John Hennessy
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
by Google Bard’s announcement last week was intended to show that the company has similar technology to the popular ChatGPT chatbot, although it still has a long way to go before it’s ready to launch, Alphabet president John Hennessy said today. Monday.
“I think Google was hesitant to make this product because they thought it wasn’t really ready for a product, but, I think as a demonstration vehicle, it’s a product.” great technology,” said Hennessy, who was once chief executive officer. President of parent company Google as of 2018. He went on to say that he thinks general AI is still one to two years away from becoming a truly useful tool for the masses.
Hennessy spoke at a summit hosted by venture firm Celesta Capital in Mountain View on Monday. He has a long history in the field of technology, as a professor, researcher and company founder, and also served as President of Stanford University from 2000 to 2016.
Hennessy, who spoke on key trends for 2023, briefly addressed Google’s position in light of the sudden interest in ChatGPT and innovative AI. Last week, the company show its response to ChatGPT in a conversational technology it calls Bard. However, there is an announcement appearance rushed to accommodate Microsoft’s introduction of ChatGPT technology into Bing, and investors sent the company’s stock down 9% that day.
Hennessy said Google was slow to roll out its ChatGPT competitor in part because it still gave the wrong answer. Google is one of the most used consumer products, and organizations like YouTube and Search have sometimes provided inaccurate information in the past.
That past seems to be inspiring caution at the company.
“You don’t want to put in place a system that says the wrong things or sometimes says malicious things,” Hennessy said during the conference, echoing CEO Sundar Pichai’s words. in December when the staff asked if it lags behind ChatGPT. He acknowledged the tech industry must “be a little more careful about the situation we create in civil society”.
“I think these models are still in the early stages,” Hennessey told CNBC on Monday. Find a way to get them into the product line and do it in a way that’s sensitive to correctness, as well as issues like toxicity, and I think the industry is struggling with that.”
He added, “I don’t think Vint predicted that people would use the internet to do evil things,” referring to Google chief executive Vint Cerf, one of the early developers of the underlying technology. internet version.
“I’m in an era where if you spam someone, you’ve been removed by society. Now, I get ten spam messages for every real message, so the world has changed and us must think about the role technology plays in making sure we have a functioning democracy, we have people who can live and work together, we don’t have grudges or some kind of monopoly. other harm. I think we really need to work on that.”
Hennessy also said he’s impressed with ChatGPT’s capabilities and that it’s growing faster than he anticipated.
“I was impressed by two things — first of all, the quality of natural language’s ability to both interpret a query and respond to something — general functionality. I get the impression that it manages, at least on a rather superficial level, to get a lot of things right.”
He declined to comment specifically on the public reaction to Google’s Bard announcement last week.
Hennessy later said it was a good time for Silicon Valley startups who could benefit from get talent from big tech in the ongoing layoff cycle.
“Startups have such an important role in the Valley,” he said. ”
