Has Google Aligned Its AI Messaging for the AI Circus?
April 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I followed the announcements at the Google shindig Cloud Next. My goodness, Google’s Code Red has produced quite a new announcements. However, I want to ask a simple question, “Has Google organized its AI acts under one tent?” You can wallow in the Google AI news because TechMeme on April 10, 2024, has a carnival midway of information.
I want to focus on one facet: The enterprise transformation underway. Google wants to cope with Microsoft’s pushing AI into the enterprise, into the Manhattan chatbot, and into the government. One example of what Google envisions is what Google calls “genAI agents.” Explaining scripts with smarts requires a diagram. Here’s one, courtesy of Constellation Research:
Look at the diagram. The “customer”, which is the organization, is at the center of a Googley world: plumbing, models, and a “platform.” Surrounding this core with the customer at the center are scripts with smarts. These will do customer functions. This customer, of course, is the customer of the real customer, the organization. The genAI agents will do employee functions, creative functions, data functions, code functions, and security functions. The only missing function is the “paying Google function,” but that is baked into the genAI approach.
If one accepts the myriad announcements as the “as is” world of Google AI, the Cloud Next conference will have done its job. If you did not get the memo, you may see the Googley diagram as the work of enthusiastic marketers. The quantumly supreme lingo as more evidence that Code Red has been one output of the Code Red initiative.
I want to call attention, however, to the information in the allegedly accurate “Google DeepMind’s CEO Reportedly Thinks It’ll Be Tough to Catch Up with OpenAI’s Sora.” The write up states:
Google DeepMind CEO may think OpenAI’s text-to-video generator, Sora, has an edge. Demis Hassabis told a colleague it’d be hard for Google to draw level with Sora … The Information reported. His comments come as Big Tech firms compete in an AI race to build rival products.
Am I to believe the genAI system can deliver what enterprises, government organizations, and non governmental entities want: Ways to cut costs and operate in a smarter way?
If I tell myself, “Believe Google’s Cloud Next statements?” Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, OpenAI, and others should fold their tents, put their animals back on the train, and head to another city in Kansas.
If I tell myself, “Google is not delivering and one cannot believe the company which sells ads and outputs weird images of ethnically interesting historical characters,” then the advertising company is a bit disjointed.
Several observations:
- The YouTube content processing issues are an indication that Google is making interesting decisions which may have significant legal consequences related to copyright
- The senior managers who are in direct opposition about their enthusiasm for Google’s AI capabilities need to get in the same book and preferably read from the same page
- The assertions appear to be marketing which is less effective than Microsoft’s at this time.
Net net: The circus has some tired acts. The Sundar and Prabhakar Show seemed a bit tired. The acts were better than those features on the Gong Show but not as scintillating as performances on the Masked Singer. But what about search? Oh, it’s great. And that circus train. Is it powered by steam?
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2024
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