DeepMind Explains Imagination, Not the Google Olympic Advertisement
August 8, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I admit it. I am suspicious of Google “announcements,” ArXiv papers, and revelations about the quantumly supreme outfit. I keep remembering the Google VP dead on a yacht with a special contract worker. I know about the Googler who tried to kill herself because a dalliance with a Big Time Google executive went off the rails. I know about the baby making among certain Googlers in the legal department. I know about the behaviors which the US Department of Justice described as “monopolistic.”
When I read “What Bosses Miss about AI,” I thought immediately about Google’s recent mass market televised advertisement about uses of Google artificial intelligence. The set up is that a father (obviously interested in his progeny) turned to Google’s generative AI to craft an electronic message to the humanoid. I know “quality time” is often tough to accommodate, but an email?
The Googler who allegedly wrote the cited essay has a different take on how to use smart software. First, most big-time thinkers are content with AI performing cost-reduction activities. AI is less expensive than a humanoid. These entities require health care, retirement, a shoulder upon which to cry (a key function for personnel in the human relations department), and time off.
Another type of big-time thinker grasps the idea that smart software can make processes more efficient. The write up describes this as the “do what we do, just do it better” approach to AI. The assumption is that the process is neutral, and it can be improved. Imagine the value of AI to Vlad the Impaler!
The third category of really Big Thinker is the leader who can use AI for imagination. I like the idea of breaking a chaotic mass of use cases into categories anchored to the Big Thinkers who use the technology.
However, I noted what I think is unintentional irony in the write up. This chart shows the non-AI approach to doing what leadership is supposed to do:
What happens when a really Big Thinker uses AI to zip through this type of process. The acceleration is delivered from AI. In this Googler’s universe, I think one can assume Google’s AI plays a modest role. Here’s the payoff paragraph:
Traditional product development processes are designed based on historical data about how many ideas typically enter the pipeline. If that rate is constant or varies by small amounts (20% or 50% a year), your processes hold. But the moment you 10x or 100x the front of that pipeline because of a new scientific tool like AlphaFold or a generative AI system, the rest of the process clogs up. Stage 1 to Stage 2 might be designed to review 100 items a quarter and pass 5% to Stage 2. But what if you have 100,000 ideas that arrive at Stage 1? Can you even evaluate all of them? Do the criteria used to pass items to Stage 2 even make sense now? Whether it is a product development process or something else, you need to rethink what you are doing and why you are doing it. That takes time, but crucially, it takes imagination.
Let’s think about this advice and consider the imagination component of the Google Olympics’ advertisement.
- Google implemented a process, spent money, did “testing,” ran the advert, and promptly withdrew it. Why? The ad was annoying to humanoids.
- Google’s “imagination” did not work. Perhaps this is a failure of the Google AI and the Google leadership? The advert succeeded in making Google the focal point of some good, old-fashioned, quite humanoid humor. Laughing at Google AI is certainly entertaining, but it appears to have been something that Google’s leadership could not “imagine.”
- The Google AI obviously reflects Google engineering choices. The parent who must turn to Google AI to demonstrate love, parental affection, and support to one’s child is, in my opinion, quite Googley. Whether the action is human or not might be an interesting topics for a coffee shop discussion. For non-Googlers, the idea of talking about what many perceived as stupid, insensitive, and inhumane is probably a non-started. Just post on social media and move on.
Viewed in a larger context, the cited essay makes it clear that Googlers embrace AI. Googlers see others’ reaction to AI as ranging from doltish to informed. Google liked the advertisement well enough to pay other companies to show the message.
I suggest the following: Google leadership should ask several AI systems if proposed advertising copy can be more economical. That’s a Stage 1 AI function. Then Google leadership should ask several AI systems how the process of creating the ideas for an advertisement can be improved. That’s a Stage 2 AI function. And, finally, Google leadership should ask, “What can we do to prevent bonkers problems resulting from trying to pretend we understand people who know nothing and care less about the three “stages” of AI understanding.
Will that help out the Google? I don’t need to ask an AI system. I will go with my instinct. The answer is, “No.”
That’s one of the challenges Google faces. The company seems unable to help itself do anything other than sell ads, promote its AI system, and cruise along in quantumly supremeness.
Stephen E Arnold, August 8, 2024
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