I find it interesting that Gemini coming well after other competitive products - and with everything Google has in terms of data, infrastructure, talent, good "process" (I assume) & an incentive to get this right - tripped so badly. I see this as Google's "New Coke" moment. For consumer facing AI products at the intersection of company v…
I find it interesting that Gemini coming well after other competitive products - and with everything Google has in terms of data, infrastructure, talent, good "process" (I assume) & an incentive to get this right - tripped so badly. I see this as Google's "New Coke" moment. For consumer facing AI products at the intersection of company values, technology & politics the go/no go criteria have to be defined very differently than say B2B applications. And the company culture influences these criteria so I'm very sympathetic to Ben Thomson's view that existing cuture will have to change which may not be possible with current leadership.
And I agree that Google was probably a bit unlucky; other AI companies will have the same hurdles to cross. Interesting times nevertheless!
I'm not sure they had a good process personally. I'd venture they leant on their smarts instead of brute forcing solutions, which doesn't work with LLMs. Hence you end up speedrunning all the same mistakes.
In which case my comment on culture (given the reputational risks involved after all the known issues with 'hallucinations' as well as legal challenges OpenAI/others are facing) is even more pertinent.
I find it interesting that Gemini coming well after other competitive products - and with everything Google has in terms of data, infrastructure, talent, good "process" (I assume) & an incentive to get this right - tripped so badly. I see this as Google's "New Coke" moment. For consumer facing AI products at the intersection of company values, technology & politics the go/no go criteria have to be defined very differently than say B2B applications. And the company culture influences these criteria so I'm very sympathetic to Ben Thomson's view that existing cuture will have to change which may not be possible with current leadership.
And I agree that Google was probably a bit unlucky; other AI companies will have the same hurdles to cross. Interesting times nevertheless!
I'm not sure they had a good process personally. I'd venture they leant on their smarts instead of brute forcing solutions, which doesn't work with LLMs. Hence you end up speedrunning all the same mistakes.
In which case my comment on culture (given the reputational risks involved after all the known issues with 'hallucinations' as well as legal challenges OpenAI/others are facing) is even more pertinent.