Brin Is Back and Working Every Day at Google: Will He Be Summoned to Appear and Testify?
September 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
I read some “real” news in the article “Sergey Brin Says He’s Working on AI at Google Pretty Much Every Day.” The write up does not provide specifics of his employment agreement, but the headline say “every day.” Does this mean that those dragging the Google into court will add him to their witness list? I am not an attorney, but I would be interested in finding out about the mechanisms for the alleged monopolistic lock in in the Google advertising system. Oh, well. I am equally intrigued to know if Mr. Brin will wear his roller blades to big meetings as he did with Viacom’s Big Dog.
My question is, “Can Mr. Brin go home again?” As Thomas Wolfe noted in his novel You Can’t Go Home Again”:
Every corner of our home has a story to tell.
I wonder if those dragging Alphabet Google YouTube into court will want to dig into that “story”?
Now what does the “real” news report other than Mr. Brin’s working every day? These items jumped off my screen and into my dinobaby mind:
- AI has tremendous value to humanity. I am not sure what this means when VCs, users, and assorted poohbahs point out that AI is burning cash, not generating it.
- AI is big and fast moving. Okay, but since the Microsoft AI marketing play with OpenAI, the flurry of activity has not translated to rapid fire next big things. In fact, progress on consumer-facing AI services has stalled. Even Google is reluctant to glue pizza to a crust if you know what I mean.
- The algorithms are demanding more “compute.” I think this means power, CPUs, and data. But Google is buying carbon credits, you say. Yeah, those are useful for PR, not for providing what Mr. Brin seems to suggest are needed to do AI.
Several thoughts crossed my mind:
First, most of the algorithms for smart software were presented in patent document form by Banjo, a Softbank company that ran into some headwinds. But the algorithms and numerical recipes were known and explained in Banjo’s patent documents. The missing piece was Google’s “transformer” method, which the company released as open source. Well, so what? The reason that large language models are becoming the same old same old. The Big Dogs of AI are using the same plumbing. Not much is new other than the hyperbole, right?
Second, where does Mr. Brin fit into the Google leadership set up. I am not sure he is in the cast of the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show. What happens when he makes a suggestion? Who “approves” something he puts “wood” behind? Does his presence deliver entropy or chaos? Does he exist on the boundary, working his magic as he did with the Clever technology developed at IBM Almaden?
Third, how quickly will his working “pretty much every day” move him onto witness lists? Perhaps he will be asked to contribute to EU, US House, and US Senate hearings? How will Google work out the lingo of one of the original Googlers and the current “leadership”? The answer is meetings, scripting, and practicing. Aren’t these the things that motivated Mr. Brin to leave the company to pursue other interests. Now he wants
To sum up, just when I thought Google had reached peak dysfunction, I was wrong again.
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2024
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
