7 ms·

Google is still drip-feeding AI into Search, Maps, and Translate

43 points by makepanic 4y ago

jurmous 4y ago
Google their presentation felt lacking. Mostly repeating AI features they already announced with some small features or expanded locations/languages to distract that their Bard is totally underwhelming. It did not show any source links below the generated text. They did not show off any queries with super recent information. It feels Microsoft is at least one year ahead with this Prometheus model and product work with integrations into Bing and Edge. In an interview with the Verge Microsoft CEO mentioned they already had the raw search optimised Prometheus model in mid 2022. So for Google to train a similar model optimised for search including sources will take quite a while. It will be interesting to see if Bing market share will grow. I will certainly try it out when it is my turn on the waitlist. Google on the other hand said nothing on availability.. Showing really they were caught unprepared and that this presentation was an act of desperation.
- user3939382 4y ago
  I've gotten cynical about these AI features. I've seen that they try to outsmart me by changing my query which 95% of the time just leads to worse results. Bing is even worse than Google in this regard where I quote every word in my query and they still ignore my terms. It drives me nuts. If they want to use AI for ranking great, if the page doesn't contain my quoted terms stop including it!
  - petra 4y ago
    It seems that it's all a result of optimizing search for the average user. For him it might be better, and leaving the power users aside. I wonder whether this is an inherent conflict in search and information systems , and so we'll see the same results with the newer LLM based tools ?
    - user3939382 4y ago
      I would agree if we were talking about unquoted terms. I’d like a checkbox in my account settings that make my terms act as quoted by default and I add a flag to make the search fuzzy, but at least respect the quotes, you know? Assume quotes are being used by power users and make everything else fuzzy.
ttul 4y ago
OpenAI’s huge advantage is several months of training by hundreds of millions of users. Google never risked putting a chat model out into the wild for fear it would lead to embarrassing misuses - typical behavior for a giant company defending a legacy business at all costs. OpenAI has no such legacy business to defend and so was free to take the risk.
- htrp 4y ago
  If their [OpenAI's] server status is any indication, they've been fully tapped out for the better part of 2 months collecting prompt training data. Not sure how 100k google employees will be able to match that degree of training data.
  - actsasbuffoon 4y ago
    According to a UBS study from last week, ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer-based web app in history: https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-faste... This thing is taking off like wildfire. Google has very good reason to be terrified. This kind of growth is quite likely indicative of a major disruption.
- motoxpro 4y ago
  Apparently this is a contrarian take, but Google is in no way in danger of being disrupted by OpenAI. The scale they have means that they could reduce that "advantage" in a matter of hours if they wanted to. 100m monthly active users vs Google 4.3b daily active users. The compute they have can train more/better models than they can, and they have been working on this for longer than OpenAI has (see their keynote in 2017, Chatbot that got the guy fired because he thought it was sentient) Microsoft helps here, but all of those things still exist. Bing is tiny compared to Google. Microsoft will "win" the productivity tools (Teams, Office, etc.) for the same reason Google will win search. Happy to be quoted on this in a year or so.
  - jurmous 4y ago
ben30 4y ago
The early days of Google were magical, with its ability to answer our questions instantly and without distractions. It's a shame that now, ads and SEO strategies have taken over and made the search process more cumbersome. It feels OpenAI's public chat bot has the potential to bring back that simple, distraction-free experience of finding information. However this simplicity feels in conflict with how Google as an advertising company makes it's money.
- acdha 4y ago
  That last part is key: search didn’t just happen to get worse, chasing ad revenue made it that way. Once Google started allowed ethically dubious SEO like Quora’s search cloaking it marked the end of the era where search quality was the main focus. It’s very easy to imagine tools like ChatGPT following a similar arc, only harder to discern if it’s not legally required to mark when advice is sponsored.
- user3939382 4y ago
  > bring back that simple, distraction-free experience of finding information This is what I got with Kagi which is why I switched to it. I'm pretty hard to please and always have nits so it's rare I'd cheerlead for a brand but the product is great. If anything my fear is that it'll be like everything else that was good at first: pressure to grow skyrockets the price, or they succumb to the pressure to mine/sell data, ads, etc. Time will tell.
webdoodle 4y ago
Drip-feeding? How about BOILING THE FROG. A.I. isn't our friend here. With all the censorship Google and other bigtech companies have been repeatedly caught doing, it's just another way of taking out the censorship middle-man, now without human accountability or oversight.

43 points by makepanic 4y ago

Google their presentation felt lacking. Mostly repeating AI features they already announced with some small features or expanded locations/languages to distract that their Bard is totally underwhelming. It did not show any source links below the generated text. They did not show off any queries with super recent information. It feels Microsoft is at least one year ahead with this Prometheus model and product work with integrations into Bing and Edge. In an interview with the Verge Microsoft CEO mentioned they already had the raw search optimised Prometheus model in mid 2022. So for Google to train a similar model optimised for search including sources will take quite a while. It will be interesting to see if Bing market share will grow. I will certainly try it out when it is my turn on the waitlist. Google on the other hand said nothing on availability.. Showing really they were caught unprepared and that this presentation was an act of desperation.

user3939382 4y ago
I've gotten cynical about these AI features. I've seen that they try to outsmart me by changing my query which 95% of the time just leads to worse results. Bing is even worse than Google in this regard where I quote every word in my query and they still ignore my terms. It drives me nuts. If they want to use AI for ranking great, if the page doesn't contain my quoted terms stop including it!
- petra 4y ago
  It seems that it's all a result of optimizing search for the average user. For him it might be better, and leaving the power users aside. I wonder whether this is an inherent conflict in search and information systems , and so we'll see the same results with the newer LLM based tools ?
  - user3939382 4y ago
    I would agree if we were talking about unquoted terms. I’d like a checkbox in my account settings that make my terms act as quoted by default and I add a flag to make the search fuzzy, but at least respect the quotes, you know? Assume quotes are being used by power users and make everything else fuzzy.

ttul 4y ago

OpenAI’s huge advantage is several months of training by hundreds of millions of users. Google never risked putting a chat model out into the wild for fear it would lead to embarrassing misuses - typical behavior for a giant company defending a legacy business at all costs. OpenAI has no such legacy business to defend and so was free to take the risk.

htrp 4y ago
If their [OpenAI's] server status is any indication, they've been fully tapped out for the better part of 2 months collecting prompt training data. Not sure how 100k google employees will be able to match that degree of training data.
- actsasbuffoon 4y ago
  According to a UBS study from last week, ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer-based web app in history: https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-faste... This thing is taking off like wildfire. Google has very good reason to be terrified. This kind of growth is quite likely indicative of a major disruption.
motoxpro 4y ago
Apparently this is a contrarian take, but Google is in no way in danger of being disrupted by OpenAI. The scale they have means that they could reduce that "advantage" in a matter of hours if they wanted to. 100m monthly active users vs Google 4.3b daily active users. The compute they have can train more/better models than they can, and they have been working on this for longer than OpenAI has (see their keynote in 2017, Chatbot that got the guy fired because he thought it was sentient) Microsoft helps here, but all of those things still exist. Bing is tiny compared to Google. Microsoft will "win" the productivity tools (Teams, Office, etc.) for the same reason Google will win search. Happy to be quoted on this in a year or so.
- jurmous 4y ago

ben30 4y ago

The early days of Google were magical, with its ability to answer our questions instantly and without distractions. It's a shame that now, ads and SEO strategies have taken over and made the search process more cumbersome. It feels OpenAI's public chat bot has the potential to bring back that simple, distraction-free experience of finding information. However this simplicity feels in conflict with how Google as an advertising company makes it's money.

acdha 4y ago
That last part is key: search didn’t just happen to get worse, chasing ad revenue made it that way. Once Google started allowed ethically dubious SEO like Quora’s search cloaking it marked the end of the era where search quality was the main focus. It’s very easy to imagine tools like ChatGPT following a similar arc, only harder to discern if it’s not legally required to mark when advice is sponsored.
user3939382 4y ago
> bring back that simple, distraction-free experience of finding information This is what I got with Kagi which is why I switched to it. I'm pretty hard to please and always have nits so it's rare I'd cheerlead for a brand but the product is great. If anything my fear is that it'll be like everything else that was good at first: pressure to grow skyrockets the price, or they succumb to the pressure to mine/sell data, ads, etc. Time will tell.

webdoodle 4y ago

Drip-feeding? How about BOILING THE FROG. A.I. isn't our friend here. With all the censorship Google and other bigtech companies have been repeatedly caught doing, it's just another way of taking out the censorship middle-man, now without human accountability or oversight.