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Google To Unveil Its ChatGPT Rival Next Week (arstechnica.com)

(Friday February 03, 2023 @05:40PM (msmash) from the up-next dept.)


Next week Google is hosting what can only be described as an "emergency" event. From a report:

> According to an invite sent to The Verge, the event will revolve around "using the power of AI to [1]reimagine how people search for, explore and interact with information , making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need" -- in other words, Google's going to fire up its photocopier and stick OpenAI's ChatGPT onto the platen. The 40 minute event will, of course, be live on YouTube on February 8.

>

> Google's parent company, Alphabet, had its earnings call yesterday, and Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai promised that "very soon people will be able to interact directly with our newest, most powerful language models as a companion to Search in experimental and innovative ways." Earlier this year the company declared a "code red" over the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and even dragged co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin out of retirement to help.



[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/it-sounds-like-google-will-unveil-its-chatgpt-clone-february-8/



Great news (Score:2)

by OrangeTide ( 124937 )

The fad is almost over but maybe Google can play in the 9th inning.

Re: (Score:2)

by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 )

If you think this is just a fad, you are missing how many applications these have, and they are just getting better and better. For example, I had to make a survey a few days ago. I had already made a draft of the survey but before I sent it out, I told GPTChat what the survey was about and asked for potential question. It gave me a whole bunch some of which were not things I had thought about before. (Admittedly one was one I had thought about and had decided not to include already.) Similarly, I spend so

Re: (Score:2)

by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

I can see the value of this Chat AI thing.

But I'm not looking for that with a simple web search like I do all the time.

When searching, I don't want interaction...I want to be able to put in my requests....maybe even a bit of regular expression notation and have it simply spit out to me links to results.

I'm not looking to waste time on an interactive "chat" when searching for the web, I want simple request and simple, quality return links with a bit of synopsis from the site.

Re: Great news (Score:1)

by dowhileor ( 7796472 )

Maybe a search engine is not what it should be all about. Isn't the concept an intelligent process or function? It can take argument parameters in the most in defined of ways and return something useful. Just off the top...in a Windows environment for example you can have an intelligent registry that is completely interactive. Just tossing confetti mind you......

Re: (Score:2)

by squiggleslash ( 241428 )

Completely 100% agree. And the truth is, I suspect most people want the same thing. We want to be able to tell a computer what we want, and to get it. ChatGPT is... not that. Natural language is just not that specific and accurate. Especially in the context of search results where there is no context .

Add to that the idea that ChatGPT will answer questions by creating the answers , and you're looking at a nightmare. At least with the web if something links to "OrganicHealthSupplements.com" and is supposedl

Re: (Score:1)

by CalgaryD ( 9235067 )

I asked it about its math abilities, it uses GPTMath model for that. It can solve some basic equations, that I asked it to solve. I did not ask it to prove anything, but I will :).

Re: (Score:2)

by pete6677 ( 681676 )

Google is well on it's way towards becoming the new IBM. Fast forward another decade and they'll be nothing but a "search consultancy" that uses their brand name to import low-wage H1B workers to implement AI initiatives at companies dumb enough to hire them.

same old move from the goog (Score:2)

by not_mchurch ( 7306306 )

they're playing this exactly like when they got spooked by facebook's ascendancy

Re:same old move from the goog (Score:4, Insightful)

by ranton ( 36917 )

Google didn't announce Google+ until 2011, 7 years after Facebook was launched. They are apparently announcing their own large language model product a little over 3 months after ChatGPT was launched. This is because they were already working on this, they just didn't see the same need to release it as a product until ChatGPT showed how popular it could be.

This is nothing like their response to Facebook.

Google Hoping ChatGPT is this Decades "Alta Vista" (Score:3)

by Vandil X ( 636030 )

When Google arrives later, they sometimes win, other times, they lose. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. One thing's for sure, there's been some heated discussions at Google about being completely blindsided by ChatGPT.

Re: (Score:2)

by Visarga ( 1071662 )

I wouldn't want to be on the googleGPT team right now. I bet they got the order "In one month replicate chatGPT, no sleeping, now get!"

Re: (Score:2)

by afaiktoit ( 831835 )

they'll just throw a large wad of cash at someone already doing it. problem solved.

Re: (Score:2)

by Rei ( 128717 )

It's definitely not too late. For the AI art crowd, getting an invite for DALL-E was a dream goal. People were secretly selling their invites to the beta for large sums. There were livestream channels where people with invites would take generation requests from the audience. Then DALL-E went public and everyone rushed in. Those who didn't want to pay the high fees rationed their limited generations. And lived in fear of losing access by accidentally invoking banned topics in their generaiton.

They quic

Not accurate to say Google is photocopying (Score:3)

by presidenteloco ( 659168 )

ChatGPT.

"Transformers were introduced in 2017 by a team at Google Brain."

GPT is an example of a transformer-based AI system.

Also, Google has had its own AI chat project ongoing, called LAMDA (https://blog.google/technology/ai/lamda/) May, 2021

I don't work for google or get paid by them. Just don't like to see flippant "dis" bias in article summaries when the dis is based on lack of understanding of the real situation.

OpenAI has been the first to package up language transformer technology in an easy to use app, and to promote it as such. But similar AI r&d has been going on in parallel in several organizations, and the whole general technique of language model improvement was originated at google.

Re: (Score:2)

by quantaman ( 517394 )

> ChatGPT.

> "Transformers were introduced in 2017 by a team at Google Brain."

> GPT is an example of a transformer-based AI system.

> Also, Google has had its own AI chat project ongoing, called LAMDA (https://blog.google/technology/ai/lamda/) May, 2021

> I don't work for google or get paid by them. Just don't like to see flippant "dis" bias in article summaries when the dis is based on lack of understanding of the real situation.

> OpenAI has been the first to package up language transformer technology in an easy to use app, and to promote it as such. But similar AI r&d has been going on in parallel in several organizations, and the whole general technique of language model improvement was originated at google.

I think this is how a lot of innovation happens.

Big org makes an important advancement, but doesn't see a clear path to a product so they leave it on the shelf.

Small org builds something on the advancement and suddenly has a hit product.

Now big org understands that the market is there and has to start playing catch up (or buy the small org).

It's really hard for established orgs like Google to pull off something like ChatGTP, even if they have the tech there's a lot of risks to throwing your organization's r

Re: (Score:2)

by Visarga ( 1071662 )

That rockstar team that built the transformers has left long ago and built their own startups. And now Google is using one of these startups. AnthropicAI happens to be a splinter from OpenAI actually, but Cohere.AI, Adept.AI, Character.AI and others are from the actual inventors of the transformer. Take a look at this diagram: [1]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FS... [twimg.com]

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FSZuTSZWQAMzlBW?format=jpg&name=medium

hard pass (Score:2)

by awwshit ( 6214476 )

First, its Google. Second, just as soon as this feature is popular Google will cancel it. Google cannot be trusted.

Second Place is the First Loser. (Score:4, Insightful)

by TigerPlish ( 174064 )

2nd step on the podium is nice, but top step is best.

All "the people" will remember is ChatGPT was first... and Google second -- therefore, in their minds, irrelevant.

But if you ask me, Eliza was first.

"Can you tell me more about how that makes you feel?"

Re: (Score:2)

by ranton ( 36917 )

> All "the people" will remember is ChatGPT was first... and Google second -- therefore, in their minds, irrelevant.

Yeah, just like how Google was the first search engine ever.

Re: (Score:2)

by ranton ( 36917 )

> The market rarely chooses the best winner.

The market often, if not usually, chooses the best product. Not always the most innovative product or the one preferred by the most savvy users, but the best product for the most people.

Re: (Score:1)

by f00zbll ( 526151 )

are you living in an alternate universe? Google wasn't first or even second. There was alta vista and yahoo. Keep in mind running chatGPT requires a shit ton of hardware and they are using Azure right now. Google has all of those TPU pods at their disposable to serve up chat style search. It's not like azure can magically get 1000 new racks up to handle chatGPT loads. I'm not a fan of google and they've acting like evil jerks lately, but they do have a huge hardware advantage.

Re: (Score:2)

by bloodhawk ( 813939 )

yeah because Google, Apple, Microsoft, have all failed miserably as companies by being second to bring out search, smart phones and office suites respectively.

Trust going from 10% to 20% (Score:2)

by Visarga ( 1071662 )

I was trusting Google about 10% to do anything noteworthy in AI that is not closed and locked away. Now I trust maybe 20%. You know what? I'll believe it when I'll see it.

GoogBro knows about you and your friends (Score:2)

by mveloso ( 325617 )

Instead of an AI that answers questions about stuff, GoogBro will allow you to ask questions about all the things you and your friends do, are interested in, and search for.

Google = AltaVista (Score:2)

by sinij ( 911942 )

Google wasted billions, maybe trillions, chasing nonsense like social media (G+) while real innovation happened elsewhere. Good luck to them, take a Polaroid on the way out.

Crazy meteors (Score:1)

by wavetraced ( 7434638 )

How exactly do they rise?

Even CodeCamps (Score:1)

by warp_kez ( 711090 )

have beaten Google to the *GPT clones.

Paper Rabies:
Hypersensitivity to littering.
-- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
Culture"