11 months ago
117 Things got weird astatine yesterday’s Google I/O league close from the jump, erstwhile the duck deed the stage.
The time began with a philharmonic show described arsenic a “generative AI experimentation featuring Dan Deacon and Google’s MusicLM, Phenaki, and Bard AI tools.” It wasn’t wide precisely however overmuch of it was machine-made and however overmuch was human. There was a long, lyrically rambling dissertation astir gathering a duck with lips. Deacon informed the assemblage that we were each successful a set called Chiptune and launched into a opus with assorted chiptune riffs layered connected apical of each other. Later helium had a opus astir oat milk? I judge the lyrics were wholly AI generated. Someone wearing a duck suit with lipstick came retired and danced connected stage. It was each precise confusing.
Then again, everything astir beingness successful the AI epoch is simply a spot confusing and weird. And this was, nary doubt, the AI show. It was Google I/O arsenic Google AI. So overmuch truthful that connected Twitter, the internet’s remark section, idiosyncratic aft idiosyncratic utilized #GoogleIO to kick astir each the AI talk, and exhorted Google to get connected with it and get to the phones. (There was an eagerly anticipated caller phone, the Pixel Fold. It folds.)
Yet erstwhile Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who erstwhile ran the company’s efforts with Android, stepped connected stage, helium made it wide what helium was determination to speech about. It wasn’t a caller phone—it was AI. He opened by going consecutive astatine the ways AI is successful everything the institution does now. With generative AI, helium said, “we are reimagining each our halfway products, including Search.”
I don’t deliberation that’s rather right.
At Google successful 2023, it seems beauteous wide that AI itself present is the halfway product. Or astatine slightest it’s the backbone of that product, a cardinal constituent that manifests itself successful antithetic forms. As my workfellow Melissa Heikkilä enactment it successful her study connected the company’s efforts: Google is throwing generative AI astatine everything.
The institution made this constituent successful 1 demo aft another, each greeting long. A Gmail demo showed however generative AI tin constitute an elaborate email to an hose to assistance you get a refund. The caller Magic Editor successful Google Photos volition not lone region unwanted elements but reposition radical and objects successful photos, marque the entity brighter and bluer, and past set the lighting successful the photograph truthful that each that doctoring looks natural.
In Docs, the AI volition make a afloat occupation statement from conscionable a fewer words. It volition make spreadsheets. Help you program your abrogation successful Search, set the code of your substance messages to beryllium much nonrecreational (or much personable), springiness you an “immersive view” successful Maps, summarize your email, constitute machine code, seamlessly construe lip-sync videos. It is truthful profoundly integrated into not lone the Android operating strategy but the hardware itself that Google present makes “the lone telephone with AI astatine its center,” arsenic Google’s Rick Osterloh said successful describing the G2 chip. Phew.
Google I/O is simply a highly, highly scripted event. For months present the institution has faced disapproval that its AI efforts were being outpaced by the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT oregon Microsoft Bing. Alarm bells were sounding internally, too. Today felt similar a long-planned reply to that. Taken together, the demos came crossed arsenic a benignant of flex—a mode to amusement what the institution has nether the hood and however it tin deploy that exertion passim its existing, massively fashionable products (Pichai noted that the institution has 5 antithetic products with much than 2 cardinal users).
And yet astatine the aforesaid time, it is intelligibly trying to locomotion a line, showing disconnected what it tin bash but successful ways that won’t, you know, freak everyone out.
Three years ago, the institution forced retired Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of its ethical AI team, fundamentally implicit a insubstantial that raised concerns astir the dangers of ample connection models. Gebru’s concerns person since go mainstream. Her departure, and the fallout from it, marked a turning constituent successful the speech astir the dangers of unchecked AI. One would anticipation Google learned from it; from her.
And then, conscionable past week, Geoffrey Hinton announced helium was stepping down from Google, successful ample portion truthful he’d beryllium escaped to sound the alarm doorbell astir the dire consequences of accelerated advancements successful AI that helium fears could soon alteration it to surpass quality intelligence. (Or, arsenic Hinton enactment it, it is “quite conceivable that humanity is conscionable a passing signifier successful the improvement of intelligence.”)
And so, I/O yesterday was a acold outcry from the lawsuit successful 2018, erstwhile the institution gleefully demonstrated Duplex, showcasing however Google Assistant could marque automated calls to tiny businesses without ever letting the radical connected those calls cognize they were interacting with an AI. It was an unthinkable demo. And 1 that made precise galore radical profoundly uneasy.
Again and again astatine this year’s I/O, we heard astir responsibility. James Manyika, who leads the company’s exertion and nine program, opened by talking astir the wonders AI has wrought, peculiarly astir macromolecule folding, but was speedy to modulation to the ways the institution is reasoning astir misinformation, noting however it would watermark generated images and alluding to guardrails to forestall their misuse.
There was a demo of however Google tin deploy representation provenance to antagonistic misinformation, debunking an representation hunt efficaciously by showing the archetypal clip it (in the illustration connected stage, a fake photograph purporting to amusement that the satellite landing was a hoax) was indexed. It was a small spot of grounding amidst each the awe and wonder, operating astatine scale.
And past … connected to the phones. The caller Google Pixel Fold scored the biggest applause enactment of the day. People similar gadgets.
The telephone whitethorn fold, but for maine it was among the slightest mind-bending things I saw each day. And successful my head, I kept returning to 1 of the earliest examples we saw: a photograph of a pistillate lasting successful beforehand of immoderate hills and a waterfall.
Magic Editor erased her backpack strap. Cool! And it besides made the cloudy entity look a batch much blue. Reinforcing this, successful different example—this clip with a kid sitting connected a seat holding balloons—Magic Editor erstwhile again made the time brighter and past adjusted each the lighting successful the photos truthful the sunshine would look much natural. More existent than real.
How acold bash we privation to spell here? What’s the extremity end we are aiming for? Ultimately, bash we conscionable skip the abrogation altogether and make immoderate pretty, beauteous pictures? Can we supplant our memories with sunnier, much idealized versions of the past? Are we making world better? Is everything much beautiful? Is everything better? Is this each very, precise cool? Or thing else? Something we haven’t realized yet?
