The Google: A Bit of a Wobble
February 28, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
Check out this snap from Techmeme on February 28, 2024. The folks commenting about Google Gemini’s very interesting picture generation system are confused. Some think that Gemini makes clear that the Google has lost its way. Others just find the recent image gaffes as one more indication that the company is too big to manage and the present senior management is too busy amping up the advertising pushed in front of “users.”
I wanted to take a look at What Analytics India Magazine had to say. Its article is “Aal Izz Well, Google.” The write up — from a nation state some nifty drone technology and so-so relationships with its neighbors — offers this statement:
In recent weeks, the situation has intensified to the extent that there are calls for the resignation of Google chief Sundar Pichai. Helios Capital founder Samir Arora has suggested a likelihood of Pichai facing termination or choosing to resign soon, in the aftermath of the Gemini debacle.
The write offers:
Google chief Sundar Pichai, too, graciously accepted the mistake. “I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias – to be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong,” Pichai said in a memo.
The author of the Analytics India article is Siddharth Jindal. I wonder if he will talk about Sundar’s and Prabhakar’s most recent comedy sketch. The roll out of Bard in Paris was a hoot, and it too had gaffes. That was a year ago. Now it is a year later and what’s Google accomplished:
Analytics India emphasizes that “Google is not alone.” My team and I know that smart software is the next big thing. But Analytics India is particularly forgiving.
The estimable New York Post takes a slightly different approach. “Google Parent Loses $70B in Market Value after Woke AI Chatbot Disaster” reports:
Google’s parent company lost more than $70 billion in market value in a single trading day after its “woke” chatbot’s bizarre image debacle stoked renewed fears among investors about its heavily promoted AI tool. Shares of Alphabet sank 4.4% to close at $138.75 in the week’s first day of trading on Monday. The Google’s parent’s stock moved slightly higher in premarket trading on Tuesday [February 28, 2024, 941 am US Eastern time].
As I write this, I turned to Google’s nemesis, the Softies in Redmond, Washington. I asked for a dinosaur looking at a meteorite crater. Here’s what Copilot provided:
Several observations:
- This is a spectacular event. Sundar and Prabhakar will have a smooth explanation I believe. Smooth may be their core competency.
- The fact that a Code Red has become a Code Dead makes clear that communications at Google requires a tune up. But if no one is in charge, blowing $70 billion will catch the attention of some folks with sharp teeth and a mean spirit.
- The adolescent attitudes of a high school science club appear to inform the management methods at Google. A big time investigative journalist told me that Google did not operate like a high school science club planning a bus trip to the state science fair. I stick by my HSSCMM or high school science club management method. I won’t repeat her phrase because it is similar to Google’s quantumly supreme smart software: Wildly off base.
Net net: I love this rationalization of management, governance, and technical failure. Everyone in the science club gets a failing grade. Hey, wizards and wizardettes, why not just stick to selling advertising.
Stephen E Arnold, February 28,. 2024
Second Winds: Maybe There Are Other Factors Like AI?
February 28, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
I read “Second Winds,” which is an essay about YouTube. The main idea is that YouTube “content creators” are quitting, hanging up their Sony and Canon cameras, parking their converted vans, and finding an apartment, a job, or their parents’ basement. The reasons are, as the essay points out, not too hard to understand:
- Creating “content” for a long time and having a desire to do something different like not spending hours creating videos, explaining to mom what their “job” is, or living in a weird world without the support staff, steady income, and recognition that other work sometimes provides.
- Burnout because doing video is hard, tedious, and a general contributor to one’s developing a potato-like body type
- Running out of ideas (this is the hook to the Czech playwright unknown to most high school students in the US today I surmise).
I think there is another reason. I have minimal evidence; specifically, the videos of Thomas Gast, a person who ended up in the French Foreign Legion and turned to YouTube. His early videos were explanations about what the French Foreign Legion was, how to enlist, and how to learn useful skills in an austere, male-oriented military outfit. Then he made shooting videos with some of his pals. These morphed into “roughing it” videos in Scandinavia. The current videos include the survival angle and assorted military-themed topics as M.O.S. or Military-Outdoor-Survival. Some of the videos are in German (Gast’s native language); others are in English. It is clear that he knows his subject. However, he is not producing what I would call consistent content. The format is Mr. Gast talking. He sells merchandise. He hints that he does some odd jobs. He writes books. But the videos are beginning to repeat. For lovers of things associated with brave and motivated people, his work is interesting.
For me, he seems to be getting tired. He changes the name under which his videos appear. He is looking for an anchor in the YouTube rapids.
He is a pre-quitter. Let my hypothesize why:
- Making videos takes indoor time. For a person who likes being “outdoors,” the thrill of making videos recedes over time.
- YouTube changes the rules, usually without warning. As a result, Mr. Gast avoids certain “obvious” subjects directly germane to a military professional’s core interests.
- YouTube money is tricky to stabilize. A very few superstars emerge. Most “creators” cannot balance YouTube with their bank account.
Can YouTube change this? No. Why should it? Google needs revenue. Videos which draw eyeballs make Google money. So far the method works. Googlers just need to jam more ads into popular videos and do little to boost niche “creators.” How many people care about the French Foreign Legion? How many care about Mr. Beast? The delta between Mr. Gast and Mr. Beast illustrates Google’s approach. Get lots of clicks; get Google bucks.
Is there a risk to YouTube in the quitting trend, which seems to be coalescing into a trend? Yep, my research team and I have identified several factors. Let’s look at several (not our complete list) quickly:
- Alternative channels with fewer YouTube-type hidden rules. One can push out videos via end to end encrypted messaging platforms like Telegram. Believe us, the use of E2EE is a definite thing, and it is appealing to millions.
- The China-linked TikTok and its US “me too” services like Meta’s allow quick-and-dirty (often literally) videos. Experimentation is easy and lighter weight than YouTube’s method. Mr. Gast should do 30 second videos about weapons or specific French Foreign Legion tasks like avoiding an attack dog hunting one in a forest.
- New technology is attracting the attention of “creators” and may offer an alternative to the DIY demands of making videos the old-fashioned way. Once “creators” figure out AI, there may be a video Renaissance, but it may shift the center of gravity from Google’s YouTube to a different service. Maybe Telegram will emerge as the winner? Maybe Google or Meta will be the winner? Some type of change is guaranteed.
The “second winds” angle is okay. There may be more afoot.
Stephen E Arnold, February 28, 2024
ChatGPT: No Problem Letting This System Make Decisions, Right?
February 28, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
Even an AI can have a very bad day at work, apparently. ChatGPT recently went off the rails, as Gary Marcus explains in his Substack post, “ChatGPT Has Gone Berserk.” Marcus compiled snippets of AI-generated hogwash after the algorithm lost its virtual mind. Here is a small snippet sampled by data scientist Hamilton Ulmer:
“It’s the frame and the fun. Your text, your token, to the took, to the turn. The thing, it’s a theme, it’s a thread, it’s a thorp. The nek, the nay, the nesh, and the north. A mWhere you’re to, where you’re turn, in the tap, in the troth. The front and the ford, the foin and the lThe article, and the aspect, in the earn, in the enow. …”
This nonsense goes on and on. It is almost poetic, in an absurdist sort of way. But it is not helpful when one is just trying to generate a regex, as Ulmer was. Curious readers can see the post for more examples. Marcus observes:
“In the end, Generative AI is a kind of alchemy. People collect the biggest pile of data they can, and (apparently, if rumors are to be believed) tinker with the kinds of hidden prompts that I discussed a few days ago, hoping that everything will work out right. The reality, though is that these systems have never been stable. Nobody has ever been able to engineer safety guarantees around then. … The need for altogether different technologies that are less opaque, more interpretable, more maintainable, and more debuggable — and hence more tractable—remains paramount. Today’s issue may well be fixed quickly, but I hope it will be seen as the wakeup call that it is.”
Well, one can hope. For artificial intelligence is being given more and more real responsibilities. What happens when smart software runs a hospital and causes some difficult situations? Or a smart aircraft control panel dives into a backyard swimming pool? The hype around generative AI has produced a lot of leaping without looking. Results could be dangerous, of not downright catastrophic.
Cynthia Murrell, February 28, 2024
Google Gems for the Week of 19 February, 2024
February 27, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
This week’s edition of Google Gems focuses on a Hope Diamond and a handful of lesser stones. Let’s go.
THE HOPE DIAMOND
In the chaos of the AI Gold Rush, horses fall and wizard engineers realize that they left their common sense in the saloon. Here’s the Hope Diamond from the Google.
The world’s largest online advertising agency created smart software with a lot of math, dump trucks filled with data, and wizards who did not recall that certain historical figures in the US were not of color. “Google Says Its AI Image-Generator Would Sometimes Overcompensate for Diversity,” an Associated Press story, explains in very gentle rhetoric that its super sophisticate brain and DeepMind would get the race of historical figures wrong. I think this means that Ben Franklin could look like a Zulu prince or George Washington might have some resemblance to Rama (blue skin, bow, arrow, and snappy hat).
My favorite search and retrieval expert Prabhakar Raghavan (famous for his brilliant lecture in Paris about the now renamed Bard) indicated that Google’s image rendering system did not hit the bull’s eye. No, Dr. Raghavan, the digital arrow pierced the micrometer thin plastic wrap of Google’s super sophisticated, quantum supremacy, gee-whiz technology.
The message I received from Google when I asked for an illustration of John Hancock, an American historical figure. Too bad because this request goes against Google’s policies. Yep, wizards infused with the high school science club management method.
More important, however, was how Google’s massive stumble complemented OpenAI’s ChatGPT wonkiness. I want to award the Hope Diamond Award for AI Ineptitude to both Google and OpenAI. But, alas, there is just one Hope Diamond. The award goes to the quantumly supreme outfit Google.
[Note: I did not quote from the AP story. Why? Years ago the outfit threatened to sue people who use their stories’ words. Okay, no problemo, even though the newspaper for which I once worked supported this outfit in the days of “real” news, not recycled blog posts. I listen, but I do not forget some things. I wonder if the AP knows that Google Chrome can finish a “real” journalist’s sentences for he/him/she/her/it/them. Read about this “feature” at this link.]
Here are my reasons:
- Google is in catch-up mode and like those in the old Gold Rush, some fall from their horses and get up close and personal with hooves. How do those affect the body of a wizard? I have never fallen from a horse, but I saw a fellow get trampled when I lived in Campinas, Brazil. I recall there was a lot of screaming and blood. Messy.
- Google’s arrogance and intellectual sophistication cannot prevent incredible gaffes. A company with a mixed record of managing diversity, equity, etc. has demonstrated why Xooglers like Dr. Timnit Gebru find the company “interesting.” I don’t think Google is interesting. I think it is disappointing, particularly in the racial sensitivity department.
- For years I have explained that Google operates via the high school science club management method. What’s cute when one is 14 loses its charm when those using the method have been at it for a quarter century. It’s time to put on the big boy pants.
OTHER LITTLE GEMMAS
The previous week revealed a dirt trail with some sharp stones and thorny bushes. Here’s a quick selection of the sharpest and thorniest:
- The Google is running webinars to inform publishers about life after their wonderful long-lived cookies. Read more at Fipp.com.
- Google has released a small model as open source. What about the big model with the diversity quirk? Well, no. Read more at the weird green Verge thing.
- Google cares about AI safety. Yeah, believe it or not. Read more about this PR move on Techcrunch.
- Web search competitors will fail. This is a little stone. Yep, a kidney stone for those who don’t recall Neeva. Read more at Techpolicy.
- Did Google really pay $60 million to get that outstanding Reddit content. Wow. Maybe Google looks at different sub reddits than my research team does. Read more about it in 9 to 5 Google.
- What happens when an uninformed person uses the Google Cloud? Answer: Sticker shock. More about this estimable method in The Register.
- Some spoil sport finds traffic lights informed with Google’s smart software annoying. That’s hard to believe. Read more at this link.
- Google pointed out in a court filing that DuckDuckGo was a meta search system (that is, a search interface to other firm’s indexes) and Neeva was a loser crafted by Xooglers. Read more at this link.
No Google Hope Diamond report would be complete without pointing out that the online advertising giant will roll out its smart software to companies. Read more at this link. Let’s hope the wizards figure out that historical figures often have quite specific racial characteristics like Rama.
I wanted to include an image of Google’s rendering of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. What you see in the illustration above is what I got. Wow. I have more “gemmas”, but I just don’t want to present them.
Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2024
10X: The Magic Factor
February 27, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The 10X engineer. The 10X payout. The 10X advertising impact. The 10X factor can apply to money, people, and processes. Flip to the inverse and one can use smart software to replace the engineers who are not 10X or — more optimistically — lift those expensive digital humanoids to a higher level. It is magical: Win either way, provided you are a top dog a one percenter. Applied to money, 10X means winner. End up with $0.10, and the hapless investor is a loser. For processes, figuring out a 10X trick, and you are a winner, although one who is misunderstood. Money matters more than machine efficiency to some people.
In pursuit of a 10X payoff, will the people end up under water? Thanks, ImageFX. Good enough.
These are my 10X thoughts after I read “Groq, Gemini, and 10X Improvements.” The essay focuses on things technical. I am going to skip over what the author offers as a well-reasoned, dispassionate commentary on 10X. I want to zip to one passage which I think is quite fascinating. Here it is:
We don’t know when increasing parameters or datasets will plateau. We don’t know when we’ll discover the next breakthrough architecture akin to Transformers. And we don’t know how good GPUs, or LPUs, or whatever else we’re going to have, will become. Yet, when when you consider that Moore’s Law held for decades… suddenly Sam Altman’s goal of raising seven trillion dollars to build AI chips seems a little less crazy.
The way I read this is that unknowns exist with AI, money, and processes. For me, the unknowns are somewhat formidable. For many, charging into the unknown does not cause sleepless nights. Talking about raising trillions of dollars which is a large pile of silver dollars.
One must take the $7 trillion and Sam AI-Man seriously. In June 2023, Sam AI-Man met the boss of Softbank. Today (February 22, 2024) rumors about a deal related to raising the trillions required for OpenAI to build chips and fulfill its promise have reached my research team. If true, will there be a 10X payoff, which noses into spitting distance of 15 zeros. If that goes inverse, that’s going to create a bad day for someone.
Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2024
Qualcomm: Its AI Models and Pour Gasoline on a Raging Fire
February 26, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
Qualcomm’s announcements at the Mobile World Congress pour gasoline on the raging AI fire. The chip maker aims to enable smart software on mobile devices, new gear, gym shoes, and more. Venture Beat’s “Qualcomm Unveils AI and Connectivity Chips at Mobile World Congress” does a good job of explaining the big picture. The online publication reports:
Generative AI functions in upcoming smartphones, Windows PCs, cars, and wearables will also be on display with practical applications. Generative AI is expected to have a broad impact across industries, with estimates that it could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion in economic benefits annually.
Qualcomm, primarily associated with chips, has pushed into what it calls “AI models.” The listing of the models appears on the Qualcomm AI Hub Web page. You can find this page at https://aihub.qualcomm.com/models. To view the available models, click on one of the four model domains, shown below:
Each domain will expand and present the name of the model. Note that the domain with the most models is computer vision. The company offers 60 models. These are grouped by function; for example, image classification, image editing, image generation, object detection, pose estimation, semantic segmentation (tagging objects), and super resolution.
The image below shows a model which analyzes data and then predicts related values. In this case, the position of the subject’s body are presented. The predictive functions of a company like Recorded Future suddenly appear to be behind the curve in my opinion.
There are two models for generative AI. These are image generation and text generation. Models are available for audio functions and for multimodal operations.
Qualcomm includes brief descriptions of each model. These descriptions include some repetitive phrases like “state of the art”, “transformer,” and “real time.”
Looking at the examples and following the links to supplemental information makes clear at first glance to suggest:
- Qualcomm will become a company of interest to investors
- Competitive outfits have their marching orders to develop comparable or better functions
- Supply chain vendors may experience additional interest and uplift from investors.
Can Qualcomm deliver? Let me answer the question this way. Whether the company experiences an nVidia moment or not, other companies have to respond, innovate, cut costs, and become more forward leaning in this chip sector.
I am in my underground computer lab in rural Kentucky, and I can feel the heat from Qualcomm’s AI announcement. Those at the conference not working for Qualcomm may have had their eyebrows scorched.
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2024
Ambercite: Patent Analysis via Smart Software
February 26, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
A news item made its way to me from an Australian company called Ambercite. The firm is in the business of providing a next-generation patent analysis system. The company began incorporating artificial intelligence in its patent research and discovery system in 2017.
As you may know, a patent is a legal document granted a the government process. Once awarded (usually after months or years of examiners), the patent gives an inventor or inventors named in the patent application exclusive rights to their invention for a certain period of time. The patent protects the inventor’s intellectual property, preventing others from making, using, or selling the invention without permission. Inventors need patents to safeguard their innovations, incentivize creativity, and potentially monetize their inventions through licensing or sales.
Ambercite’s news item pointed out that the firm’s predictive analytics (a type of smart software) predicted the trajectory of the litigation between Google (an online advertising company with numerous side businesses) and Sonos, a company producing hardware and software for audio applications. Ambercite reported:
Back in October 2020, we showed that Ambercite could be used to predict that Google might be at risk from a patent infringement lawsuit from Sonos – a prediction that matched actual litigation.
An auto-generated Ambercite report. © Ambercite 2024
The company has prepared an interesting report which, I think, is relevant to those engaged in patent activity or to individuals who are considering a predictive analytics system for investigations or related activity.
Ambercite’s case study states:
Recent developments reveal that Sonos has secured a substantial $32.5 million patent infringement judgment against Google. Notably, this legal victory stems from a Sonos patent, US10,848,885, pertaining to the synchronization of music across distinct zones
Ambercite’s system processes the patent and identifies prior patents. The Ambercite system reduces the task to several key taps and a button click. The approach contrasts sharply with other commercial patent analysis systems. The Thomson Innovation service includes a wide range of patent and technical information. Plus, Thomson allows its paying customers to access the Westlaw system. The complexity of analysis is underscored by the 122 page user guide to the service.
Ambercite’s approach streamlines identification of potentially problematic documents; for example, Sonos patent US10,848,885 is related to three Google patents:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8407273B2/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US9218156B2/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10416961B2
Several observations are warranted:
- Ambercite’s system is easy to use, even for a non-attorney or an entrepreneur in the process of writing a patent
- Ambercite’s point-and-click approach eliminates the need to hunt through documentation to locate the specifics of locating potentially infringing documents
- The “smart software” remains in the background, presenting the user with actionable inputs, not for-fee options for commonly-used functions.
Net net: Worth a close look.
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2024
What a Great Testament to Peer Review!
February 23, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I have been concerned about academic research journals for decades. These folks learn that a paper is wonky and, guess what. Most of the bogus write ups remain online. Now that big academic wheels have been resigning due to mental lapses or outright plagiarism and made up data, we have this wonderful illustration:
The diagram looks like an up-market medical illustration, I think it is a confection pumped out by a helpful smart software image outputter. “FrontiersIn Publishes Peer Reviewed Paper with AI Generated Rat Image, Sparking Reliability Concerns” reports:
A peer-reviewed scientific paper with nonsensical AI-generated images, including a rat with exaggerated features like a gigantic penis, has been published by FrontiersIn, a major research publisher. The images have sparked concerns about the reliability of AI-generated content in academia.
I loke the “gigantic penis” trope. Are the authors delivering a tongue-in-cheek comment to the publishers of peer-reviewed papers? Are the authors chugging along blissfully unaware of the reputational damage data flexing has caused the former president of Stanford University and the big dog of ethics at Harvard University? Is the write up a slightly more sophisticated Onion article?
Interesting hallucination on the part of the alleged authors and the smart software. Most tech bros are happy with an exotic car. Who knew what appealed to a smart software system’s notion of a male rat organ?
Stephen E Arnold, February 23, 2024
What Techno-Optimism Seems to Suggest (Oligopolies, a Plutocracy, or Utopia)
February 23, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Science and mathematics are comparable to religion. These fields of study attract acolytes who study and revere associated knowledge and shun nonbelievers. The advancement of modern technology is its own subset of religious science and mathematics combined with philosophical doctrine. Tech Policy Press discusses the changing views on technology-based philosophy in: “Parsing The Political Project Of Techno-Optimism.”
Rich, venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz are influential in Silicon Valley. While they’ve shaped modern technology with their investments, they also tried drafting a manifesto about how technology should be handled in the future. They “creatively” labeled it the “techno-optimist manifesto.” It promotes an ideology that favors rich people increasing their wealth by investing in politicians that will help them achieve this.
Techno-optimism is not the new mantra of Silicon Valley. Reception didn’t go over well. Andreessen wrote:
“Techno-Optimism is a material philosophy, not a political philosophy…We are materially focused, for a reason – to open the aperture on how we may choose to live amid material abundance.”
He also labeled this section, “the meaning of life.”
Techno-optimism is a revamped version of the Californian ideology that reigned in the 1990s. It preached that the future should be shaped by engineers, investors, and entrepreneurs without governmental influence. Techno-optimism wants venture capitalists to be untaxed with unregulated portfolios.
Horowitz added his own Silicon Valley-type titbit:
“‘…will, for the first time, get involved with politics by supporting candidates who align with our vision and values specifically for technology. (…) [W]e are non-partisan, one issue voters: if a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them.’”
Horowitz and Andreessen are giving the world what some might describe as “a one-finger salute.” These venture capitalists want to do whatever they want wherever they want with governments in their pockets.
This isn’t a new ideology or a philosophy. It’s a rebranding of socialism and fascism and communism. There’s an even better word that describes techno-optimism: Plutocracy. I am not sure the approach will produce a Utopia. But there is a good chance that some giant techno feudal outfits will reap big rewards. But another approach might be to call techno optimism a religion and grab the benefits of a tax exemption. I wonder if someone will create a deep fake of Jim and Tammy Faye? Interesting.
Whitney Grace, February 23, 2023
OpenAI Embarks on Taking Down the Big Guy in Web Search
February 22, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The Google may be getting up there in Internet years; however, due to its size and dark shadow, taking the big fellow down and putting it out of the game may be difficult. Users are accustomed to the Google. Habits, particularly those which become semi automatic like a heroin addict’s fiddling with a spoon, are tough to break. After 25 years, growing out of a habit is reassuring to worried onlookers. But the efficacy of wait-and-see is not getting a bent person straight.
Taking down Googzilla may be a job for lots of little people. Thanks, Google ImageFX. Know thyself, right?
I read “OpenAI Is Going to Face an Uphill Battle If It Takes on Google Search.” The write up describes an aspirational goal of Sam AI-Man’s OpenAI system. The write up says:
OpenAI is reportedly building its own search product to take on Google.
OpenAI is jumping in a CRRC already crowded with special ops people. There is the Kagi subscription search. There is Phind.com and You.com. There is a one-man band called Stract and more. A new and improved Yandex is coming. The reliable Swisscows.com is ruminating in the mountains. The ever-watchful OSINT professionals gather search engines like a mother goose. And what do we get? Bing is going nowhere even with Copilot except in the enterprise market where Excel users are asking, “What the H*ll?” Meanwhile the litigating beast continues to capture 90 percent or more of search traffic and oodles of data. Okay, team, who is going to chop block the Google, a fat and slow player at that?
The write up opines:
But on the search front, it’s still all Google all the way. And even if OpenAI popularized the generative AI craze, the company has a long way to go if it hopes to take down the search giant.
Competitors can dream, plot, innovate, and issue press releases. But for the foreseeable future, the big guy is going to push others out of the way.
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2024
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