alt Hacker NewsI remember when there was a guy at Google years a few years ago that was convinced that they had an internal, sentient creature in their labs (I think maybe 4 years ago?)
If I’m not mistaken, after the media cycle, he lost his job for breaking confidentiality.
That was the opposite of marketing, Google really didn’t get how to turn this into a product until ChatGPT happened.
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jabwd • today at 1:00 PM
They most likely understood that it wasn't viable for anything. OpenAI just yolo'd it and now we're dealing with the fallout. I'm fairly certain that any management layer at google isn't going to say yes to "invest 5 billion to make 10 million" scheme that OpenAI, Anthropic, are currently running.
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player1234 • today at 11:17 AM
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Google is the leader, they really don't want AI to be a success, it only comes with a risk of disruption. They probably don't even really believe it's going to be that big of a deal. They are only in that game to hedge; sure they have wasted a trillion dollars if AI doesn't come through, but they will earn that back in 3-5 years. So why would they need to do deranged marketing stunts and sacrifice their credibility for that?
If OpenAI or Anthropic doesn't turn this into a trillion dollar industry FAST, they are cooked. The strategy of building up fear around your product is risky, but necessary. There is simply no way to grow the AI business fast enough if they can't talk directly to the CEOs and bypass input from the employees, and baba yaga stories are perfect for that. Every time the CEO hears an employee say that the AI isn't working great for him, he hears an employee that's scared for his job or for his life, dismisses it, and sends out a mandate that everyone needs to prompt an AI every time they as much as need to go to the toilet.