If anything, I think Sundar Pichai will have to face more consequences for botching this launch than firing 12k people in the stupidest way possible.
Boards are a fun thing to have to respond to.
Since when do the largest companies capitalize on tech inflection points early? If this is a goal its a new and ambitious one in the history of large business
What have MS got to lose? They were not making a dent in search. Google has to be measured. They rushed it unnecessarily. It's not like an overnight coup --where it's done and over. Google has lots of time to respond.
> Because they are the very ones who made this urgent, yes.
If the board did do that, Sundar is the directly responsible individual who said "yes". If the board suggests "jump" and Sundar reflexively response "how high?", in my view Google has bigger problems.
Eh, we all know ChatGPT can make these same kinds of errors. The only difference between Microsoft and Google is Microsoft did a better job of proofing their marketing materials. It's genuinely amazing watching Google taking a shellacking on this when all of these LLMs have the exact same problems.
The real problem is none of these technologies should be put in front of users in a way that might give them a patina of authority or certainty. Their ability to convincingly bullshit is incredibly dangerous and I'm amazed at how blithely irresponsible these companies are in pushing this technology out in front of users before it can be trusted.
>The real problem is none of these technologies should be put in front of users in a way that might give them a patina of authority or certainty.
Well, it seems that Microsoft has addressed with Bing in a better way than ChatGPT and Bard by providing actual web references.
Sometimes I wonder whether there is generally a mismatch in expectations. People seem to expect the LLMs to output only verified and true information, when it fact it is subject to fallacies very similar to those of a human due to vagueness inherent to written language. I found that if you think of these assistants as an extremely eager and efficient intern, expectations and reality match much better.
The people use things uncritically all the time. Many people don’t even read past a headline. Someone who won’t check their source on a search headline won’t check the source on anything else they read on the internet either, which is rife with incorrect information (either accidentally or intentionally).
Yeah but the difference is a headline is written by a human who will make human mistakes.
These AIs make weird mistakes that humans are not well equipped to detect.
No human would write an article claiming the JWST was the first to detect an exoplanet, but Bard did, and your average user won't even know to question the answer because it's written with authority.
Whatever, I guess we'll see what happens. These companies are rolling out this technology regardless of concerns about safety or ethics so now we all get to live the experiment.
I don’t understand why some seem to think that not vetting your marketing materials is somehow ok when you are paid hundreds of millions of dollars and effectively have unlimited resources at your disposal.
But is it the kind of error that justifies a large decline in stock price? No.
The behaviour of the stock implies doubt in Google's AI implementation itself, and my point is there's absolutely no evidence ChatGPT is any better or worse. If that was the reason for the stock decline, Microsoft and Google should both be taking a pounding because, at this point, we should assuming their implementations are equally flawed due to fundamental limitations in LLMs.
Their ability to bullshit is indeed a weak spot that should (and probably will) be addressed. However, I don't think the average person is not aware of that, nor fails to notice it.
Or put another way, how often are legacy search results wrong or misleading?
ChatGPT is incredibly useful despite it's limitations... imho.
Isn’t it obvious that Pichai is not up the task of running a company like Google? Is there a single new area that Google has claimed leadership in under his tenure as CEO?
Stability.ai is currently being sued for like $150,000 per image it was trained on. There's probably some concern. Microsoft is able to shift potential liability onto OpenAI.
>The meme featured a photo of actor Nicolas Cage smiling and said “Firing 12k people rises the stock by 3%, one rushed AI presentation drops it by 8%.”
I wonder if there was one with Nelson Muntz pointing, with the caption “Ah-ha! Your AI doesn’t even know what telescope took what picture!”
Yeah, probably because they used up a ton of good will with employees with layoffs, and then immediately face planted. Kinda makes sense that employees would criticize them after that.
Mr Pichai,you have been weighed, you have been measured and you have been found wanting.
What is Eric Schmidt up to these days? ;-)