How are we feeling the AI War between Google Bard and Microsoft Bing (ChatGPT) now? 

#Artificial Intelligence 
https://youtu.be/Qa4K7XsRO0g

Google Strikes Back (The AI Wars)

Artificial Intelligence

How are we feeling the AI War between Google Bard and Microsoft Bing (ChatGPT) now?   #Artificial Intelligence  https://youtu.be/Qa4K7XsRO0g

David

Google's Bard chatbot is now being powered by Gemini, the company's most advanced AI model. According to Google, it's the biggest improvement to Bard since its launch in March. CEO Sundar Pichai said the model will eventually come to Google's search engine, ad products, Chrome browser, and beyond.
• The upgrade is boosting Bard's abilities in tasks like understanding, summarizing, reasoning, brainstorming, writing, and planning.
• Initially, Bard is being powered by Gemini Pro, a tailored version of the large language model.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/technology/google-ai-bard-chatbot-gemini.html
#Artificial Intelligence

Google's Bard chatbot is now being powered by Gemini, the company's most advanced AI model. According to Google, it's the biggest improvement to Bard since its launch in March. CEO Sundar Pichai said the model will eventually come to Google's search engine, ad products, Chrome browser, and beyond. • The upgrade is boosting Bard's abilities in tasks like understanding, summarizing, reasoning, brainstorming, writing, and planning. • Initially, Bard is being powered by Gemini Pro, a tailored version of the large language model.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/technology/google-ai-bard-chatbot-gemini.html #Artificial Intelligence

For more than a year, Google has raced to build technology that could match ChatGPT, the eye-opening chatbot offered by the San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up OpenAI.

On Wednesday, the te

Google Updates Bard Chatbot With ‘Gemini’ A.I. as It Chases ChatGPT

Sam Mendoza

The question is whether or not there will be “clean” chat interfaces to raw LLMs, or will the major platforms/interfaces (e.g. Google) remain the primary touch-point for consumers. MSFT’s moves, and Firefox’s newfound relevance, certainly suggest that the chat-box interface will dominate, and that “the browser” and “answer engine” will remain/become the primary interface.

Does the relative ease of standing up a chat-box/LLM democratize things, unlike the intense capital (financial as well as technical) that is required to build the search engines?

If there are large numbers of useful/powerful answer engines, do the search platforms fall away in relevance?

Kinda feels like the crawling/ingesting prowess of the big search engines could remain the most significant bit. The “dataset” and its freshness remains highly relevant. How you front-end it (LLM w/ chat interface vs. search engine/search-box result) is important, but, secondary and just the UI.

So, Google remains on-top for general consumer “web” interface purposes, and MSFT flails again (unless they market a new browser (tied to their LLM via the primary search/chat box interface) and get all of us to use it).

Netscape caught Microsoft off-guard, and we all know how that ended. Before Google was Inktomi, not Altavista - and they gave away the search mantle not because of quality, but because Inktomi needed to grow and nobody could figure out how to make ads into a big business. It was Applied Semantics that cracked the nut, and Google bought them in 2003. https://digiday.com/media/today-in-history-google-buys-applied-semantics/

But enough history: I have technical reasons to bet on Google this time:

- data. LLM-powered search enormously benefits from having the largest and best indexed database of web content. For example, if you use ChatGPT in "browse mode" you're waiting 10+ seconds for live crawling and the results are hit or miss because internet connections are hit or miss. Google crawls the largest amount of the web in advance, with freshness-to-the-second for content that's time-sensitive - and then has the best organized database for accessing this crawl data, pressure-tested by serving 1000s of applications. This is precisely what an LLM needs to produce fast, accurate and reliable answers. Google is lightyears ahead of Microsoft in non-websearch databases, including billions of mobile devices and maps (listings, reviews, etc).

- technology. Google's engineers made huge contributions to ("invented") much of the technology on which ChatGPT was based (e.g. scaling neural nets, attention, transformers, etc). Sure, they dragged their feet "connecting the dots" but that's a much easier thing to catchup to.

- antitrust is orthogonal to success in AI, and arguably helps Google since neural networks' lack of transparency makes antitrust regulation largely useless and therefore favors incumbents.

The fact that OpenAI caught Google & everyone else so off-guard suggests that Bard-powered search could definitely end up on a different trajectory than the OG Google search engine. And considering the number of times Microsoft has been written off as nearing obsolescence, only to complete a full 180-degree turnaround, I wouldn't assume they'll necessarily "flail again," especially given the strength of their cloud business.

There's also a rather considerable difference this time around. I've been in the business long enough to remember both Google's debut and how it absolutely annihilated every other search engine – sites like Excite and AltaVista disappeared practically overnight – and it did so for the most basic of reasons: it had by far the best product, and was the only real way of performing truly accurate web searches. While I don't think anyone would disagree that they still dominate in search, they *don't* dominate in AI: ChatGPT beat everyone to the punch, and the fact that they already have a browser plug-in of their own design should be concerning, to say the least. (Especially since its results are quite good, based on my testing.)

Also, it's not on anyone's radar yet, but Google's obviously gotten a lot of antitrust heat; the outcome you described here would be all but certain to worsen it. Considering paid search placements comprise the large majority of the antitrust argument against them, I think it's much too soon to assume anything about how this will all play out.

The fact that OpenAI caught Google & everyone else so off-guard suggests that Bard-powered search could definitely end up on a different trajectory than the OG Google search engine. And considering the number of times Microsoft has been written off as nearing obsolescence, only to complete a full 180-degree turnaround, I wouldn't assume they'll necessarily "flail again," especially given the strength of their cloud business.  There's also a rather considerable difference this time around. I've been in the business long enough to remember both Google's debut and how it absolutely annihilated every other search engine – sites like Excite and AltaVista disappeared practically overnight – and it did so for the most basic of reasons: it had by far the best product, and was the only real way of performing truly accurate web searches. While I don't think anyone would disagree that they still dominate in search, they *don't* dominate in AI: ChatGPT beat everyone to the punch, and the fact that they already have a browser plug-in of their own design should be concerning, to say the least. (Especially since its results are quite good, based on my testing.)  Also, it's not on anyone's radar yet, but Google's obviously gotten a lot of antitrust heat; the outcome you described here would be all but certain to worsen it. Considering paid search placements comprise the large majority of the antitrust argument against them, I think it's much too soon to assume anything about how this will all play out.

Netscape caught Microsoft off-guard, and we all know how that ended. Before Google was Inktomi, not Altavista - and they gave away the search mantle not because of quality, but because Inktomi needed to grow and nobody could figure out how to make ads into a big business. It was Applied Semantics that cracked the nut, and Google bought them in 2003. https://digiday.com/media/today-in-history-google-buys-applied-semantics/  But enough history: I have technical reasons to bet on Google this time:  - data. LLM-powered search enormously benefits from having the largest and best indexed database of web content. For example, if you use ChatGPT in "browse mode" you're waiting 10+ seconds for live crawling and the results are hit or miss because internet connections are hit or miss. Google crawls the largest amount of the web in advance, with freshness-to-the-second for content that's time-sensitive - and then has the best organized database for accessing this crawl data, pressure-tested by serving 1000s of applications. This is precisely what an LLM needs to produce fast, accurate and reliable answers. Google is lightyears ahead of Microsoft in non-websearch databases, including billions of mobile devices and maps (listings, reviews, etc).  - technology. Google's engineers made huge contributions to ("invented") much of the technology on which ChatGPT was based (e.g. scaling neural nets, attention, transformers, etc). Sure, they dragged their feet "connecting the dots" but that's a much easier thing to catchup to.  - antitrust is orthogonal to success in AI, and arguably helps Google since neural networks' lack of transparency makes antitrust regulation largely useless and therefore favors incumbents.

A decade ago Google made a buy that helped pave its way to becoming an advertising juggernaut. Here's why it did the deal.

Today in History: Google Buys Applied Semantics

Todd Smith

The question is whether or not there will be “clean” chat interfaces to raw LLMs, or will the major platforms/interfaces (e.g. Google) remain the primary touch-point for consumers. MSFT’s moves, and Firefox’s newfound relevance, certainly suggest that the chat-box interface will dominate, and that “the browser” and “answer engine” will remain/become the primary interface.  Does the relative ease of standing up a chat-box/LLM democratize things, unlike the intense capital (financial as well as technical) that is required to build the search engines?  If there are large numbers of useful/powerful answer engines, do the search platforms fall away in relevance?  Kinda feels like the crawling/ingesting prowess of the big search engines could remain the most significant bit. The “dataset” and its freshness remains highly relevant. How you front-end it (LLM w/ chat interface vs. search engine/search-box result) is important, but, secondary and just the UI.  So, Google remains on-top for general consumer “web” interface purposes, and MSFT flails again (unless they market a new browser (tied to their LLM via the primary search/chat box interface) and get all of us to use it).

Jerome Cody

Agreed, seems like it expedites the trend of software value going to zero

I’m still wondering how many of these companies accrue value though. Almost everyone is armed with the same super powers, so a lot of it becomes table stakes very quickly

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I’m Sam, I’m the curriculum director at Gregorio Perfecto High School in Manila, Philippines. I’ve been an educator and administrator for just over 25 years. Our school is spending a good amount on edtech, but I don’t feel like we’re getting the most out of it. I’d love to learn from everyone what is working for them. Thanks!

David

A group of likeminded people in Artificial Intelligence are talking about this.