alt Hacker NewsYeah, I'm conflicted about the use of AI for creative endeavors as much as anyone, but Google is an advertising company. It was acceptable for them to build a massive empire around mining private information for the purposes of advertisement, but generative AI is now somehow beyond the pale? People can change their mind, but Rob crashing out about AI now feels awfully revisionist.
(NB: I am currently working in AI, and have previously worked in adtech. I'm not claiming to be above the fray in any way.)
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Google's official mission was "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", not to maximize advertising sales.
Obviously now it is mostly the latter and minimally the former. What capitalism giveth, it taketh away. (Or: Capitalism without good market design that causes multiple competitors in every market doesn't work.)
It’s certainly possible to see genAI as a step beyond adtech as a waste of resources built on an unethical foundation of misuse of data. Just because you’re okay with lumping them together doesn’t mean Rob has to.
Ad tech is a scourge as well. You think Rob Pike was super happy about it? He’s not even at google anymore.
The amount of “he’s not allowed to have an opinion because” in this thread is exhausting. Nothing stands up to the purity test.