While ultimately I think this is probably a very good organizational change, to have similar teams working on similar projects under the same leadership, it does seem to spell trouble in the short term.
I can read between the lines that Google is done having Deepmind floating out there independently creating foundational research and not products. Sounds like this is a sign that they've internally recognized they are behind and need all their resources pulling in the same directions towards responding to the OpenAI/Microsoft threat.
It also seems to signal that they won't have their answer to Bing in the short term. As they say, nine women can't make a baby in a month and adding people to a late project makes it later.
This sounds about right. I think it's acknowledged that OpenAI's strength has been product rather than just pure research - google and facebook both have way more publications and deeper benches, but aren't really commercializing anything.
The shift to commercialization (by companies) was inevitable. It's also a bit sad though. Somebody still has to do the fundamental stuff, and Google (along with Facebook) have been amazing for the ecosystem, especially open source. If everyone is going the OpenAI route, the golden age of AI is going be be over as we to the profit extraction phase
I see your point, though I think it's ultimately going to be good for AI progress. So far the research has been mostly a vanity project for these companies. Who knew if there was really any gold at the end of those rainbows. Eventually the appetite for participating in the research paper olympics was going to run out, probably right at the same time that monetary policy stayed tight for too long.
The possibility of building a trillion dollar company on this tech means a whole lot more investment, more people entering the field. More people excited to tinker in their spare time and more practical knowledge gained. More GPUs in more data centers. Eventually things will loop back around to pure research with that many more resources applied.
It sure beats an AI winter, which probably would have been the alternative had LLMs not taken off.
> google and facebook both have way more publications and deeper benches, but aren't really commercializing anything.
I am absolutely certain that Google and Facebook are productizing their AI research and integrating it with their money-making products and measurably earning more money from the effort. Perhaps what you mean by "commercializing" is packaging AI in direct-to-consumer APIs? IMO, that market is not currently large enough to be worth the effort, but is almost certain GCloud will continue to expand ML support.
> Somebody still has to do the fundamental stuff, and Google (along with Facebook) have been amazing for the ecosystem, especially open source
A new golden age for university research? It has been completely made irrelevant in the last 3 years, and now it has the chance to capture fundamental research back. Let corporations worry about products, as has always been.
I can read between the lines that Google is done having Deepmind floating out there independently creating foundational research and not products. Sounds like this is a sign that they've internally recognized they are behind and need all their resources pulling in the same directions towards responding to the OpenAI/Microsoft threat.
It also seems to signal that they won't have their answer to Bing in the short term. As they say, nine women can't make a baby in a month and adding people to a late project makes it later.