[HN Gopher] 2023: A year of groundbreaking advances in AI and co...
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       2023: A year of groundbreaking advances in AI and computing
        
       Author : jithinraj
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2023-12-22 21:04 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.research.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.research.google)
        
       | px43 wrote:
       | And of course, 2024 is going to make 2023 look like 2022.
        
         | worldsayshi wrote:
         | Are there any key indications for this? Why would it not just
         | stop here (for a while)?
        
           | cryptoz wrote:
           | The key indications are capitalism, pace of current
           | development (what was it, yesterday that mj6 dropped?), and
           | active research.
           | 
           | In other words: 1) There's (a lot of) money to be made in
           | making it better. 2) Releases are happening constantly, why
           | would that stop? 3) Lots of recent research still that hasn't
           | been productized and also that opens the door to future
           | improvements.
        
           | huijzer wrote:
           | OpenAI showed they can do capability extrapolate/predict
           | (training loss) for the amount of compute they put in [1, see
           | Predictable Scaling section]. This is also in line with
           | earlier findings. Furthermore, there is no evidence at this
           | point that there is an end in sight.
           | 
           | [1]: https://openai.com/research/gpt-4
        
             | randmeerkat wrote:
             | > OpenAI showed they can do capability extrapolate/predict
             | (training loss) for the amount of compute they put in [1,
             | see Predictable Scaling section]. This is also in line with
             | earlier findings.
             | 
             | That's interesting if it's actually true. I think it's
             | important to keep in mind that it's also their own
             | marketing materials...
        
           | bitshiftfaced wrote:
           | We now have several organizations actively iterating on the
           | same idea: OpenAI, Google, Apple, etc., most of which have
           | more resources at their disposal than most countries do. They
           | are also in fierce competition with each other. There's also
           | a trend line if you look at the rate of progress over the
           | last decade.
           | 
           | Then again, Bill Gates thinks it may has plateaued. He ought
           | to be privy to OpenAI's going-ons. That, and Gemini was
           | underwhelming.
        
             | falcor84 wrote:
             | > That, and Gemini was underwhelming.
             | 
             | Gemini Ultra wasn't yet fully released, so I'd like to
             | correct your statement to: Gemini _will be_ underwhelming.
        
         | falcor84 wrote:
         | Can I extrapolate that 2025 is going to make 2023 look like
         | 2021?
        
       | light_hue_1 wrote:
       | Google with some of the best people in the world. Unlimited
       | resources in almost every way, manages to fall further behind and
       | further into irrelevance in AI.
       | 
       | A bunch of closed models no one can run. A mediocre bard that is
       | way behind everyone else. Pretty pathetic. Is anyone home at
       | Google?
       | 
       | Google's AI budget is higher than the total funding for AI at all
       | US universities combined. It's just mind boggling how they can
       | drop the ball so badly.
       | 
       | What a change in fortunes. Just a few years ago it was the place
       | to be and our PhD students were dying to work there.
        
         | fnordpiglet wrote:
         | Well, Google has a bunch of people who tell themselves they're
         | the best in the world. I've known perfectly reasonable humans
         | start working there and by the time the left they felt they
         | were smarter. By that I mean, in general, smarter than others.
         | You can't be smarter, you can be smart, but smarter isn't a
         | state of being. But they definitely feel they are, and assume
         | you know that too. When discussing work I had done with one
         | they insisted I must have based it off of a Google paper, which
         | they weren't sure if there was one on it, but surely I didn't
         | do it myself. That level.
         | 
         | One when confronted with the actual remit of their new job at a
         | new company said "wow you hired an atom bomb to open a tin
         | can." They failed to achieve anything in two years and was
         | fired.
        
           | manmal wrote:
           | Are you suggesting Google is a narcissist incubator? (only
           | slightly tongue in cheek)
        
         | solardev wrote:
         | It's nice to see this. Hopefully small upstarts will make
         | breakthroughs in different areas. Better than an AI monopoly.
         | 
         | This last decade, Google hasn't really made much of relevance
         | outside AI either. The company is just milking its existing ad
         | flows and not much else, it seems.
        
         | candiddevmike wrote:
         | Google probably has at least 5x the management bloat as the
         | competitors and it's killing them. Too many cooks in the
         | kitchen vying to be the next AI thought leader. They're acting
         | like IBM to be honest.
        
         | l8_to_catch_up wrote:
         | Gemini Pro, with arguably comparable quality to GPT4, competes
         | with GPT4 with its superior pricing and speed.
         | 
         | If you actually use Gemini Pro, you will find that it gives
         | nearly instantaneous full responses, which makes me use it more
         | than even GPT4 Turbo for a lot of quick questions. And
         | certainly more than Bing AI with GPT4, which is so slow and
         | awkward to use and which I gave up on.
         | 
         | It's something that doesn't get discussed: speed and pricing,
         | with near top quality. That's maybe how Google is planning to
         | win for now.
        
       | htrp wrote:
       | This has been kind of a bad year for Google AI
       | 
       | Feb - Bard Launched with LaMDA -- Immediately replaced by Palm 2
       | backend within a month.
       | 
       | May - Launched Palm2 with 4 different sizes, 2 of which were
       | unusable (poor Gecko) and 1 of which was unavailable (unicorn
       | being invite-only/ask your google rep), which replaced Palm-540.
       | Will be replaced by Gemini Ultra apparently next year as "Bard
       | Advanced"
       | 
       | Launched Duet AI for both Workspace and Cloud, still compares
       | unfavorably to GH Copilot.
       | 
       | SGE basically caught up to ChatGPT web search with Bing
       | 
       | June - Imagen released, results were ok, and immediately
       | superseded by DallE3 within 3 months.
       | 
       | November - Youtube releases AI Music generation, but only as part
       | of their Music AI Incubator.
       | 
       | Gemini launches with the infamous blue duck video.
       | 
       | Gemini Ultra will likely be gatekept just like Palm2-Unicorn
       | despite performance only matching GPT4/Turbo (and despite
       | delaying their official launch by a quarter).
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-22 23:01 UTC)