Google has had a rough six months. Since ChatGPT launched last November \u2014 followed by the new Bing in February and GPT-4 in March \u2014\u00a0the company has failed to establish its AI credentials. Its own offering, the \u201cexperimental\u201d chatbot Bard, compares poorly to rivals, and insider reports have portrayed a company in panic and disarray.\u00a0Today, at its annual I\/O conference, the company needs to convince the public (and shareholders) that it has a meaningful response. But to do that, it needs a new playbook.<\/p>\n
Google is undoubtedly a leader in AI research<\/em>. As its executives like to point out, it was Googlers who created the transformer architecture that powers chatbots like ChatGPT. Just as significantly, it was Googlers who drew attention to these systems\u2019 failings (and, as thanks, were fired). But Google has failed at making AI products<\/em>; it\u2019s failed to take this labor and mold it into tools that engage the public imagination. In short, it\u2019s missed out on the AI zeitgeist, which \u2014 for all the discussions of existential risk and economic threat \u2014 is also<\/em> defined by a sense of exploration, experimentation, and creative, chaotic fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n AI art and tools increasingly define the current cultural moment<\/p>\n This feeling springs from two main sources. The first is a technical ecosystem that\u2019s iterative and comparatively open. A number of important AI models are open source (like Stable Diffusion); many more are shared or leaked (like Meta\u2019s LLaMA language model). Even companies that are pretty closed up, like OpenAI, push through updates with impressive speed and offer enticing hooks for developers to build on.<\/p>\n This leads to the second source: the outputs of these systems, which increasingly define the current cultural moment. Whether that\u2019s Balenciaga Harry Potter, the swagged-out pope, deepfakes of President Joe Biden playing CS:GO<\/em>, <\/em>singers licensing AI voice clones to the public, or chatbots modeled after favorite anime characters by fans, there are thousands of instances of AI weirdness that entertain and sometimes enrage.<\/p>\n It goes without saying that not all of these experiments are good<\/em>. Many are malicious (like deepfake pornography), and many more are simply irresponsible and poorly designed (like chatbot therapists). But the sum total of this work \u2014 good and bad \u2014 contributes to the sense of a roiling, protean technological ecosystem of change, experimentation, and cultural significance. A tide that Google, for all its expertise, has completely missed.\u00a0<\/p>\n This failure is exemplified best by Google\u2019s work in AI language models and its chatbot Bard, especially when compared to the launch and trajectory of Microsoft\u2019s rival Bing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today, talking to Bard feels like being trapped in an AI daycare. Stray too far from its index of acceptable questions, and you\u2019ll be politely reprimanded. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Dave. I\u2019m afraid I can\u2019t do that.\u201d Even when the system is helpful, its answers are insufferably bland. \u201cToday, trees are an essential part of the Earth\u2019s ecosystems,\u201d it told me in response to a question about the evolutionary history of trees. \u201cThey provide us with oxygen, food, and shelter.\u201d Sure, Bard. I guess. But also why not shoot me in the head while you\u2019re at it?<\/p> Bing, by comparison, feels like the sidekick that helps you escape<\/em> daycare. That\u2019s not to say it\u2019s some semi-sentient entity or seamlessly crafted NPC. But the unpredictable edge to its answers creates the illusion of personality (capturing hearts and headlines in the process), while its design encourages conversation rather than shutting it down.\u00a0<\/p>\n This difference can be seen just in basic UI choices for the two chatbots. Bing, for example, consistently offers clickable sources in its answers, which a) encourage exploration but also b) position the chatbot as something closer to a companion than an authority. It\u2019s open and permissive; it makes you feel like the system is somehow on your side while you navigate the web\u2019s vast churn of information.\u00a0<\/p> Bard\u2019s replies, by comparison, are much more self-contained. The system does occasionally offer links and citations, but the feeling is that Bard only offers access to its own domain, rather than functioning as a portal to the wider internet. It may not sound like a big criticism, but the result is a deadened user experience, a conversation killer that has me crawling up the featureless walls of Google\u2019s smooth Material You design. It\u2019s just not fun<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n This comparison is symptomatic of bigger differences in Google\u2019s and Microsoft\u2019s approaches to AI. While Bard has been idling along (its update page shows just three changes since launch), Microsoft has been rapidly iterating, stuffing chatbots into more and more of its products, and rushing out new features for Bing, from image generation to (coming soon) integration with apps like WolframAlpha and OpenTable. In short, it\u2019s been experimenting, and though its efforts may prove to be misguided, it is at least in tune with the moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure what the answer for Google is here. Personally, I don\u2019t think chatbots in their current form are a good replacement for search, full stop. As I\u2019ve written before, issues like \u201challucinations\u201d are just too persistent and damning to be ignored. But at I\/O, the company needs to prove that it at least sees the potential \u2014 the excitement<\/em> \u2014\u00a0of this technology. In the past, CEO Sundar Pichai has tried to talk the talk, comparing AI to electricity or fire (a silly thing to say, in my opinion), but such empty chatter should be left to the bots. Instead, let\u2019s see what the humans can actually make. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Google has had a rough six months. Since ChatGPT launched last November \u2014 followed by the new Bing in February and GPT-4 in March \u2014\u00a0the company has failed to establish its AI credentials. Its own offering, the \u201cexperimental\u201d chatbot Bard, compares poorly to rivals, and insider reports have portrayed a company in panic and disarray.\u00a0Today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[93,95,96,81,84,87,90],"class_list":{"0":"post-3656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-google-fiber","8":"tag-android-phone-guide","9":"tag-android-phone-news","10":"tag-android-phone-reviews","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-google-guide","13":"tag-google-news","14":"tag-google-reviewsandroid-phone"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5031,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions\/5031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eufad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}