So far, Google's missed opportunity to create GPT-3 doesn't fee like much of a setback. They're at least neck-and-neck with GPT-4, and in some areas (e.g. million token context window) clearly ahead.
Google's problem isn't lack of engineering talent, it's lack of leadership. If Google's board of directors gets their act together and finds new leadership, Google could yet harness what remains of their engineering talent and stay in the game, or even pull ahead.
A lot of the pieces are there for Google to succeed. They still have top researchers and the institutional skill to run AI at scale. What they lack is clarity of vision. Under the current management, Google is following the paths of Xerox and Kodak.
If the board wants to shift focus from high confidence near/medium term revenue they likely need a new leader.
Thats 6x returns!
They don't offer the long token Gemini model to people paying money... They just expect you to Shell out 240 a year for a GPT 3.5 class model.
It really feels like they're trying to sell to people who don't know how to evaluate llms, and they're not ready to offer anything out that competes with gpt4. At least not at the gpt4 price point.
I feel that this indicates a leadership that either doesn't understand what it means to deliver value, or does not have a feasible opportunity to deliver value.
It feels hey're BSing the market without knowing what they're doing.
Will it be affordable?
Gemini 1.5 still lags behind GPT-4 for most of my programming related questions. In fact, Claude-3 is a better competitor.
I'm skeptical of Google - all of their "breakthroughs" seem to be unreleased research. Meanwhile, the rest of the world passes them by.
ive not read any reports on pricing which obviously would be the main constraint on using this thing
Google's a year behind. They haven't really caught up.