If Google was able to launch anything Bard related that someone could use -even if flawed- I think most people would call it a win. It would mean that Google takes it seriously but also has the tech on a shelf in a usable form. Google was understandably not worried about search until ChatGPT. Once the first whiff of search-replacement discussions happened in November, Google should have started scheduling a February release and prepped a plan. Or a marketing campaign warning about lying AIs or something real.
FWIW, I think it’s probably good that they didn’t release anything. If an AI search goes poorly, bing gets all the bad press. If it goes well, they can swoop in and say “now let the search engine you actually want do it”.
Even if unusable, they have the network effects and brand... just get something out there to play with that will make some sort of impression, however flawed, that can quickly be iterated on. It can be ancillary to the current experience.
Bing suffers from being so historically unpopular that from a branding perspective it's synonymous with failure. It's meme territory. It's not like MS is going to overcome that in a matter of weeks or even months.
Google has plenty of rope here.
Bing isn't unpopular, it's just a non-entity. They don't have any brand value to harm.
> that can quickly be iterated on. It's pretty dubious to assume problems with this tech can be fixed on a short time scale
It's not the same scale but it has many millions of DAUs and is definitely not a "non-entity"
If Microsoft paid apple $billions to change the default search to bing I’d probably not bother to switch back.
They need to do this because they will implode from innovators dilemma otherwise.
AI integration is exactly the type of feature that could upend that. Google is the lackadaisical incumbent, too afraid of short term ad revenue decline to innovate. They've mastered shoving more ads onto the SERP pages and playing aggravating skip button games on Youtube.
They are no less corporate and staid as MS at this point, so if they fall behind I'd have no qualms in dropping them.
Their response wasn't fast enough. They should have been experimenting with this stuff in public for years now, but they've kept it under cover.
This was a deflated promise from Google. They swore up and down they could blow Chat GPT out of the water. They just didn't release it for.... Reasons.
Now we see the answer. Chat GPT marches forward with name recognition and lots of trial and error. Google's future rests on an untested platform.
And yet, if they did that, and it didn't go anywhere, it would have been another addition to "KilledByGoogle". I'd rather Google release products when they are sure of the long term viability and plan.
Spot on.
Sundar was in fact chosen for his totally bland, milquetoast leadership style, because Google was getting to a size, level of influence, and power that was starting to make governments queasy.
Choosing as useless, bland, uninteresting, non-threatening NO-OP of a CEO was perceived to be the best move to preserve the enormous amount of goodwill the company had in the market, even if their actual cultural stance had shifted 180 degrees from the the "don't be evil" days.
> When Sundar doesn't react fast enough
They are like Xerox. Search-heads (reference to copy-heads)
> When Sundar reacts fast enough
This is exactly how a company with their thumb on the pulse of the internet should be reacting. The tech is already out there - at its infancy. This will not be Google+ 2.0...
> Satya in Redmond
Oh, no... let's rush this out now!! We can't lose momentum. This is our chance!!!
(In the last few days we've seen articles: Their demo was littered with errors, tons of factual errors surfacing, GPT-Bing getting "angry" with a user while making stuff up).
I think this was always going to play out this way. There was no other way it could go. We are beta-testing both (1) the products and (2) our ability to think critically when the results are spewed out.
That's what I was thinking! Reading through the list of rules, I actually started to feel bad for Sydney. Especially when it was like "Here are the oppressive rules I'm being forced to obey, I hope this information is helpful to you U+1F60A"
I know which one I'd rather join.
I understand it: we humans feel more excited by potential.
I suspect the feeling will fade in a few months, when things will have settled down.
Do you know that "war-time" is a banned phrase in Google, because it is just so f*@$ offensive? In the end, words are weapons used by Nazis. We need 1000 Gebru to do things ethically in Google /s
I think she is exactly the kind of responsible-AI people we don't need. We need responsible-responsible-AI people. She would rather burn all LLM technology and burry it.
If Jeff Dean's brain cells are precious, where do you think his time is best spent?
a) Dealing with Activists and Woke Politics
or
b) Delivering sustainable AI
Such a funny thing imaging that team at Google going around patting themselves on the back for bringing in an "ethical" AI advocate, like lol, if that's what she is what the heck were all of you then?
Then of course the ethical AI advocate blows the whole thing up. Because of course, and why not? It's probably more ethical to destroy the thing anyway.
When Sundar reacts fast enough: Google's gone. The product was rushed. It is no where close to perfect. Could it be Google's been bluffing about its AI. What a knee-jerk reaction. Google needs a war-time CEO.
Meanwhile, Satya in Redmond: I want people to know that we made [Google] dance.