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☆ Google CEO responds to 'woke AI' criticisms after Gemini debacle: 'We got it wrong'
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-09 | by ( Ana Altchek | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Google's CEO said "We got it wrong" in response to Gemini's AI debacle. Google has temporarily disabled Gemini's ability to generate images of people. AdvertisementGoogle's CEO reflected in a new interview on the company's Gemini AI image-generation debacle earlier this year, a controversy that drew backlash. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Bloomberg in an interview published Wednesday that "we got it wrong" and it was a case in which good intentions went awry. Following criticism of the issue, Google paused Gemini from generating AI images of people while it corrected the changes.

Persons: Sundar Pichai, —, Pichai, should've, chatbot, Gemini Organizations: Google, Service, Bloomberg

☆ AI engineers report burnout, rushed rollouts as 'rat race' to stay competitive hits tech industry
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-03 | by ( Hayden Field | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +16 min

The AI engineer bailed on his friends, who had traveled from the East Coast to the Seattle area. watch nowThis is the dark underbelly of the generative AI gold rush. Last year marked the beginning of the generative AI boom, following the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT near the end of 2022. Justin Sullivan | Getty ImagesAn AI engineer at Microsoft said the company is engaged in an "AI rat race." The Microsoft AI engineer said a lot of tasks are about "trying to create AI hype" with no practical use.

Persons: Sebastien Bozon, Jensen Huang, Tech's, Amy Hood, Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Andy Jassy, Jassy, they're, Eric Gu, “, Gu, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Justin Sullivan, there's, Morry, Kolman, doesn't, Sundar Pichai, Bard, There's, That's, beholden, Ayodele Odubela, ", it’s, Adam Selipsky, Anthropic, Dario Amodei, Noah Berger, Odubela, Gemini Organizations: Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, AFP, Getty, Amazon, CNBC, Big Tech, Nvidia, Google . Engineers, Tech, Vision, Cloud Next, Web, Amazon Web Locations: Mulhouse, France, East Coast, Seattle, ChatGPT, San Francisco, Vegas, Las Vegas, German

☆ I got offers from Microsoft, Meta, and Google. Here's why I chose Google.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-27 | by ( Ana Altchek | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A recent tech grad received offers from Google, Meta, and Microsoft. Meta initially offered $210,700 in total compensation, but Google offered other appealing benefits. Right as I was about to accept my offer from Meta, Google let me know that they found a match for me. I would have chosen Google either wayIf Google didn't increase its total compensation offer, I would've had a really tough decision to make. Before college and working in tech, Google was a name that stood out to me.

Persons: —, FANG, Meta, would've Organizations: Google, Microsoft, Meta, Service, Facebook, Netflix

☆ Oh look at that! Now Google is using AI to answer search queries.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-15 | by ( Peter Kafka | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

AdvertisementThe upshot: For now, Google is testing out self-generated "AI overviews" for some regular search queries where it thinks the answer might be complex (but answerable). A Google rep told me the AI answers have been deployed in a "very limited percentage of search traffic" in the US and the UK. Screenshot/GoogleBecause I am A Responsible Journalist, I also asked Google how Google Magi, which powers these results, does or doesn't interact with the tech powering Google Gemini, its much-maligned "woke AI" chatbot. Right now, Google tries to keep you on Google by surfacing text from a site that purports to answer your query. AdvertisementOn the one hand, maybe Google becomes even more valuable because you're no longer even pretending it's a "search engine" — it's just an answer machine.

Persons: —, you've, Microsoft's Bing, truman, OpenAI, Bing, It's, Google's, You've, Jason Kelce's, Taylor Organizations: Google, Service, National Locations: vietnam

☆ Google's AI search tool doesn't seem to have mastered math yet
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-04 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google's AI search tool got simple mathematics wrong, a review by The Washington Post said. The experimental tool, Search Generative Experience, was introduced in May. AdvertisementGoogle's AI search tool appears to struggle when it comes to simple mathematics. Google previously said it was "supercharging" and "improving" its search experience with a generative AI-infused version called Search Generative Experience (SGE). AdvertisementThe company told the FT, "With our generative AI experiments in Search, we've already served billions of queries, and we're seeing positive Search query growth in all of our major markets.

Persons: —, Geoffrey A, Fowler, we're, you'll, SGE, Mark Zuckerberg's, we've, Google didn't Organizations: Washington Post, Google, Financial Times, Service

☆ Google just scored a big win in the AI talent war
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-03 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Some observers say it's a big win for Google to secure OpenAI's "secret weapon." Kilpatrick's move comes as Big Tech firms vie for top expertise in an AI talent war. The move shows the transfer window of AI expertise is firmly open as Big Tech companies battle it out to lure top AI talent. Google AI Studio lets developers integrate Gemini with APIs to create generative AI applications that are also known as "wrappers". Intel's senior AI developers community lead, Ryan Carson, wrote on X: "Things are movin' and shakin' in the AI industry.

Persons: OpenAI's, Logan Kilpatrick, —, OpenAI, he's, Mustafa Suleyman, Satya Nadella's, Bruce Monaco, Monaco, Kilpatrick, Ryan Carson, Logan, He's, Mark Zuckerberg, Google's, Sergey Brin, it's, Aravind Srinivas, who's Organizations: Google, Big Tech, Service, Studio, Microsoft, AI, Workers, Meta, Business Locations: OpenAI

☆ I left my dream job at Google to start my own business. Sometimes I miss the security of a big tech job, but I don't regret leaving.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-23 | by ( Ella Hopkins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Quaid Walker worked as a design lead at Google in the movies and TV teams over five years. He decided to leave his job in 2021 to start his own business, a watch-buying platform called Bezel. AdvertisementI moved to the new team in 2018 and became one of the founding designers of Google TV. Once Google TV became popular, it no longer felt like we were trying things out and seeing what worked. Sometimes, I miss the security I had at Google, but the highs I get running my own company are much higher.

Persons: Quaid Walker, Walker, —, I'd, I've, Chase Pion, Daryl Johnson, I'm Organizations: Google, Service, Apple, Amazon Locations: Los Angeles, San Francisco

☆ Google's efforts to shrink its workforce in Korea has hit a snag as some employees are refusing to go
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-23 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

About 10 Google employees from its office in Seoul have accepted the company's suggestion to resign, the report said. Around 100 Google workers in Korea formed a union last year due to mounting concerns over the industry-wide layoffs in the US. "With the ongoing job cuts within the US tech industry, employees have been concerned about their job security and decided to establish a union," Kim Jong-sub, head of the Google Korea union, told Korea Herald last April. Google laid off 12,000 employees in 2023 — about 6% of its headcount — and it's continuing to make job cuts this year. A total of 262,595 employees were laid off from 1,186 tech companies in 2023, Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts, showed.

Persons: KangNam, Bongsoo Jung, Kim Jong, Sundar Pichai, Hugh Langley, Google didn't Organizations: Service, Google, Korea JoongAng Daily, Business, Google Korea, Korea Herald, Korea Locations: South Korea, Korea, Seoul

☆ Google is replacing the exec who oversees its $220 billion ad business amid big privacy and AI changes
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Lauren Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Dischler has spent 15 years at Google, and was most recently leading all of Google's ad business. He is credited with steering Google through privacy changes and for overseeing new uses of technology like machine learning and artificial intelligence for its advertising business. Dischler helped spearhead Google's advertising efforts around Google's Chrome web browser phasing out third-party cookies. "Our ads business helps millions of businesses thrive and we're grateful to Jerry for his many accomplishments in this area." Before joining Google, Srinivasan worked at Amazon and IBM.

Persons: Jerry Dischler, Dischler, Google's Prabhakar Raghavan, Jerry, Vidhya Srinivasan, Srinivasan, Max, Raghavan, Srinivasan's, Shashi Thakur, nix Organizations: Google, Business, Department, YouTube, Amazon, IBM, Justice Department

☆ Meta's unique approach to developing AI puzzles Wall Street, but techies love it
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-16 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +18 min

If the world's leading AI researchers use Llama, Meta could have an easier time hiring skilled technologists who understand the company's approach to development. Spisak helped oversee PyTorch and other open source AI projects when he worked at Meta from 2018 until January 2023. Although a number of open source LLMs are available, Lambert said Llama 2 is by far the most popular. "Facebook was not and that's sort of how they move forward and democratizing this, giving sort of broad access to open source. However, open source doesn't always win, and Padval acknowledged that "in this case, I don't know how it's going to evolve."

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Josh Edelson, Mark Zuckerberg's multibillion, Joseph Spisak, that's, Zuckerberg, Meta, Andrew Bosworth, Yann LeCun, isn't, Susan Li, Spisak, Cai GoGwilt, GoGwilt, OpenAI's, Ahmad Al, Dahle, he's, Jim Fan, Arjun Bansal, Jensen Huang, Nathan Lambert, Lambert, Critics, Umesh Padval, " Lambert, Nvidia's, Fan, Meta's, Taka Ariga, Ariga, Claude, Elon Musk, Tesla, Nur Hamdan, OpenAI's GPT, Sam Altman, Guido Appenzeller, Thomvest's Padval, Padval Organizations: Meta, AFP, Getty, Microsoft, Industry, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Facebook, Twitter, Finance, Google, AI Research, FAIR, Apple, Nvidia, Web Services, Thomvest Ventures, TC Cowen, United, United Arab Emirates, U.S, Government, AWS, Bloomberg, Amazon, VMware, Intel, Red Hat Locations: Menlo Park , California, Taiwan, United Arab, Washington, Elon, Hamadan, Seoul, South Korea

☆ Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gets honest about Bing's chances against Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-03 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said Google's dominance of online search is hurting Bing, WSJ reported. Bing is struggling to compete with Google, even with its new AI developments, Nadella said. AdvertisementAdvertisementEven Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, may not think the company's search engine Bing has a chance against Google. "You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth, and you search on Google," Nadella told the Justice Department. AdvertisementAdvertisementThe result for Microsoft, Nadella said, is a "vicious cycle" — and Bing can't keep up.

Persons: Satya Nadella, Bing, Nadella, —, Google's, Sundar Pichai, Bard, Daniel Tunkelang Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Service, US Department, Street Journal, Apple, Justice Department, DOJ, Bing Locations: Washington, OpenAI, —

☆ Google CEO says he isn't worried about catching up to OpenAI after declaring a 'code red': 'I feel very comfortable about where we are.'
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-12 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai isn't in a rush to catch up to OpenAI, he told Wired. Releasing Google's AI products before ChatGPT was launched "wouldn't have worked out as well," he said. Pichai's thoughts on AI come months after the CEO declared a "code red" for Google's search engine. "In some ways, it was an exciting moment for me, because we are building that underlying technology and deploying it across our products," Pichai told Wired in an interview published on Monday. Since the disastrous demo, Google has announced a slate of new AI products.

Persons: Sundar Pichai isn't, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Sundar Pichai, Pichai, —, Bard, James Webb, John Hennessy Organizations: Wired, Service, Microsoft, Google, James Webb Space, Gmail Locations: Wall, Silicon

DuckDuckGo, Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Yahoo are among a long list of Google competitors who will be watching the trial closely. “It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this case, particularly for monopolies and companies with significant market share,” antitrust lawyer Luke Hasskamp told Reuters. The lawsuit that goes to trial was brought by former President Donald Trump's Justice Department. read moreJudge Mehta will decide if Google has broken antitrust law in this first trial, and, if so, what should be done. Reporting by Diane Bartz; additional reporting by Mike Scarcella; editing by Diane CraftOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Toby Melville, DuckDuckGo, Kamyl Bazbaz, Luke Hasskamp, ”, Amit Mehta, Barack Obama, Donald Trump's, Joe Biden's, Mehta, Daniel McCuaig, Cohen Milstein, Diane Bartz, Mike Scarcella, Diane Craft Organizations: Google, REUTERS, U.S . Justice, Apple Inc, Mozilla, Microsoft, Yahoo, Big Tech, Facebook, Reuters, Apple, Twitter, Big, U.S, District of Columbia, Department, Android, U.S . Justice Department's Antitrust, Thomson Locations: London, Britain, WASHINGTON, United States, “

☆ A Gen Z software engineer at Google reportedly earns $150,000 working 1 hour a day and spends the rest of his time on his startup
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-22 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Devon, a Google software engineer, told Fortune he works one-hour days at his job. For the rest of the day, he works on his startup, he told Fortune. Devon told Fortune he couldn't justify working hard when he saw colleagues working late nights without moving up the corporate ladder. "It's not like you'd really get promoted for going above and beyond," Devon told Fortune. "If I wanted to work long hours, I'd be at a startup," Devon told Fortune.

Persons: Fortune, Devon, Google didn't, Devon isn't, Jason, sprees, Keith Rabois, Thomas Siebel, Forbes, I'd Organizations: Morning, Google, Tech, Meta Locations: Devon, Silicon, Hawaii

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried leaked Caroline Ellison's diary to the New York Times to paint her as a 'jilted lover,' prosecutors say
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-21 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Prosecutors say Sam Bankman-Fried is trying to discredit Caroline Ellison by leaking her diary entries. Bankman-Fried wants to make her look like a "jilted lover," prosecutors wrote in a court filing. Prosecutors say Bankman-Fried gave "a misleading patina of legitimacy" to an effort to discredit Ellison in the case. "The fact that the defendant funneled this material through the New York Times, rather than directly commenting on the documents himself, is particularly pernicious," prosecutors wrote. The material risked tainting the jury pool and could deter other potential witnesses from testifying at the trial, prosecutors wrote.

Persons: Sam Bankman, Fried, Caroline Ellison, Ellison —, —, Samuel Bankman, — Caroline Ellison, Ellison, Caroline Ellison Tyler Le, Rebecca Zisser, Lewis Kaplan, who's, didn't Organizations: Alameda Research, Prosecutors, New York Times, Times, Google, Federal, US Locations: Manhattan

☆ Google cuts jobs at Waze as it continues to merge mapping products
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-27 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Google is cutting jobs at its Waze mapping service as it merges the unit with its own map products. "We have decided to transition Waze's ads monetization to be managed by the Global Business Organization (GBO), similar to Google Maps," Phillips wrote. "Unfortunately, this will result in a reduction of Waze Ads monetization-focused roles in sales, marketing, operations and analytics." The company hopes to "create a more scalable and optimized Waze Ads product," Phillips wrote, adding that it will "wind down the current Waze Ads product while we focus on building new Waze Ads powered by Google Ads." The Waze unit has more than 500 employees, according to internal documentation viewed by CNBC.

Persons: Chris Phillips, Phillips, Google didn't, it's, Neha Parikh, Waze, didn't Organizations: Google, Geo, CNBC, Global Business Organization

☆ Google just revealed what its new generative AI ads will look like as it races to keep up with Microsoft and Amazon in the AI gold rush
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-23 | by ( Ryan Joe | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Google is introducing generative AI to its adtech products as it races against Amazon and Microsoft. Revenues from generative AI software will surge to $81 billion by 2027, per a TD Cowen report. The value of generative AI software is primed to explode, and a recent TD Cowen report projected that generative AI software revenues will surge to $81 billion by 2027, from under $1 billion in 2022. Google's generative AI can automatically create image variants GoogleGoogle had previously said at its I/O conference that there would be new search formats from generative AI. Dischler said the move to bring generative AI, which automatically creates content, to Google's ad products was the natural next step of Google's AI evolution.

☆ Google employees bombard leaders with questions about the company's strategy, asking if it's become too AI-focused
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Hugh Langley | Rosalie Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Top of mind for employees was AI, including the company's recent showcase of generative AI products at its I/O developer conference on May 10. But staffers have concerns about the impacts of Google's aggressive push to build generative AI into all of its products. These OKRs were written to "rally" teams to incorporate AI into Google's products, Pichai said. 'People don't want to just hear AI-generated content'Another submitted question read: "LLMs are inundating the internet with AI-generated content, such as websites, books, images, music, and videos. This AI-generated content may eventually lead to a decline in internet quality, which may directly affect the quality of Google's search results.

☆ Google's newest A.I. model uses nearly five times more text data for training than its predecessor
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Google's new large language model, which the company announced last week, uses almost five times as much training data as its predecessor from 2022, allowing its to perform more advanced coding, math and creative writing tasks, CNBC has learned. PaLM 2, the company's new general-use large language model (LLM) that was unveiled at Google I/O, is trained on 3.6 trillion tokens, according to internal documentation viewed by CNBC. Google's previous version of PaLM, which stands for Pathways Language Model, was released in 2022 and trained on 780 billion tokens. PaLM 2, according to internal documents, is trained on 340 billion parameters, an indication of the complexity of the model. The initial PaLM was trained on 540 billion parameters.

☆ 'Godfather of AI' says the technology could pose a 'more urgent' threat to humankind than climate change
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Ryan Hogg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Artificial intelligence could present a more urgent danger to the world than climate change, Geoffrey Hinton said. The "Godfather of AI" recently quit Google so he could speak openly about the threat posed by the tech. The "Godfather of AI" who recently quit Google to raise awareness about the dangers of artificial intelligence has said the threat the tech poses to the world could be more urgent than climate change. I wouldn't like to say, 'You shouldn't worry about climate change.' "With climate change, it's very easy to recommend what you should do: you just stop burning carbon.

☆ A senior software engineer dies after falling from the 14th floor of Google's NYC headquarters
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A software engineer died after falling from the 14th floor of Google's headquarters, NYPD confirmed. Police responded to a 911 call on Thursday reporting an unconscious person lying on the ground. The 31-year-old senior software engineer's name is being withheld pending family notification. A 31-year-old senior software engineer has died after falling from the 14th floor of Google's New York City office building, the New York Post first reported. The name of the engineer hasn't been released pending family notification, the NYPD said.

☆ Google employees complain about CEO Sundar Pichai's pay raise as cost cuts hit rest of the company
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a panel at the CEO Summit of the Americas hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on June 09, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)Google CEO Sundar Pichai received a hefty pay raise last year, making him one of the highest-paid CEOs in America. SEC filings showed Pichai was paid a total of $226 million last year, mostly through $218 million in stock awards. Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson said he'd also be taking a pay cut amid a 17% workforce reduction. At an all-hands meeting, employees asked Pichai why executives are getting pay cuts if he's taking responsibility.

☆ Google is trying to be 'safe and responsible' with AI, says the engineer who got fired after sentience claim
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Google engineer fired after saying an AI chatbot was sentient said it's being "responsible". A Google engineer who was fired after saying its AI chatbot gained sentience said the company is approaching artificial intelligence in a "safe and responsible" way. "I think Google is going about doing things in what they believe is a safe and responsible manner, and OpenAI just happened to release something," he said. He was fired later that month as Google claimed he violated its confidentiality policy. A company representative told Insider at the time that his sentience claims were unsupported and there wasn't any evidence to suggest it had consciousness.

☆ A former Google researcher behind a seminal AI paper describes how the company lost a top chatbot visionary
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Character.ai CEO Noam Shazeer, a former Googler who worked in AI, spoke to the "No Priors" podcast. He says Google was afraid to launch a chatbot, fearing consequences of it saying something wrong. Like the chatbot ChatGPT, Character.ai's technology leans on a vast amount of text-based information scraped from the web for its knowledge. Shazeer was a lead author on Google's Transformer paper, which has been widely cited as key to today's chatbots. Google had also received pushback internally from AI researchers like Timnit Gebru who cautioned against releasing anything that might cause harm.

☆ You can ask Elon Musk anything on Twitter if you pay him $4 a month with new 'Subscriptions' feature
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-15 | by ( Sam Tabahriti | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Elon Musk announced a rebrand of a Twitter feature allowing users to subscribe to exclusive content. The Twitter owner said those who subscribe to him for $4 a month will be able to "ask-me-anything." Elon Musk announced the rebranding of the "Super Follows" feature on Thursday as "Subscriptions" that will allow users to subscribe to exclusive content. In his tweet, Musk said users will be able to charge followers for exclusive content, including long-form text, long-form videos, and subscriber-only Spaces. Musk has his own "Subscriptions" and said those who subscribe to him, for $4 a month according to his profile, will be able to "ask-me-anything" once every few weeks.

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