> Google has world-class research teams that have produced unbelievable models, without any plan at all on how those make it into their products beyond forcing a chat window into Google Drive.

NotebookLM is a genuinely novel AI-first product.

YouTube gaining an “ask a question about this video” button, this is a perfect example of how to sprinkle AI on an existing product.

Extremely slow, but the obvious incremental addition of Gemini to Docs is another example.

I think folks sleep on Google around here. They are slow but they have so many compelling iterative AI usecases that even a BigTech org can manage it eventually.

Apple and Microsoft are rightly getting panned, Apple in particular is inexcusable (but I think they will have a unique offering when they finally execute on the blindingly obvious strategic play that they are naturally positioned for).

Google was the absolute king of AI (previously "ML") for at least 10 years of the last 20. They are also an absolute behemoth of tech and have consistently ranked among the most valuable companies in the world for multiple years, valued at trillions of dollars today. Hell, they're on version 7 and production year 10 of their custom AI ASIC family.

When considering the above, the amount of non-force-fed "modern AI" use they've been able to drive is supposed to be shown by things to the level of a question button on YouTube and some incremental overlaying of Gemini to Docs? What does that leave the companies without the decade head start, custom AI hardware, and trillions to spend to look to actually do worth a damn in their products with the tech?

I'm (cautiously) optimistic AI will have another round or two of fast gains again in the next 5 years. Without it I don't think it leaves the realm of niche/limited uses in products in that time frame. At least certainly not enough that building AI into your product is expected to make sense most of the time yet.

> YouTube gaining an “ask a question about this video” button, this is a perfect example of how to sprinkle AI on an existing product.

lol if this is the perfect example, "AI" in general is in a sad place. I've tried to use it a handful of times and each time it confidently produced wrong results in a way that derailed my quest for an answer. In my experience it's an anti-feature in that it seems to make things worse.

The best and latest Gemini Pro model is not SOTA. The only good things it has are the huge context and the low API price. But I had to stop using it because it kept contradicting itself in the walls of text it produces. (My paid account was forced to pay for AI with a price hike so I tried for a couple of months to see if I could make it work with prompt engineering, no luck).

Google researchers are great, but Engineering is dropping like a stone, and management is a complete disaster. Starting with their Indian McKinsey CEO moving core engineering teams to India.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/01/google-cuts-hundreds-of-core...

> when they finally execute on the blindingly obvious strategic play that they are naturally positioned for

What's that? It's not obvious to me, anyway.

The biggest counterexample would be that dead-ai-autotranslate-voice sucking every gram of joy out of watching your favourite creators, with no ability to turn it off.

Yeah to be clear, I think Google is the strongest in AI product development of the FAANG companies. I included them in the list because the most complaints I see about AI product integration among FANNG comes from Google products; the incessant bundling of Gemini chatboxes in every Workspace product.

> YouTube gaining an “ask a question about this video” button, this is a perfect example of how to sprinkle AI on an existing product.

I remember when I was trying to find a YouTube video, I remembered the contents but not the name. I tried google search and existing LLMs including Gemini, and none could find it.

It would also be useful for security: give the AI a recording and ask when the suspicious person shows up, the item is stolen, the event happens, etc. But unfortunately also useful for tyranny…

> Apple in particular is inexcusable

This isn't me defending apple, but, let me play out a little scenario:

"hey siri, book me tickets to see tonight's game"

"sure thing, champ"

<<time passes>>

"I have booked the tickets, they are now in your apple wallet"

<<opens up wallet, sees that there is 1x £350 ticket to see "the game", a interactive lesson in pickup artistry>>

You buy apple because "it works" (yes, most of that is hype, but the vertical integration is actually good, not great for devs/tinkerers though.) AI just adds in a 10-30% chance of breaking what seems to be a simple workflow.

You don't notice with chatGPT, because you expect it to be the dipshit in your pocket. You don't expect apple to be shit. (although if you've tried to ask for a specific track whilst driving, you know how shit that is. )

> YouTube gaining an “ask a question about this video” button, this is a perfect example of how to sprinkle AI on an existing product.

> Extremely slow, but the obvious incremental addition of Gemini to Docs is another example.

These are great examples of insulting and invasive introductions of LLMs into already functional workflows. These are anti-features.

If its really useful, how long do you think it will take Google to kill it ? ;-)

Those examples are interesting and novel, but don't anywhere near live up to the promise of the next great technological revolution, greater than even the internet. I'm fairly sure if an all-knowing genie were to tell Google that this is the best AI gets, their interest in it would drop pretty quickly.

I think for most people, if NotebookLM were to disappear overnight it'd be a shame but something you can live with. There'll be a few who do heavily rely on it, but then I wouldn't be surprised to hear that at least one person heavily relies on the "I'm feeling lucky" button, or in other words, xkcd 1172

I mean Microsoft hosts key AI models in their AI Foundry, I don't think they're hurting.

https://ai.azure.com/catalog