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Google chose "understanding" in that context, because the relevant AI/ML task is called "Natural language understanding". But that term is an aspiration. It's the problem of trying to reveal the "meaning" of text data (language) as in making sense of the symbols with computers.

Just because Transformers work well on the "Natural language understanding" task in AI, doesn't mean that a Transformer actually "understands" language in the human sense.

Thanks for the link, I will read it. But keep in mind that Google wants to sell us something.

A the time, it was a free language translation tool. You weren't paying for transformers in 2017.

True, but that doesn't mean that Google did not already have intentions to monetize it if possible.

You would think, wouldn’t you?

And yet they waited until ChatGPT was a thing and threw Bard together overnight in response.

Fair point ;)

The task is language understanding. The tool is amazing. Pianos are amazing. The task is to create music. The process is to transform movement to sound. They don't understand music.