Two big stories for Google this week. One is "we can't do this AI thing and we wish we could" and the other is "we accidentally deleted a bunch of data and we're pretending we didn't". Seems the two have attributes in common - their execution has failed and marketing is trying to paper over the void.
One hurts the credibility they built with Alpha Go etc and the other hurts the confidence that they know how to run reliable servers. Seems end stage to me, company trending in the direction of IBM.
This is a really good article. Thank you for calling this behaviour out.
I watched the demo with a team mate while we were working on a Chatbot. My team mate was going “WOW - that is amazing!” I was going “Yeah, we will see. At least they did not shoot themselves in the foot with the demo - but it was not really live. “ now I see that even my scepticism was too weak. They DID shoot themselves in the foot.
We keep hearing about this amazing AI Google is too afraid to let people play with. This video looked like a they were going to let that bad boy start to go public. But , No, we get a parlour trick promo. I just don’t get it. The team there has a brain as big as a planet but we keep getting these stumbles.
When I saw the demo I figured out that it wasn't live or real but the article does have some nice examples of exactly how it was faked which is good to see.
I am not surprised by this news at all. The fact is Google can't innovate nearly as quickly as OpenAI, despite their endless amounts of money. They are bogged down by self-imposed bureaucracy and non-productive chair warmers. So they have to try to make up for it with fake promotional videos.
One hurts the credibility they built with Alpha Go etc and the other hurts the confidence that they know how to run reliable servers. Seems end stage to me, company trending in the direction of IBM.