Ex-Googler says company's AI panic is like Google+ fiasco all over again

101 点作者 Matrixik12 个月前

21 条评论

As a software developer, I'm anxious about the AI gold rush being a bubble that's about to pop.I've been unemployed ever since the Great 15% Layoffs, about 14 months ago. I finally landed a job (well, once the paperwork is done) related to bringing up a new processor. But it's a DL accelerator.I really hope there's not another employment bloodbath if/when the AI bubble bursts, since my savings are pretty much depleted.

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beezlebroxxxxxx12 个月前

It's not so bad to get caught flat-footed by something like ChatGPT (of course, it's not like Google didn't have AI stuff in development, for example that thing they showed once and then never brought up again when you could let Google Now talk to call reps), after all it seems like everyone was genuinely caught off guard by that first release of GPT and it's capabilities as a product.The bigger issue for Google, at least in my view, seems to be that they don't seem capable of responding or competing in a real tangible way. Over the years they've seemingly lost the ability to rapidly and coherently release a product. Instead, you get this bizarre, incoherent, and spasmodic, response from all of these different product teams that don't seem to really work together all that well and don't have a clear product identity.At this point, I doubt Google can turn the ship around. The company is just a gigantic behemoth of petty fiefdoms that will go the way of the Carolingian empire.

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scialex12 个月前

> Some of you may remember Google's much-hyped AI voice "Duplex," which was supposed to automate all those annoying phone calls and call centers. That was in 2018, six years ago. Since then, we've seen how it's turned outReasonably successfully?Call screen is easily one of the best features of my phone. Call hold navigation is also really useful. It calling restaurants and the like is not something I commonly use but it works and I've used it sometimes.

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louwrentius12 个月前

Many companies are trying to find new growth to satisfy their shareholders. We all understand that growing growth is unsustainable, but that doesn't matter, they just 'have to'.VR and Crypto/Blockchain didn't pan out, so now the new hotness is AI. There is an opportunity to make something useful out of AI that people want to pay for, in order to keep shareholders happy.AI is especially interesting for shareholders as it allows you to cut down on labour cost for certain professions. It's an almost ideal tool for creating shareholder value.Yet, I think the hype will come crashing down eventually. Because we know that it's all statistics and no actual reasoning. Cool that your service now has new AI features that tells me things, but why would I believe any of it?Meanwhile, I'm pondering what the next hype will be. Not VR for sure. 'Normal' people don't want to wear heavy stuff on their head messing up their hair. Fun for games but let's be real.But I have absolutely no sense of direction where things are headed, if there even is such notion. What I do observe is that society is more diverging between the haves and the have-nots.

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StableAlkyne12 个月前

> Google's goal, according to Jenson, is to create a Jarvis-like assistant that keeps users locked into Google's ecosystem. The company is driven by the fear that someone else might get there first...> ...Apple is pursuing a similar AI lock-in strategy with Siri, Jenson believes.I remember when Microsoft got sued for including a web browser in Windows. Oh how anti-trust has fallen.

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surfingdino12 个月前

The same panic is happening on the adoption side where managers want to be seen keeping up with the latest tech. They are spending money of haphazardly executed OpenAI API integrations without understanding how they work Every business and gov org I speak to these days is working on an "AI policy".

mmh000012 个月前

I'm not convinced A.I. will disappear anytime soon, either. It's way too useful, even if it's wrong sometimes.Just in my personal life:GitHub Co-Pilot: I love this tool and really don't like working without it. Is it perfect? No. Does it make mistakes? Yes. But I think of it as having a full-time junior developer working under me. They can take care of a LOT of the boilerplate crap while I focus on the more difficult parts of programming.GPT4: Has replaced most of my internet searches. It's so easy to ask it focused questions and get a reasonable answer, or, a starting point for more in-depth research.Kagi's Summarizer: I like being informed on world events, but, every news org likes to write 9000 page articles for the most mundane things. With Summarizer, I can, get a nice bullet-pointed list of facts without all the fluff. In turn, I can get through much more news quickly.Apple Photos: I use A.I. recognition of various objects and the ability to search for them almost daily.Grammarly: It prevents me from sounding like the absolute idiot I am in online conversations.I'm very eager for A.I. stuff to be integrated into more tools, such as my file manager. How amazing it would be if I could just point an A.I. system at a directory and say something along the lines of "Please organize this using Johnny.Decimal." or "Please find all documents related to my financials."

high_na_euv12 个月前

Companies like this hire 10s or 100s hundreds of thousands ppl who represent infinite amount of opinions, so Id take it with grain of salt.You can find a lot of ppl in companies like that who arent up to date with mission, marketing or strategy and theres nothing very wrong with that

Mountain_Skies12 个月前

At the other end of the spectrum there's Microsoft's marketing dominated approach, which is busy renaming everything they own into some variant of Copilot.

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mrbgty12 个月前

What is the moat for AI? Right now, it's enormously expensive to produce an LLM but doesn't AI produce results which, in the long run, will make it easier and easier for any company to produce the same?

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cajunboi3421312 个月前

I question how useful "jarvis" would be for most people (including me).I was in the fortunate position to have a supremely talented admin/chief of staff a couple years ago when I was in charge of a 100+ people org. They were amazing. Spoke 5 languages, took detailed notes for me, created decks and ran status update meetings on my behalf, scheduled my time based on my priorities. Ultimately, it was nice to have, because when they left, I never ended up replacing them.The only thing I really missed was scheduling meetings. But now a calendly link works just as well.

alecco12 个月前

I disagree with the article. I think Google is right to freak out. And I don't see how they are going to deal with it with their sick culture and hierarchy.I think Meta is doing much better. They are not freaking out, instead they are hyper-focusing on winning the race and then see how can they use that to improve. They have a lot less nonsense. I have no idea how they are going to monetize this huge expense, but I would bet they are going to be fine. (who would've thought only a couple of years ago)

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TheNewsIsHere12 个月前

I absolutely believe this. The spouse works at a very large multinational working in B2B (exclusive) software. Their AI products have taken years to develop stretching years before the pandemic. Rushing useful AI out the door is a recipe for subpar products/services.

isabelremirez12 个月前

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bee_rider12 个月前

Missing on social media was a pretty big error for Google, right?

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ChrisArchitect12 个月前

[dupe]More discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40429041">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40429041</a>

ttcbj12 个月前

I don't think I blame Google for panic here. I find myself going to claude.ai much more, and Google somewhat less. Claude feels much more efficient to me than filtering through search results for many queries. The conversational aspect can be really helpful also.

cynicalsecurity12 个月前

It's time for new startups/search engines.

andsoitis12 个月前

Scott Jenson is the ex-Googler in the article.He posted this on LinkedIn: “ I just left Google last month. The "AI Projects" I was working on were poorly motivated and driven by this panic that as long as it had "AI" in it, it would be great. This myopia is NOT something driven by a user need. It is a stone cold panic that they are getting left behind.The vision is that there will be a Tony Stark like Jarvis assistant in your phone that locks you into their ecosystem so hard that you'll never leave. That vision is pure catnip. The fear is that they can't afford to let someone else get there first.This exact thing happened 13 years ago with Google+ (I was there for that fiasco as well). That was a similar reaction but to Facebook.BTW, Apple is no different. They too are trying to create this AI lock-in with Siri. When the emperor, eventually, has no clothes, they'll be lapped by someone thinking bigger.I'm not a luddite, there is some value to this new technology. It's just not well motivated.Edit: Well, this has blown up. To be very clear, I wasn't a senior leader at Google, my projects were fairly limited. My comment comes more from a general frustration of the entire industry and it's approach to AI”— <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/scottjenson_this-years-google-io-was-the-most-boring-activity-7198073799051780096-0AmW" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/posts/scottjenson_this-years-google...</a>

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stephc_int1312 个月前

This is not only Google. Most of the big and medium tech companies CEOs have been about as gullible and delusional as the crypto-bros of 2k18.And now, as all the FOMO-driven AI integrations are starting to bear fruits, it seems that we're going to enter a chapter of unprecedented bullshit and disappointment in the history of personal computers.

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darylteo12 个月前

Mmm I don't think I agree with this person's analysis, despite him being a ex-googler.Don't get me wrong - i'm also not a big fan of company's hamfisting "ai" into every product that they have. But in Google's case it might be a do-or-die situation.---Basically, AI tech's current value proposition is simple - information retrieval.What does Google happen to do? Information retrieval.---Google absolutely should be scared if they aren't already.The phrase "Just ask ChatGPT" has already entered the common parlance, in much the same way "Just Google It" did in the 2000s. Zoom killed Skype in much the same way.In 10 years, gen-alphas could be using ChatGPT exclusively for performing their information gathering. In 20 years, Google's search revenue (55% of their revenue) might be hit sufficiently that they have to pivot something else. In 30 years, more time than it took Yahoo to become completely irrelevant as a company (founded 30 years ago!), Google may be just as irrelevant then.Google is already giving up the meta-physical space to Facebook and Apple. They've already given up the services space to Apple. They hardly even build their own hardware anymore, so all that's all going to Apple and Samsung. If the balance of power shifts, Google might just lose Android to Samsung completely.Now they might just lose the information-retrieval space too, which is their core identity.What do they have left after? YouTube, Business, and Infra, and Play Store. None of which actually makes them much money at all.They absolutely need to put their AI thing in as many things as possible, and try to leapfrog the competition. But at this point I think they may have already lost in the current consumer headspace.My casual 2cents