't tend to get let go for doing this, it just frees
             | us up to do other, possibly higher-value things. Or, if you
             | are less lucky, your employer just comes up with other not-
             | yet-automated tedious things for you to do to demonstrate
             | toil.
             | 
             | Our days are all filled with a combination of useless, low-
             | value tasks and useful, high-value tasks. I'm personally a
             | believer of finding the low-value tasks and automating
             | them, so that you can spend more of your time on the high-
             | value ones. I've worked with people who have the opposite
             | view: Spend your time visibly toiling on whatever is
             | easiest, because most employers can't tell the difference
             | between spinning your wheels being busy and providing
             | actual value.
        
       | whoisjuan wrote:
       | They just keep putting out press releases talking about private
       | betas and tests with "selected trusted partners" but nothing the
       | regular consumer can play with.
       | 
       | If that's the pace at which they're planning to compete with
       | Microsoft/OpenAI, they already lost.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | inductive_magic wrote:
       | The mail-part is ridiculous, reminiscent of the latest episode of
       | south park, which illustrates the impact of teenagers using
       | ChatGPT to respond to their girlfriends messages.
       | 
       | Nature goes the path of least resistance, and nowhere is this
       | more obvious than in human interactions. If your signal consists
       | of three words, write three words instead of generating blobs of
       | decorative noise masquerading as content, that serves no purpose
       | but to be decoded by the same ai, but client-side.
        
       | bluelightning2k wrote:
       | Oh what's that? Microsoft has a future of work event in a couple
       | of days? Better pre-empt it.
       | 
       | "Available for select developers. Stay tuned for the waitlist
       | soon"
       | 
       | When the order to pre-empt comes too quick to get your waitlist
       | landing page approved.
        
         | nabakin wrote:
         | Just like the BARD announcement in response to MSFT Sydney.
         | They're trying to keep their stock prices from dipping
        
           | alphabetting wrote:
           | I don't think that timeline is correct. MSFT did a surprise
           | announcement of Bing chat the day before Google's planned
           | announcement of Bard.
           | 
           | https://twitter.com/xlr8harder/status/1622849293571817472
        
             | ukuina wrote:
             | But Google's planned announcement was, err, announced,
             | after the Bing Chat screenshots leaked the week before.
        
       | nmca wrote:
       | Does anyone have a `curl` that hits the palm API or does it not
       | really exist yet?
        
         | sanxiyn wrote:
         | I am pretty sure it exists, but not for you. "Select developers
         | can access the PaLM API ... in Private Preview today, and stay
         | tuned for our waitlist soon".
        
       | tlogan wrote:
       | This seems like pre-emptive announcement without any beef behind
       | it (there is no even waiting list). I'm not 100% sure if this is
       | a smart move.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | debacle wrote:
       | The question needs to be asked - is Google done competing?
        
       | arijun wrote:
       | They show an example of someone typing "I'm on it!" and then
       | converting that into a page long email. They also show the
       | ability to summarize, which of course you'd use on a page long
       | email whose real content is nothing but "I'm on it."
       | 
       | That verbose email is going to end up a weird machine interchange
       | format (which only looks like formal writing for human
       | consumption), just to send a message like "I'm on it."
        
       | we_never_see_it wrote:
       | Too little, too late. I am all-in on Microsoft.
        
         | bogwog wrote:
         | Don't let all the AI hype trick you into thinking you can trust
         | Microsoft for anything.
        
       | Simon321 wrote:
       | Wow! Looks like they're determined to catch up!
       | 
       | They're going to open up PaLM & an image generation model
       | (imagen?) through Google Cloud. It looks incredibly easy to
       | finetune PaLM in their environment:
       | 
       | Video (Build, tune, and deploy foundation models with Vertex AI):
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg2yHIKQ7oM
        
         | bluelightning2k wrote:
         | I don't know that catch-up is entirely fair.
         | 
         | My understanding is that Google has always been ahead (at least
         | until recently) - but the difference is that one of their
         | competitors _ships_.
         | 
         | OpenAI has a bias to action. DeepMind has a bias to grand-
         | challenge stunts. Google has a bias to perpetual validation.
        
           | sebzim4500 wrote:
           | I think 'catch-up' is a fair description if Google
           | Brain/Deepmind have until now shipped nothing and their
           | competitors have shipped something.
        
             | Workaccount2 wrote:
             | When you have nothing at stake, like openAI or bing, its
             | easy to just throw things at the wall and see what sticks.
             | There is nothing else on the wall you could potentially
             | knock off.
        
               | sebzim4500 wrote:
               | I don't see why Google is in a materially different
               | situation with AI than Microsoft is. It's not like anyone
               | is suggesting that Google should have shut down their
               | search in order to launch something like this, if it
               | fails then it joins the long line of dead products.
        
       | IanCal wrote:
       | > Starting today, we're making an efficient model available in
       | terms of size and capabilities,
       | 
       | Excellent!
       | 
       |  _goes through the terrible UI of google cloud console_
       | 
       | Nothing there. I see it's not actually today it's a sometime soon
       | with some people in a private preview. Any info on what model
       | size they're actually releasing?
       | 
       | Time to try the demo they showed in google docs.
       | 
       | > Now, we're excited to take the next step and bring a limited
       | set of trusted testers
       | 
       | Oh.
       | 
       | It's good that they're actually planning to ship stuff, but
       | _when_? I 've seen private previews sit around certainly for 6+
       | months, probably a lot longer.
        
         | topicseed wrote:
         | Google needs to nail their launches better... We're all tired
         | of Google Forms demos and access...
        
           | IanCal wrote:
           | It's quite something. I wish they'd just be more up front
           | about it because then I'd probably be more excited. These
           | changes are incredible, and it's a shame my general feeling
           | is disappointment from trying and failing to use something.
           | 
           | They do this all the time launching something in the US but
           | not mentioning the limits leaving me struggling to get
           | something to work.
           | 
           | It doesn't help that their approach to ai is often "don't
           | worry a magic thing will tell when you want it and will make
           | it appear" and I don't know if I'm not making the right
           | incantations or it's broken or it's not available.
           | 
           | I wish these would all come with a "notify me when available"
           | button at the very top.
        
         | sf_rob wrote:
         | I'm looking forward to seeing some of this make its way to
         | general release, but I'd guess that this post is in the vein of
         | their hurried initial press response to Chat GPT.
        
       | gavi wrote:
       | When they say Augment your dataset with synthetic data on
       | https://developers.googleblog.com/2023/03/announcing-palm-ap...
       | do they mean something like this
       | https://github.com/yizhongw/self-instruct ?
        
         | shtack wrote:
         | Possibly this:
         | https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230314005528/en/Gre...
        
       | mabbo wrote:
       | If I'm following this all here...
       | 
       | We're going to have AI help us generate long pieces of text from
       | very small blurbs of information.
       | 
       | Then the reader is going to have AI read the long pieces of text,
       | and condense it down into just small blurbs of information.
       | 
       | Will my self-driving car also take unneeded detours through
       | pretty places, making it take longer to get where I'm going?
        
         | RobotToaster wrote:
         | >Will my self-driving car also take unneeded detours through
         | pretty places, making it take longer to get where I'm going?
         | 
         | No, but it may take a detour through the local McDonalds drive
         | through because they sponsor the self driving car company.
        
         | Jack000 wrote:
         | Malls are already designed in a labyrinthine way so you pass by
         | as many stores as possible.
         | 
         | Self driving cars might have set destinations that are cheaper
         | to visit, or have free rides that are ad-supported, or
         | recommend stops along your route.
        
           | flangola7 wrote:
           | All the while creating more CO2
        
             | nicksrose7224 wrote:
             | most (all?) self driving companies are electric. Cruise,
             | Waymo, Tesla
        
               | californical wrote:
               | And how is that electricity generated in most of the
               | US/world?
        
           | tedajax wrote:
           | Ah good, more terrible things to look forward to.
        
           | yencabulator wrote:
           | > Self driving cars might have set destinations that are
           | cheaper to visit,
           | 
           | I think you mean set destinations based on an auction of what
           | business paid most for your visit, based on your demographics
           | & ride history.
        
         | IanCal wrote:
         | It's more than that. The initial blurbs don't contain enough
         | information, but with context you can make solid guesses about
         | what should go in.
         | 
         | So it's
         | 
         | * small explanation
         | 
         | * initial proposal of what you probably want
         | 
         | * fixes and approval
         | 
         | Not really any different than asking a person to do it for you.
         | 
         | You don't tell your car/mapping software the exact route you
         | want, you tell it where you want to go and then review the
         | proposed plan, and that's with a very restricted setup (exact
         | destination, limited routes).
         | 
         | Edit
         | 
         | More importantly, short messages that convey everything you
         | want with the right tone are hard. Taking my mashed thoughts
         | and converting them to easier to understand prose is a benefit
         | even if it's longer.
         | 
         | Just like a larger function can be better than a code-golfed
         | one. It's longer but it doesn't take longer to read.
        
         | usful wrote:
         | > Will my self-driving car also take unneeded detours through
         | pretty places, making it take longer to get where I'm going?
         | 
         | I hope so, when you want it to. "Unneeded detours through
         | pretty places" is a kind of being present in the world.
        
         | avereveard wrote:
         | > detours through pretty places
         | 
         | heck I might like that service, if optional
        
         | dagw wrote:
         | _Will my self-driving car_
         | 
         | I guess that depends if it's _your_ self-driving car or
         | Google/Uber/Teslas self-driving car that they're letting you
         | use. It might even be so that the physical car is yours, but
         | the self-driving software is licensed and controlled by a third
         | party.
        
         | ren_engineer wrote:
         | Google is also effectively giving up on Search if they are
         | willing to help people generate more SEO spam at scale by
         | directly providing AI text generation in Docs. OpenAI/Microsoft
         | shook them up so hard that they are doing stuff that is most
         | likely self-destructive long term
        
           | Veen wrote:
           | AI-generated SEO spam is here regardless of what Google does.
           | But they don't also want everyone to stop using Google Docs
           | because it lacks features that are definitely coming to
           | Microsoft Word and every other competitor.
        
           | sebzim4500 wrote:
           | Presumably any other search engine will be just as badly hit
           | as Google is, so this won't make people move away.
        
         | pxtail wrote:
         | Well, that google post probably was written with the help of AI
         | and itself looks like it could benefit from keypoints
         | extraction service, it's full of corporate mumbojumbo with
         | occasional "Select developers can access", "stay tuned for our
         | waitlist soon", "to testers in the coming weeks.", "more to
         | come in the weeks and months ahead." In general, very low
         | energy and conservative compared to bold MS moves
        
           | scottyah wrote:
           | At least somebody is trying to get it right before they ship
        
             | generalizations wrote:
             | Nah. They're just more scared of failure than they are
             | motivated to capture the market.
        
         | hs86 wrote:
         | It looks like these AI features are going to add some padding
         | to our messages, and the other end needs AI to undo it in order
         | to save their sanity.
         | 
         | Just look at the "I'm on it" example from their announcement
         | video and what nonsense their AI makes out of it:
         | https://youtu.be/6DaJVZBXETE?t=31
        
         | seydor wrote:
         | https://twitter.com/sama/status/1631394688384270336
        
         | sebzim4500 wrote:
         | I wonder if they will let the AI on the receiving end access
         | the original text that the sender wrote to get better results.
         | Presumably Google will store the pre-BS message.
        
       | betteryet wrote:
       | Prompting an AI for 5 seconds to write a bunch of paragraphs that
       | your human counterpart has to then read and think through is
       | incredibly disrespectful of their time.
       | 
       | AI assistants that summarize and enrich information for you,
       | fine. That actually saves time. But this feeding of generative
       | output to humans is way off the mark. It feels like the product
       | people are not sitting down to think what they're doing and just
       | riding the GPT hype wave.
        
         | sebzim4500 wrote:
         | But the recipient doesn't have to read and think through it,
         | they can just have the same AI summarise the email. Google
         | could even store the original prompt and use it as context for
         | the summariser.
        
       | virtuosarmo wrote:
       | Notable this announcement drops two days ahead of Microsoft's
       | announcement tied to enhancing M365 with gen-AI
       | https://news.microsoft.com/reinventing-productivity/
        
       | ec109685 wrote:
       | How many recent startups are simply "build google docs but with
       | AI [using other people's models]"? I can't see that being a long
       | term path to success.
        
       | aver4geredditor wrote:
       | Also see https://developers.googleblog.com/2023/03/announcing-
       | palm-ap...
       | 
       | > Earlier today, we announced the PaLM API, a new developer
       | offering that makes it easy and safe to experiment with Google's
       | large language models. Alongside the API, we're releasing
       | MakerSuite, a tool that lets developers start prototyping quickly
       | and easily. We'll be making these tools available to select
       | developers through a Private Preview, and stay tuned for our
       | waitlist soon.
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | This is an extinction event for the low hanging fruit ideas for
       | the so-called AI startups.
       | 
       | Again, this maybe bad timing since GPT-4 will (probably) gate
       | crash Google's announcements this week, hence why Google has done
       | this today.
       | 
       | But for now, AI copyrighters are going to be destroyed, quickly
       | by the same tech giants: Microsoft (OpenAI), Google, and possibly
       | Meta.
        
         | Buttons840 wrote:
         | Speaking of copyright, remember that content produced by an
         | algorithm cannot be copyrighted. We've already seen this play
         | out with stable diffusion. Also, the government copyright
         | office is surely unprepared for the coming tsunami.
        
           | bioemerl wrote:
           | > produced by an algorithm
           | 
           | This is a very grey area. A prompt, for example, could be
           | copyright. An image you create by drawing a base layer and
           | having the AI fill the details in could be copyright as well.
           | 
           | The government copyright office doesn't really decide these
           | things. Courts do.
        
       | topicseed wrote:
       | This video published just now is incredible --
       | https://youtu.be/6DaJVZBXETE
       | 
       | Not sure though if it's mostly stuff that's being beta tested as
       | we speak, or stuff that's not even built at all as of yet.
        
         | jpollock wrote:
         | I get way too much of these bulk-generated documents to read
         | _now_. Making their generation more efficient is a bad thing,
         | not a good thing.
        
         | Ozzie_osman wrote:
         | This video probably had functionality representing 10% of the
         | latest YC batch.
         | 
         | Not mocking. This is a really hard space. You can start a whole
         | company and build a product and overnight goog/msft/openai can
         | tweak an existing product or API to make you obsolete. I'm sure
         | some folks will figure out moats eventually... Always rooting
         | for the upstarts over the incumbents.
        
           | cloudking wrote:
           | Yeah turns out launching a UI wrapper around a clever prompt
           | doesn't give you much leverage against the big players.
           | 
           | Seems like the opportunity is applying LLMs in the background
           | to accomplish previously difficult tasks, as opposed to just
           | building text generator tools.
        
           | sebzim4500 wrote:
           | Yeah but let's wait and see if it actually ends up being any
           | good. Also, you could use a similar argument to say that
           | Feedly has no reason to exist while Google Reader was better,
           | but we all know how that ended.
        
         | noduerme wrote:
         | We're so fucked. Everyone will be AI spambots. You'll never
         | know if you're talking to a human again.
        
           | nyolfen wrote:
           | just demand that they use a slur, this is the true voight-
           | kampff
        
           | topicseed wrote:
           | Indeed, even with content... Somebody with ChatGPT and
           | Grammarly can produce a humongous amount of content these
           | days, and it will read really well to the average Joe.
        
             | noduerme wrote:
             | Ah, but the joke's on them, cause the average Joe doesn't
             | read anymore.
        
         | Buttons840 wrote:
         | The video is very focused on first order effects. A middle
         | manager automates all their work by writing a few sentences;
         | they produce a "brief" by giving a one sentence input to the
         | AI, doubtless imagining that other humans will carefully read
         | their brief, quietly nodding to themselves and considering
         | every sentence, with passing thoughts about how competent the
         | middle manager is. In truth, the middle manager will soon be
         | replaced by an AI, and the lovely looking briefs produced by
         | the AI will only be consumed by other AIs.
         | 
         | Another part shows the AI creating personalized marketing
         | messages. For a brief time they will work, and then every
         | company will be producing them by the millions, and then
         | customers will stop reading emails at all -- again, the AIs
         | will be writing messages consumed by other AIs.
        
           | noduerme wrote:
           | We're pretty close to outsourcing the customers' decision-
           | making to AI already. Of course, when the customers all lose
           | _their_ jobs, I 'm not sure who's going to be buying
           | anything...
        
             | gpderetta wrote:
             | AIs of course.
        
           | rch wrote:
           | > For a brief time they will work
           | 
           | The generated 'thank you for your leadership' message was
           | amusing. If it's all fake, then what's the point?
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | agos wrote:
         | is this going to be like Google Duplex, i.e. mostly forgotten,
         | then unceremoniously shut down?
        
           | eclipxe wrote:
           | Google Duplex wasn't shut down. It still is a thing built
           | into Google Assistant on Android.
        
             | amf12 wrote:
             | With a lot of Google projects, they are "killed" by
             | integrating their features in other projects or merged.
        
           | aabhay wrote:
           | This is worse -- terrified, anxious make-work to appease
           | insecure management with "apps" for AI
        
         | Workaccount2 wrote:
         | My view of the future has completely collapsed over the last
         | 6mos-1year. I desperately don't want to live in a world where
         | everything about everyone is fake and augmented. Where
         | everything you look at and interact with is just AI generated
         | or AI controlled.
         | 
         | I can't see how AI isn't going to make the problem of falling
         | social interaction 1000x worse.
        
           | Sol- wrote:
           | I can relate. Maybe the Amish got a point after all!
        
           | gretch wrote:
           | I promise you, it's not that dramatic.
           | 
           | You can still walk down to the creamery and drink a
           | milkshake. There are plenty of flesh and blood people there
           | to talk to. The birds are chirping and it's a sunny day.
           | 
           | There are some bad/weird stuff happening on parts of social
           | media, but you can literally just turn off your phone and go
           | outside.
        
       | flohofwoe wrote:
       | Ooof, exactly as predicted a few days ago:
       | 
       | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/google-dusts-off-the...
       | 
       | Now every Google team needs to shoehorn "AI" into its products,
       | no matter if it makes sense or not.
        
       | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
       | It's worth comparing these to how a human would respond to the
       | same request. "I'd like to write a job description" would get
       | "okay, what will they be doing?" or something. Instead we just
       | get a best attempt at making shit up.
        
       | indymike wrote:
       | It's interesting that the example for using an AI to write
       | documents is a job description. It is uniquely suited to the AI
       | because in real life, we've been copy-pasta-ing them for decades.
       | It's also a place where there is some level of legal peril - a
       | job description with material inaccuracies or discriminatory
       | language creates lawsuits.
        
       | solarmist wrote:
       | I'll never even try it because I'm constantly waiting for the
       | service cancellation announcement.
        
         | robertlagrant wrote:
         | You can ask it how long it has.
        
       | ipsum2 wrote:
       | It is either intentional or awfully coincidental that that Google
       | would announce this two days before Microsoft's AI event:
       | https://news.microsoft.com/reinventing-productivity/, which will
       | probably discuss similar product features in Office 365.
        
         | zamnos wrote:
         | https://twitter.com/xlr8harder/status/1622849293571817472
         | 
         | It's intentional.
        
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