Brin has been particularly focusing on the development of Google’s next-generation AI model, Gemini. According to reports from the Wall Street Journal, Brin has been showing up at Google offices three to four days a week since the buzz around the success of ChatGPT began late last year.

Brin’s involvement has been primarily in supporting the hiring process and strategically selecting key personnel for the AI team after the loss of several important researchers in the field.

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has embraced and encouraged Brin’s newfound engagement with the company.

The co-founder’s previous lack of interest in AI has been well-documented, with some employees revealing that he had neglected the early developments of Google’s Brain division, which played a pioneering role in shaping today’s AI landscape.

ChatGPT’s success appears to have prompted Brin to catch up on the latest AI advancements and acknowledge its importance.

Microsoft’s plans to integrate a new version of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine set off alarm bells at Google. In response, Google CEO Sundar Pichai invited the company’s founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – to return for a series of meetings to review its AI strategy.

Google launched its own AI language model, Google Bard, to compete with OpenAI’s product.

Bard’s launch was considered “botched” by many Googlers and the chatbot gained a public reputation as being less sophisticated and more prone to errors compared to ChatGPT. Since then, Bard has undergone significant improvements.

One of the recent boosts to Bard’s capabilities is the integration of Google Lens, leveraging Google’s vast array of products and technologies. With this integration, Bard can now perform various tasks – including visual recognition and understanding – providing users with a more comprehensive and interactive experience.

Brin’s active involvement in the development of Gemini is a clear indication of Google’s commitment to staying at the forefront of AI research and innovation. As AI technologies continue to evolve, the company recognises the need to foster a strong team and develop cutting-edge models to remain competitive in the AI market.

Industry experts and analysts have praised Google’s move to embrace Brin’s expertise in the field, stating that his hands-on approach will likely result in significant advancements for the company.

With Brin’s leadership and the dedicated efforts of the AI team, Google aims to surpass existing AI models like ChatGPT and secure its position as a leading force in the landscape.

(Image Credit: Thomas Hawk under CC BY-NC 2.0 license)

See also: Google report highlights AI’s impact on the UK economy

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The event is co-located with Digital Transformation Week.

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The report suggests that by 2030, AI could boost the UK economy by £400 billion—leading to an annual growth rate of 2.6 percent.

Steven Mooney, CEO of FundMyPitch, commented:

“If AI is projected to bring billions to the UK economy, then why on earth aren’t our start-ups and SMEs getting the funding they need to take their businesses to the next level?

Time and time again, reports show that UK entrepreneurs struggle to secure access to credible funding or even an independent valuation, in stark contrast to other markets.

A failure to get ahead of the game on AI will have disastrous consequences for the economy, so giving full financial backing to up-and-coming companies that are pioneering developments in this technology should be a top priority.”

Google’s UK and Ireland boss, Debbie Weinstein, describes the transformative power of AI as unprecedented in the tech industry.

While concerns about job displacement due to AI exist, Weinstein reassures that new job opportunities will also arise as a result of AI implementation. She acknowledges the impact that this technology will have on people and emphasises the need to equip individuals with the necessary skills.

Recognising the profound impact AI will have on all aspects of society, Google says that it aims to ensure that individuals are prepared for this fundamental shift.

The report comes at a time when fears about the disruptive nature of AI are widespread. 

Professor Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “godfather of AI,” recently resigned from Google, expressing concerns about the potential misuse of AI tools.

Hinton warns of the possibility of bad actors using AI for nefarious purposes. However, he also acknowledges that someone else would have developed AI if he had not, suggesting that responsible development and regulation are necessary.

The call for caution and regulation in AI development has been echoed by experts worldwide. 

The launch of tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney has highlighted the potential for misuse. Google’s report emphasises the importance of regulation as AI technology advances and affirms that the company is actively collaborating with regulators globally.

Moreover, Google supports the establishment of a “national skills agenda” involving governments, businesses, and educational institutions. This collaborative effort aims to ensure that workers are not left behind as AI technology progresses.

Chris Downie, CEO of Pasabi, said:

“With AI set to bring unprecedented change to the economy, it is refreshing to see companies like Google looking to work proactively with Government to take a nuanced approach to regulation.

A national skills agenda and the UK Research Cloud are admirable initiatives, however, more attention still needs to be given to the risks posed by cyber criminals who are already hijacking the technology for their own harmful purposes.

From online scams to the global epidemic of fake reviews, to adopt a proactive approach to harness the latest fraud detection technologies to take the fight to online fraudsters.”

Google recognises the necessity of striking a balance, enabling agile regulation to attract inward investment while effectively managing the risks associated with AI.

By fostering collaboration between various stakeholders and prioritising skill development, the UK can capitalise on the competitive advantages offered by AI while safeguarding against negative consequences.

AI presents both challenges and opportunities, and it is crucial to navigate this technological shift thoughtfully and responsibly.

See also: UK will host global AI summit to address potential risks

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Hinton, alongside two others, won the Turing Award in 2018 for laying the foundations of AI. He had been working at Google since 2013 but resigned to speak out about the fast pace of AI development and the risks it poses.

In an interview with The New York Times, Hinton warned that the rapid development of generative AI products was “racing towards danger” and that false text, images, and videos created by AI could lead to a situation where average people “would not be able to know what is true anymore.”

Hinton also expressed concerns about the impact of AI on the job market, as machines could eventually replace roles such as paralegals, personal assistants, and translators.

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that. But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that,” said Hinton.

Hinton’s concerns are not unfounded. AI has already been used to create deepfakes, which are videos that manipulate facial and voice expressions to make it appear that someone is saying something they did not say. These deepfakes can be used to spread misinformation or damage a person’s reputation.

Furthermore, AI has the potential to automate many jobs, leading to job losses. This week, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that the company plans to use AI to replace around 30 percent of back office jobs—equivalent to around 7,800 jobs.

Hinton is not alone in his concerns. Other experts have also warned about the risks of AI.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, called AI “our biggest existential threat”. The following year, the legendary astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said that he shares Musk’s view. In 2018, Stephen Hawking warned that AI could replace humans as the dominant species on Earth.

In March, Musk joined Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and over 1,000 other experts in signing an open letter calling for a  halt to “out-of-control” AI development.

However, some experts believe that AI can be developed in a way that benefits society. For example, AI can be used to diagnose diseases, detect fraud, and reduce traffic accidents.

To ensure that AI is developed in a responsible and ethical manner, many organisations have developed guidelines, including the IEEE, the EU, and the OECD.

The concerns raised by Hinton about AI are significant and highlight the need for responsible AI development. While AI has the potential to bring many benefits to society, it is crucial that it is developed in a way that minimises its risks and maximises its benefits.

(Image Credit: Eviatar Bach under CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Image cropped from original.)

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The move is seen as a strategic way for Google to maintain its edge in the competitive AI industry and compete with OpenAI. By combining the talent and resources of both entities, Google DeepMind aims to accelerate AI advancements while maintaining ethical standards.

The new unit will be responsible for spearheading groundbreaking AI products and advancements, and it will work closely with other Google product areas to deliver AI research and products.

Google Research, the former parent division of Google Brain, will remain an independent division focused on “fundamental advances in computer science across areas such as algorithms and theory, privacy and security, quantum computing, health, climate and sustainability, and responsible AI.”

Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, believes that the consolidation of the two AI research labs will bring together world-class talent in AI with the computing power, infrastructure, and resources to create the next generation of AI breakthroughs and products boldly and responsibly.

Hassabis claims that the research accomplishments of Google Brain and DeepMind have formed the foundation of the current AI industry—ranging from deep reinforcement learning to transformers. The newly consolidated unit will build upon this foundation to create the next generation of groundbreaking AI products and advancements that will shape the world.

Over the years, Google and DeepMind have jointly developed several groundbreaking innovations. The duo’s achievements include AlphaGo – which famously beat professional human Go players – and AlphaFold, an exceptional tool that accurately predicts protein structures.

Other noteworthy achievements include word2vec, WaveNet, sequence-to-sequence models, distillation, deep reinforcement learning, and distributed systems and software frameworks like TensorFlow and JAX. These cutting-edge tools have proven highly effective for expressing, training, and deploying large-scale ML models.

Google’s acquisition of DeepMind for $500 million in 2014 paved the way for a fruitful collaboration between the two entities. With the consolidation of Google Brain and DeepMind into Google DeepMind, Google hopes to further advance its AI research and development capabilities.

Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, will take on an elevated role as chief scientist for both Google Research and Google DeepMind. He has been tasked with setting the future direction of AI research at the company, as well as heading up the most critical and strategic technical projects related to AI, including a series of powerful multimodal AI models.

The creation of Google DeepMind underscores Google and parent company Alphabet’s commitment to furthering the pioneering research of both DeepMind and Google Brain. With the race to dominate the AI space becoming more intense, Google DeepMind is poised to accelerate AI advancements and create groundbreaking AI products and advancements that will shape the world.

(Image Credit: Google DeepMind)

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Earlier this year, Microsoft enhanced its Bing search engine with OpenAI’s GPT. The release reportedly set off alarm bells at Google due to the risks it poses to its core search and advertising business.

Google has been working on its own AI-powered features for its search engine under a project codenamed Magi, according to a report citing internal documents.

Ads will continue to be shown in search results generated by Magi, especially those that could lead to a financial transaction. Magi will simply focus on improving Google’s existing search engine features with AI capabilities

The project reportedly involves a team of about 160 engineers working to tweak and test the latest versions of the tool. The capabilities are “being created by designers, engineers, and executives working in so-called sprint rooms to tweak and test the latest versions.”

Google is planning a public release of the tool next month in a limited capacity. Around one million people will get to access the project’s features as part of the first batch. Around 30 million users are expected to have access by the end of the year.

Microsoft has been investing heavily in AI research and development through OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. This investment has given Microsoft an edge in developing AI products, which Google is now seeking to compete with.

A last-minute event was held by Google the day after Microsoft held an event to announce the GPT-enhanced Bing search engine and Edge browser. Google’s event was a mess. Previous announcements were rehashed, a presenter’s phone went missing, and CEO Sundar Pichai was nowhere to be seen.

Googlers took to the internal forum ‘Memegen’ to criticise Pichai’s leadership. One wrote, “Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic” and called on Pichai to “please return to taking a long-term outlook.”

In the month after Microsoft released its AI-enhanced Bing, users surged to over 100 million for the first time.

“Of the millions of active users of the new Bing preview, it’s great to see that roughly one-third are new to Bing,” wrote Yusuf Mehdi, Head of Bing at Microsoft, in a blog post.

“We see this appeal of the new Bing as a validation of our view that search is due for a reinvention and of the unique value proposition of combining Search + Answers + Chat + Creation in one experience.”

Project Magi will be seen as an opportunity for Google to get back on its feet and prove it hasn’t fallen behind Microsoft.

(Image Credit: Google)

Related: Google plays it safe with initial Bard rollout

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The ChatGPT rival was announced via a blog post in February, seemingly to get ahead of Microsoft’s own big reveal event the next day.

Microsoft’s plans to integrate a new version of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine set off alarm bells at Google. In response, Google CEO Sundar Pichai invited the company’s founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – to return for a series of meetings to review its AI strategy.

In stark contrast to Microsoft’s polished event, a last-minute event held by Google the day after was a mess. Previous announcements were rehashed, a presenter’s phone went missing, and Pichai was nowhere to be seen.

Googlers took to the internal forum ‘Memegen’ to criticise Pichai’s leadership. One wrote, “Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic” and called on Pichai to “please return to taking a long-term outlook.”

During a Bard promo video, an incorrect answer was shown that sent Google’s shares plummeting and wiped $120 billion from its value.

Google AI Chief Jeff Dean had allegedly even warned colleagues ahead of the reveal that it cannot rush products like Bard to the market because the company has more “reputational risk” in providing wrong information.

The contrast between Microsoft’s and Google’s announcements was stark. Microsoft looked unstoppable while Google appeared to be in absolute chaos. However, things shifted in the coming weeks.

Users began reporting “unhinged” responses from Microsoft’s chatbot—including not just incorrect information, but also the bot appearing to be in a depressive state, wanting to be human, and even claiming to spy on people through their webcams.

Suddenly, that one error in Bard’s promo video didn’t look so bad. Furthermore, it justified Google’s decision to hold fire on releasing Bard to the public.

Google now appears to be comfortable with Bard being ready for public testing:

“Our work on Bard is guided by our AI Principles, and we continue to focus on quality and safety,” wrote Google in a blog post.

“We’re using human feedback and evaluation to improve our systems, and we’ve also built in guardrails, like capping the number of exchanges in a dialogue, to try to keep interactions helpful and on topic.”

In a quick test, Bard (left of screenshot) is subjectively more concise with its responses than Bing (right of screenshot) while the latter is slightly more comprehensive:

However, there are currently a few key differences:

• Bing’s chatbot wants to continue the conversation and suggests possible follow-up questions.
• Bing’s chatbot makes it clear where it’s getting its information so users can get more background.
• Bard reminds the user before starting a conversation that it has “limitations” and “won’t always get it right”. Furthermore, the page always displays a warning that Bard “may display inaccurate or offensive information that doesn’t represent Google’s views.”

You can sign up to try Bard here. Google is currently rolling out access in the US and UK but will be expanding to other countries and languages over time.

(Image Credit: Google)

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Microsoft’s alternative, ChatGPT, set off alarm bells at Google. In response, Pichai invited Google founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – to return for a series of meetings to review the company’s AI strategy.

Following those meetings, it was clear that Google intended to get its AI products to market faster. The company allegedly decided to speed up its AI review process to that end.

However, it’s worth noting that Google AI Chief Jeff Dean told employees at the time that the company has more “reputational risk” in providing wrong information. That’s worth remembering for a bit later.

Rumours that Microsoft was to integrate a new version of ChatGPT, powered by GPT-4, into Bing appeared to turn the alarm bells at Google into a full-blown siren.

Google announced a relatively last-minute AI event in what was widely perceived to be an attempt to get the jump on Microsoft’s announcement. Microsoft then announced an even more last-minute event.

A day before Microsoft’s event, Pichai published a blog post to announce Bard. Google technically beat Microsoft to its announcements but the post largely just sounded like it was playing catch-up to ChatGPT rather than offering anything new.

Microsoft’s event the next day stole the spotlight. The latest version of ChatGPT, integrated with Bing and Edge – with Office and more on the horizon – proved to be impressive. Within 48 hours, more than one million people registered to test it. Despite being last-minute, the event was polished.

Next up was Google’s event. What was presented wasn’t bad, per se, but largely rehashed previous announcements in what felt like an attempt to remind people that Google hasn’t been left behind in AI.

However, the main issue with Google’s event is that – off the back of Microsoft’s – it just felt rushed. That somewhat culminated when a presenter’s phone went missing so a live demo couldn’t take place.

While Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was on-stage at the company’s own event looking relaxed and cracking jokes, Pichai was nowhere to be seen at Google’s counterpart.

Googlers took to the internal forum ‘Memegen’ to criticise Pichai’s leadership. One wrote, “Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic” and called on Pichai to “please return to taking a long-term outlook.”

A promo video for Bard showed the chatbot giving a wrong answer:

Such a blunder in a pre-recorded clip, where it’s obvious the chatbot’s answers will be heavily scrutinised, really highlights why Googlers are so concerned about the firm’s current strategy.

Investors also gave their verdict on the proceedings. Following Google’s event, the company’s shares plunged almost 10 percent—shedding $120 billion off the company’s value. As of writing, the company’s shares have declined a further four percent.

“Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us,” another Googler wrote on Memegen.

Some Googlers were allegedly unaware of the event taking place at all. The majority appear to wish they could erase the event from everyone’s memory and give Bard the launch it really deserves.

(Image Credit: Maurizio Pesce under CC BY 2.0 license)

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The last-minute event was largely seen as a response to Microsoft’s integration of OpenAI’s models into its products. Just yesterday, Microsoft held an even more impromptu event where it announced that a new version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot – based on GPT-4 – will be integrated into the Edge browser and Bing search engine.

Google was expected to make a large number of AI announcements at its I/O developer conference in May. The event this week felt like a rushed and unpolished attempt by Google to remind the world (or, more likely, investors) that it’s also an AI leader and hasn’t been left behind.

OpenAI reportedly set off alarm bells at Google with ChatGPT. At the invite of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the company’s founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – returned for a series of meetings to review Google’s AI product strategy.

In the wake of those meetings, it was allegedly decided that Google will speed up its AI review process so it can deploy solutions more quickly. Amid those reports, and Google’s firing of high-profile ethics researchers, many are concerned that the company will rush unsafe products to market.

Prabhakar Raghavan, SVP at Google, led proceedings. In his opening remarks, he stated that Google’s goal is to “significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible”. Throughout the event, various speakers appeared to really want to push the narrative that Google won’t take risks.

“When it comes to AI, it’s critical that we bring models to the world responsibly,” said Raghavan.

Google Search

Search is Google’s bread-and-butter. The threat that a ChatGPT-enhanced Bing could pose to Google appears to have been what caused such alarm within the company.

“Search is still our biggest moonshot,” said Raghavan. Adding, “the moon keeps moving.”

Google used this section to highlight some of the advancements it’s been making in the background that most won’t be aware of. This has included the use of zero-shot machine translation to add two dozen new languages to Google Translate over the past year.

Another product that continues to be enhanced by AI is Google Lens, which is now used more than 10 billion times per month.

“The camera is the next keyboard,” explains Raghavan. “The age of visual search is here.”

Liz Reid, VP of Engineering at Google, took the stage to provide an update on what the company is doing in this area.

Google Lens is being expanded to support video content. A user can activate Lens, touch something they want to learn more about in a video clip (such as a landmark), and Google will bring up more information about it.

“If you can see it, you can search it,” says Reid.

Multi-search is another impressive visual search enhancement that Google showed off. The feature allows users to search with both an image and text so, for example, you could try and find a specific chair or item of clothing in a different colour.

Google was going to give a live demo of multi-search but awkwardly lost the phone. Fortunately, the company says that it’s now live globally so you can give it a go yourself.

Few companies have access to the amount of information about the world and its citizens that Google does. Privacy arguments aside, it enables the company to offer powerful services that complement one another.

Reid says that users will be able to take a photo of something like a bakery item and ask Google to source a nearby place from Google Maps where the person can get their hands on an equivalent. Google says that feature is coming soon to images on mobile search results pages.

Bard

Prabhakar retook the stage to discuss Google’s response to ChatGPT.

Google’s conversational AI service is called Bard and it’s powered by LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications).

LaMDA is a model that’s built on Transformer, a neural network architecture that Google Research invented and open-sourced in 2017. Instead of relying on pre-defined responses like older chatbots, LaMDA is trained on dialogue for more open-ended natural interactions and can deliver up-to-date information from the web.

In an example of an interaction, Prabhakar asked Bard what he should consider when buying a new car. He then asked for the pros and cons of an electric car. Finally, he asked Bard to help him plan a road trip.

Bard is now available to trusted testers but Prabhakar says that Google is going to check it meets the company’s “high bar” for safety before a broader rollout.

The company says that it’s embracing NORA (No One Right Answer) for questions like, “What is the best constellation to look for when stargazing?” as it’s subjective. Generative AI will be used in such instances to bring multiple viewpoints to results—which sounds quite similar to what it’s been doing in Google News for some time to help address bias concerns.

Prabhakar goes on to highlight the potential for generative AI goes far beyond text. The SVP highlights that Google can use generative AI to create a 360-degree view of items like sneakers from just a handful of images.

Next month, Google will begin onboarding developers for its Generative Language API to help them access some powerful capabilities. Initially, the API will be powered by LaMDA. Prabhakar says that “a range of models” will follow.

Google Maps

Chris Phillips, Head of Google’s Geo Group, took to the stage to give an overview of some of the AI enhancements the company is bringing to Google Maps.

Phillips says that AI is “powering the next-generation of Google Maps”. Google is using AI to fuse billions of Street View and real-world images to evolve 2D maps into “multi-dimensional views” that will enable users to virtually soar over buildings if they’re planning a visit.

However, most impressive is how AI is enabling Google to take 2D images of indoor locations and turn them into 3D that people can explore. One provided example of where this could be useful is checking out a restaurant ahead of a date to see whether the lighting and general ambience is romantic:

Additional enhancements are being made to ‘Search with Live View’ which uses AR to help people find things nearby like ATMs.

When searching for things like coffee shops, you can see if they’re open and even how busy they typically are all from the AR view.

Google says that it’s making its largest expansion of indoor live view today. Indoor live view is expanding to 1000 new airports, train stations, and shopping centres.

Finally, Google is helping users make more sustainable transport choices. Phillips says that Google wants to “make the sustainable choice, the easy choice”.

New Google Maps features for electric vehicle owners will help with trip planning by factoring in traffic, charge level, and energy consumption. Charging stop recommendations will be improved and a “Very fast” charging filter will help EV owners pick somewhere they can get topped up quickly and be on their way.

Even more sustainable than EV driving is walking. Google is making walking directions more “glanceable” from your route overview. The company says that it’s rolling out globally on Android and iOS over the coming months.

Prabhakar retakes the stage to highlight that Google is “25 years into search” but teases that in some ways is “only just beginning.” He goes on to say that more is in the works and the “best is yet to come.”

Google I/O 2023 just got that much more exciting.

(Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash)

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The web giant says the event will provide an update on how Google is “using the power of AI to reimagine how people search for, explore, and interact with information, making it more natural and intuitive than ever before to find what you need.”

OpenAI reportedly set off alarm bells at Google with ChatGPT. At the invite of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the company’s founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – returned for a series of meetings to review Google’s AI product strategy.

In the wake of those meetings, it was allegedly decided that Google will speed up its AI review process so it can deploy solutions more quickly.

Microsoft has invested over $10 billion in OpenAI and has begun integrating the company’s powerful AI models into its products.

In the coming weeks, Microsoft is set to go after Google’s main product – Google Search – by integrating a more powerful version of ChatGPT into Bing. The version that will be integrated into Bing will be powered by GPT-4.

Baidu, the “Google of China,” is expected to reveal its own AI-powered chatbot in March that will be integrated into the company’s search product. The model powering Baidu’s alternative is called ERNIE.

In 2021, Baidu’s researchers posted a paper on ERNIE 3.0 in which they claim the model exceeds human performance on the SuperGLUE natural language benchmark. ERNIE 3.0 set a new top score on SuperGLUE and displaced efforts from Google and Microsoft.

Baidu isn’t a threat to Google’s search business like Microsoft is, but could make Google look like it’s just playing catch up to rivals. To avoid that, Google appears to be fast-tracking its announcements.

Google was initially expected to make its AI announcements during its I/O developer conference in May. However, by that time, rivals like Microsoft and Baidu will have already launched their own alternatives. What’s currently new and exciting will be yawn-inducing come May.

Now it looks like we’ll be seeing at least some of what Google has cooking a lot sooner. Google will be hosting its 40-minute event on YouTube on February 8th at 8:30am ET (1:30pm GMT).

(Image Credit: Google)

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The post Google will leapfrog rivals with AI event next week appeared first on AI News.

The New York Times claims ChatGPT set off alarm bells at Google. At the invite of Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the company’s founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – returned for a series of meetings to review Google’s AI product strategy.

Google is one of the biggest investors in AI and has some of the most talented minds in the industry. As a result, the company is scrutinised more than most when it comes to any AI developments.

In 2020, leading AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru was fired by Google. Gebru claims she was fired over an unpublished paper and sending an email critical of the company’s practices. Numerous other AI experts at Google left following her firing.

Just two years earlier, over 4,000 Googlers signed a petition demanding that Google cease its plans to develop AI for the US military. Google withdrew from the contract but not before at least a dozen employees resigned.

With the company in the spotlight, Google has allegedly been ultra-cautious in how it develops and deploys AI.

According to a CNBC report, Pichai and Google AI Chief Jeff Dean were asked in a meeting whether ChatGPT represented a “missed opportunity” for the company. Pichai and Dean said that Google’s own models were just as capable but the company had to move “more conservatively than a small startup” because of the “reputational risk” it poses.

Microsoft has invested so heavily in OpenAI that it’s hard to consider the company a small startup anymore. The two companies have established a deep partnership and Microsoft has begun integrating OpenAI’s technologies into its own products.

Earlier this month, AI News reported that Microsoft and OpenAI are set to integrate technology from OpenAI in Bing to challenge Google’s search dominance. That appears to have been what really set off the alarm bells at Google.

Google now appears to be speeding up the reveal and deployment of its own AI solutions. To that end, the company is reportedly working to speed up the review process which checks if it’s operating ethically.

One of the first AI solutions set to debut sounds very similar to what Microsoft and OpenAI have planned for Bing.

A demo of a chatbot-enhanced Google Search is expected at the company’s annual I/O developer conference in May. The demo will prioritise “getting facts right, ensuring safety and getting rid of misinformation.”

Other AI-powered product launches expected to be shown include an image generator, a set of tools for enterprises to develop their own AI prototypes within a browser window, and an app for testing such prototypes.

Google is also said to be working on a rival to GitHub Copilot, a coding assistant powered by OpenAI’s technology. Google’s alternative is called PaLM-Coder 2 and will have a version for building smartphone apps called Colab that will be integrated into Android Studio.

Overall, Google is set to unveil more than 20 AI-powered projects this year. The announcements should calm investors who’ve criticised Google’s slow AI developments in recent years but ethicists will be concerned about the company prioritising speed over safety.

(Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash)

Relevant: OpenAI CEO: People are ‘begging to be disappointed’ about GPT-4

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