Over the past three decades, a handful of
products like Netscape’s web browser, Google’s search engine and Apple’s iPhone
have truly upended the tech industry and made what came before them look like
lumbering dinosaurs.
اضافة اعلان
Last month, an experimental chatbot called
ChatGPT made its case to be the industry’s next big disrupter. It can serve up
information in clear, simple sentences, rather than just a list of internet
links. It can explain concepts in ways people can easily understand. It can
even generate ideas from scratch, including business strategies, Christmas gift
suggestions, blog topics, and vacation plans.
Although ChatGPT still has plenty of room
for improvement, its release led Google’s management to declare a “code red”.
For Google, this was akin to pulling the fire alarm. Some fear the company may
be approaching a moment that the biggest Silicon Valley outfits dread — the
arrival of an enormous technological change that could upend the business.
For more than 20 years, the Google search
engine has served as the world’s primary gateway to the internet. But with a
new kind of chatbot technology poised to reinvent or even replace traditional
search engines, Google could face the first serious threat to its main search
business. One Google executive described the efforts as make or break for
Google’s future.
ChatGPT was released by an aggressive
research lab called OpenAI, and Google is among the many other companies, labs,
and researchers that have helped build this technology. But experts believe the
tech giant could struggle to compete with the newer, smaller companies
developing these chatbots, because of the many ways the technology could damage
its business.
Even if Google perfects chatbots, it must tackle another issue: Does this technology cannibalize the company’s lucrative search ads?
Google has spent several years working on
chatbots and, like other big tech companies, has aggressively pursued
artificial intelligence technology. Google has already built a chatbot that
could rival ChatGPT. In fact, the technology at the heart of OpenAI’s chatbot
was developed by researchers at Google.
Called LaMDA, or Language Model for
Dialogue Applications, Google’s chatbot received enormous attention in the
summer when a Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, claimed it was sentient. This was
not true, but the technology showed how much chatbot technology had improved in
recent months.
Google may be reluctant to deploy this new
tech as a replacement for online search, however, because it is not suited to
delivering digital ads, which accounted for more than 80 percent of the
company’s revenue last year.
Because these new chatbots learn their
skills by analyzing huge amounts of data posted to the internet, they have a
way of blending fiction with fact. They deliver information that can be biased
against women and people of color. They can generate toxic language, including
hate speech.
All of that could turn people against
Google and damage the corporate brand it has spent decades building. As OpenAI
has shown, newer companies may be more willing to take their chances with
complaints in exchange for growth.
Even if Google perfects chatbots, it must
tackle another issue: Does this technology cannibalize the company’s lucrative
search ads? If a chatbot is responding to queries with tight sentences, there
is less reason for people to click on advertising links.
As the technology advances, industry experts believe, Google must decide whether it will overhaul its search engine and make a full-fledged chatbot the face of its flagship service.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, has been
involved in a series of meetings to define Google’s AI strategy, and he has
upended the work of numerous groups inside the company to respond to the threat
that ChatGPT poses, according to a memo and audio recording obtained by the New
York Times. Employees have also been tasked with building AI products that can
create artwork and other images, such as OpenAI’s DALL-E technology, which has
been used by more than three million people.
From now until a major conference expected
to be hosted by Google in May, teams within Google’s research, Trust and
Safety, and other departments have been reassigned to help develop and release
new AI prototypes and products.
As the technology advances, industry
experts believe, Google must decide whether it will overhaul its search engine
and make a full-fledged chatbot the face of its flagship service.
Google has already been working to enhance
its search engine using the same technology that underpins chatbots like LaMDA
and ChatGPT. The technology — a “large language model” — is not merely a way
for machines to carry on a conversation.
Today, this technology helps the Google
search engine highlight results that aim to directly answer a question you have
asked. In the past, if you typed “Do aestheticians stand a lot at work?” into
Google, it did not understand what you were asking. Now, Google correctly
responds with a short blurb describing the physical demands of life in the skin
care industry.
Many experts believe Google will continue
to take this approach, incrementally improving its search engine rather than
overhauling it.
Other companies, including Vectara and a
search engine called Neeva, are working to enhance search technology in similar
ways. But as OpenAI and other companies improve their chatbots — working to
solve problems with toxicity and bias — this could become a viable replacement
for today’s search engines. Whoever gets there first could be the winner.
Read more Opinion and Analysis
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
