People often forget that Google was behind Mu Zero, which IMO is the most important AI paper of the decade, not the Transformer one, because they effectively showed how models can learn how to search.

For example, for self driving, it makes much more sense to treat it like a game, where the model learns the evolution of the surrounding environment, and learns how its own actions affect it, and can MCTS its way into correct behavior - specifically because once it learns the environment dynamics, it can internally simulate crashes and retrain itself.

If this process is refined (namely the functions that control direction of training) , you can pretty much start training a model on the dataset of real world (sights, sounds, physical interactions, as well as digital ones), and as it learns the environment, it can be further and further refined, and then we get to the point where it can self evolve its decision making to be truly considered "intelligent".

> It is interesting how google turned the tide on GenAI race, and seems to be leading the pack

I think this is perhaps due to Google combining Google Brain and DeepMind, and putting Demis Hassabis at the helm?

I agree, Google is very much leading the pack in AI now. My worry is that they have mentioned recently that they are less inclined to release research into the open if they think it will give their competition a step-up. Demis is more scientist than business-man, so perhaps there's hope that he will be willing to continue to release research.