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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

So I started at Google in 2020 (after Sam closed our lab down in 2017 to focus on OpenAI), and if they were hoarding it, I at least had no clue about it. To be clear, my perspective is still limited.

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Fair enough, maybe a better way to put it is: why was the current AI boom sparked by ChatGPT and not something from Google? It's clear in retrospect that Google had similar capabilities in LaMDA, the precursor to Gemini. As I recall it was even announced a couple years before ChatGPT but wasn't released (as Bard?) until after ChatGPT.

LaMDA is probably more famous for convincing a Google employee that it was sentient and getting him fired. When I heard that story I could not believe anybody could be deceived to that extent... until I saw ChatGPT. In hindsight, it was probably the first ever case of what is now called "AI psychosis". (Which may be a valid reason Google did not want to release it.)

Google had been burned badly in multiple previous launches of ML-based products and their leadership was extremely cautious about moving too quickly. It was convenient for Google that OpenAI acted as a first mover so that Google could enter the field after there was some level of cultural acceptance of the negative behaviors. There's a whole backstory where Noam Shazeer had come up with a bunch of nice innovations and wanted to launch them, but was only able to do so by leaving and launching through his startup- and then returned to Google, negotiating a phenomenal deal (Noam has been at Google for 25 years and has been doing various ML projects for much of that time).

> badly in multiple previous launches of ML-based products

Which ML-based products?

> It was convenient for Google that OpenAI acted as a first mover

That sounds like something execs would say to fend of critics. "We are #2 in AI, and that's all part of the plan"

Thanks for the helpful context. Google being risk averse is definitely a common criticism I've heard. I can't think of what previous problematic launches could have been, but ironically all the ones I remember offhand were after the release of Gemini!

This is the canonical example: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/technology/ai-photo-label...

Some more details in https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/technology/artificial-int...

I think "hoarding" is the wrong connotation. They were happy to have it be a fun research project alongside alphago while they continued making money from ads.

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