by random_moonwalk on 4/20/23, 5:11 PM with 626 comments
by paxys on 4/20/23, 5:59 PM
Google still thinks of AI as a research project, or at best a way to produce better search results. They essentially created the entire current generation of the AI space and then... gave it away, because no one on the product side understood what they had actually built. Handing the reins to the DeepMind team – who have never launched a single product in their history – seems to be a doubling down on that same failed strategy.
Google doesn't need more smart AI researchers, academics or ethicists. They need product managers who understand the underlying technology and can commercialize it. They need pragmatic engineers who can execute, launch and maintain services. That has always been their problem as a company.
by SeanAnderson on 4/20/23, 5:27 PM
- This does not seem unexpected. Google is panicked about losing the AI race and pushing resources into DeepMind is a logical step to mitigating those fears.
- Google has currently given ~300M to Anthropic and has a partnership with them. I assume Google continues to see potential in both avenues and won't neglect one AI team for the other. I'm guessing that DeepMind will be their primary focus because of the numerous, real-world applications already at play.
- It's tough for me to compare Google DeepMind to OpenAI GPT4. They seem to be very different approaches. Yet, they both have support for language and imagery. So, perhaps they aren't that different afterall?
- Still waiting to hear more from Google on how they plan to leverage their novel PaLM architecture. The API for it was released a month ago, but, to my awareness, has yet to take the world by storm. (Q: Bard isn't powered by PaLM, right?)
Overall, I am not convinced this will be massively beneficial. I don't trust Google's ability to execute at scale in this area. I trust DeepMind's team and I trust Google's research teams, but Google's ability to execute and take products to market has been quite weak thus far. My gut says this action will hamstring DeepMind in bureaucracy.
by vessenes on 4/20/23, 6:03 PM
If we wind way back to Google Docs, Gmail and Android strategy, they took market share from leaders by giving away high quality products. If I were in charge of strategy there, I would double down on the Stability / Facebook plan, and open source PaLM architecture Chinchilla-optimal foundation models stat. Then I'd build tooling to run and customize the models over GCP, so open + cloud. I'd probably start selling TPUv4 racks immediately as well. I don't believe they can win on a direct API business model this cycle. But, I think they could do a form of embrace and extend by going radically open and leveraging their research + deployment skills.
by sva_ on 4/20/23, 5:50 PM
This probably sent a bad message with consequences for the whole public research field.
by dougmwne on 4/20/23, 5:31 PM
I can read between the lines that Google is done having Deepmind floating out there independently creating foundational research and not products. Sounds like this is a sign that they've internally recognized they are behind and need all their resources pulling in the same directions towards responding to the OpenAI/Microsoft threat.
It also seems to signal that they won't have their answer to Bing in the short term. As they say, nine women can't make a baby in a month and adding people to a late project makes it later.
by bgirard on 4/20/23, 5:27 PM
Well it was at least a decade away.
by mebazaa on 4/20/23, 5:26 PM
by xnx on 4/20/23, 6:18 PM
by Abecid on 4/20/23, 5:30 PM
by SilverBirch on 4/20/23, 5:37 PM
by whywhywhydude on 4/20/23, 5:34 PM
by hintymad on 4/20/23, 8:29 PM
How is it different from Google's structure of having reviewing committees over everything? I hope that this is not yet another layer of gatekeepers. In a large enough organization, the high-level leads have such fragmented attention and such ingrained tendency towards avoiding political mistakes that they mainly contribute concerns instead of ideas, especially product ideas. As a result, they become gatekeepers and projects slow down. The larger an oversight committee is, the more concerns a project will receive, and the more mediocre the project will be because the team will focus on making the committee happy instead of making hard trade-offs with fast iterations. Of course, the Scientific Board consists of people way over my caliber, so they may well do a fantastic job for Google.
by divyekapoor on 4/20/23, 5:35 PM
by dahwolf on 4/20/23, 8:44 PM
In reality, this is just Sundar looking through the org chart and saying: wow, these things seem related. Let's combine them because surely that will mean that it starts working. Just so that he can announce "something" as a growing army of sharks are snapping at his feet.
by zmmmmm on 4/20/23, 10:19 PM
1) DeepMind was given very significant autonomy since day 1 it was acquired. I find it very hard to believe that any attempt to take that away won't result in huge internal problems and / or attrition
2) Sundar Pichai has been coming in for a lot of criticism in general because he seems to be constantly out-maneuvered by Microsoft and we have seen very little new emerge from Google under his watch. Putting himself at the helm of this is going to really accentuate this and actually seems high risk - if he is the the reason Google is struggling to deliver elsewhere then positioning himself at the apex of an existentially important effort could be lethal.
Added together, there seems like a high risk this could go catastrophically wrong for Google, and Pichai in particular. Maybe it will work, but the downside is enormous.
by simple10 on 4/20/23, 5:28 PM
Can any HN Googlers comment on what this announcement means? Is this announcement just a PR move to get people to pay attention to upcoming announcements? Or does it actually have deeper impact to the way Google functions with internal teams?
by waselighis on 4/20/23, 6:15 PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitance_Electronic_Disc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA
Considering some of the other comments about merging two AI departments together (DeepMind and Brain) and injecting more bureaucracy into DeepMind, it seems to have some parallels with the story of the RCA CED. You can't just let researchers do research. There needs to be a clear goal/priority that this research can eventually be converted into a profitable product or service. Otherwise, the researchers will continue to work on "cool projects" and publishing papers with their name on them, with little consideration given to how to monetize this research.
Personally, I'm not a fan of this AI gold rush trying to inject AI into everything. It's just interesting to ponder.
by uptownfunk on 4/20/23, 6:45 PM
As we are now seeing before our eyes, Google has aged. Big tech cushy culture does no longer creates an environment that yields innovation.
The MSFT move was probably brilliant most for this reason. They saw the writing on the wall. ChatGPT would never have been invented at any big tech co.
Goog investment in anthropic is just taking msft sloppy seconds and kind of copy cat play. Who knows maybe anthropic will make a happy mistake and create something surprising.
You are likely reading the result of a lot of corporate reorg that was a big political battle and the victors are now patting themselves on the back.
That said, reorg can be good to refocus the company, but you’re bleeding out massively while the infection spreads, putting a little bandaid is no reason to celebrate.
Anyways wish them the best of luck. As a kid it was always one of those companies we all dreamed to work for. Now it is like an aged grandparent who needs a cane to walk and encouragement when they are able to walk by themselves.
by neximo64 on 4/20/23, 7:21 PM
by Imnimo on 4/20/23, 5:35 PM
Feels a bit like China absorbing Hong Kong.
by gojomo on 4/20/23, 5:43 PM
by alecco on 4/20/23, 6:30 PM
by sdfghswe on 4/20/23, 6:52 PM
Which..... of course he did. They don't make any money. That's ultimately how these decisions are made.
I talked to one of their in-house recruiters (or HR or whatever) some 5-6(?) years ago. I asked them how they make money, they gave me a really muddled answer. It had the word "clients" in there. I didn't understand, so I tried to clarify, I said "oh, you make revenue from consulting for your clients?". Then they gave me a crystal clear answer, they said: "No, we're a lab". I noped outta there really fast.
In retrospect, I was right that I wouldn't have made any money, but might've been a good boost for my CV to do for a couple of years.
by walnutclosefarm on 4/20/23, 8:59 PM
by fancyfredbot on 4/20/23, 8:13 PM
by w10-1 on 4/20/23, 6:05 PM
What both Google research and product missed, and ChatGPT provided almost accidentally, is that people need a way to answer ill-formed questions, and iteratively refine those questions. (The results are hit-or-miss, but far better than traditional search.)
What both OpenAI, Bing, and now Google realize, is that the race is not to a bigger model but to capturing the feedback loop of users querying your model so you can learn how to better understand their queries. If Microsoft gets all that traffic, Google never even gets the opportunity to catch up.
If Google were really smart, they would take another step: to break the mold of harvesting free users and instead pay representative users to interact with their stuff, in order to catch up. Just the process of operationalizing the notion of "representative" will vastly improve both product and research, and it would build goodwill in communities everywhere - goodwill they'll need to remain the default.
Progressive queries are just the leading edge of entire worlds of behavior that are yet ill-fitted to computers, but could be accommodated via AI. And if your engineers consider the problem as "fuzzy" search or "prompt engineering" or realism, you need to get people with more empathy, a minimal understanding of phenomenology, and enough experience with multiple cultures and discourses to be able to relate and translate
by pcj-github on 4/20/23, 5:42 PM
by woeirua on 4/20/23, 8:00 PM
Google's screwed because LLMs offer us a fundamentally different business model for search, and I'm not convinced though that you can actually make a company out of LLMs that is as wildly profitable as Google was during its hayday. If that's true, then I just don't see how any CEO could go to the shareholders and say: "in order for us to survive, we have to accept that we're going to be a much smaller company in 5 years, both in terms of head count and profit." Sundar would be overthrown in a matter of days.
by rollinDyno on 4/20/23, 5:30 PM
by dflock on 4/20/23, 8:26 PM
by nwoli on 4/20/23, 5:25 PM
by local_crmdgeon on 4/20/23, 5:33 PM
by karmasimida on 4/20/23, 8:41 PM
> DeepMind and Google Research's Brain team are merging to form a new unit called Google DeepMind, which will combine their talents and resources to accelerate progress towards building ever more capable and general AI, safely and responsibly. This will create the next wave of world-changing breakthroughs and AI products across Google and Alphabet, while transforming industries, advancing science, and serving diverse communities. The new unit will be led by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, with Eli Collins joining the leads team as VP of Product, and Zoubin Ghahramani joining the research leadership team reporting to Koray Kavukcuoglu. A new Scientific Board for Google DeepMind will also be created to oversee research progress and direction.
by tgtweak on 4/20/23, 5:56 PM
From reading these comments, it looks like this is at best mitigating some internal conflict.
by rhyme-boss on 4/20/23, 5:46 PM
by dahwolf on 4/20/23, 7:58 PM
...which is that we're not looking at enough ads.
by summerlight on 4/20/23, 11:08 PM
by omot on 4/20/23, 7:01 PM
Google took over the world as something like the 11th search engine to hit the market, but some of their benchmarks were 10x better.
OpenAI has both going for them right now and I don't think that's going to change.
by rvz on 4/20/23, 5:27 PM
Now lets get on with accelerating the real AI race to zero and the big fight against O̶p̶e̶n̶AI.com, X.AI and the other stragglers.
Stay very tuned to this.
by vivegi on 4/21/23, 2:59 AM
by Mandatum on 4/20/23, 9:41 PM
Releases like this are more about stock price and investment than anything else.
I’m glad we’ve put more investment into this area as ultimately AGI will be able to uplift a large sector of the population that historically went underserved, or at least level the playing field.
But statements like this are meaningless wank.
by agnosticmantis on 4/20/23, 6:21 PM
by robbiemitchell on 4/20/23, 5:29 PM
by abraxas on 4/20/23, 7:17 PM
by frozenlettuce on 4/20/23, 7:38 PM
by theGnuMe on 4/20/23, 7:58 PM
1. All fundamental AI research now falls under Demis. So basically what was Brain is now Deep Brain. 2. Jeff will lead the product build out of a multi-modal AI (LLM). 3. Google research under James will continue with everything else not directly AI related.
by ugh123 on 4/20/23, 5:43 PM
by FrustratedMonky on 4/20/23, 7:06 PM
by Takennickname on 4/20/23, 7:36 PM
by coding123 on 4/21/23, 6:28 AM
This is like the imagen announcement. Still can't use it.
I'm not seeing any AI here.
Yet when OpenAI "announces" things, we all have a new toy immediately. OpenAI is Apple, Google is just a PR firm at this point.
by admissionsguy on 4/21/23, 9:02 AM
by w_for_wumbo on 4/20/23, 8:38 PM
by ur-whale on 4/20/23, 5:31 PM
Only took something that can potentially take out Google (GPT4) to make it happen.
by up2isomorphism on 4/20/23, 11:46 PM
by chevy90 on 4/20/23, 5:31 PM
How times changes or is it true that nothing good lasts long?
by doomleika on 4/21/23, 7:09 AM
by huksley on 4/21/23, 6:24 AM
by fudged71 on 4/20/23, 6:36 PM
by xyst on 4/20/23, 5:29 PM
G bought out DeepMind a long time ago. I wonder what they offered C-level execs this time around.
by owenbrown on 4/20/23, 8:11 PM
I use Trax is my NLP class, so I hope it gets more adoption.
by karulont on 4/21/23, 8:56 PM
by alecco on 4/20/23, 6:24 PM
by oars on 4/25/23, 2:13 AM
by galaxyquanta on 4/20/23, 6:11 PM
by hgsgm on 4/21/23, 12:03 AM
by aix1 on 4/20/23, 5:54 PM
Other than the addition of the word "Google" - which could simply be a rebranding exercise - I am yet to see any evidence in support of that.
P.S. In particular, there haven't been any indications that Demis's reporting line is changing.
by imranq on 4/20/23, 8:54 PM
by bitL on 4/20/23, 11:19 PM
by seydor on 4/20/23, 5:49 PM
by earthboundkid on 4/20/23, 6:32 PM
I'm not an AI Doomer, but is there some kind of scenario where the coming of AGI doesn't trigger a communist revolution and a lot of death and destruction along the way? I dunno, maybe it could be a Fabian revolution, but seems pretty unlikely. Seems more like AGI → everyone is pissed off that they still have to work for a living → a lot of rich people with heads on pikes. Is there some other scenario that's more likely? Doesn't feel that way to me. Then again, I'm the creator of https://bellriots.netlify.app/, so maybe I'm a Revolution Doomer.
by felixfurtak on 4/20/23, 8:06 PM
by schappim on 4/20/23, 10:46 PM
• DeepMind and Google Research's Brain team merging into single unit: Google DeepMind
• Goal: accelerate progress in AI and AGI development safely and responsibly
• Demis Hassabis leading the new unit
• Close collaboration with Google Product Areas
• Aim: improve lives of billions, transform industries, advance science, serve diverse communities
• Greater speed, collaboration, and execution needed for biggest impact
• Combining world-class AI talent with resources and infrastructure
• DeepMind and Brain teams' research laid foundations for current AI industry
• New Scientific Board for Google DeepMind overseeing research progress and direction
• Upcoming town hall meeting for further information and clarityby turnsout on 4/20/23, 6:29 PM
by astrange on 4/20/23, 10:00 PM
by next_xibalba on 4/20/23, 6:45 PM
by cmarschner on 4/20/23, 8:52 PM
by xg15 on 4/20/23, 5:52 PM
by rvba on 4/20/23, 5:38 PM
Sounds like a PR move.
by m3kw9 on 4/20/23, 6:27 PM
by HopenHeyHi on 4/20/23, 6:19 PM
Asking for a friend.
by Etheryte on 4/20/23, 5:31 PM
by mnd999 on 4/20/23, 5:44 PM
by macns on 4/20/23, 5:31 PM
This would be enough as an anouncement, rest of it is just sugar coating.
by rasengan on 4/20/23, 5:49 PM
Google isn't the leader anymore.
-_____-
by krn on 4/20/23, 6:32 PM
> When Shane Legg and I launched DeepMind back in 2010, many people thought general AI was a farfetched science fiction technology that was decades away from being a reality.
Translation: "We were not able to see what the founders of OpenAI saw back in 2015".
> Now, we live in a time in which AI research and technology is advancing exponentially. In the coming years, AI - and ultimately AGI - has the potential to drive one of the greatest social, economic and scientific transformations in history.
Translation: "Now we live in a time in which AI research and technology has advanced exponentially thanks to the great achievements by our competitors – and we clearly feel left behind."