When visiting Shrewd'm with a laptop, it can be pleasant to hold Command (or Ctrl with Windows) and '+' a few times. The site scales to allow any font size, and the larger font can be pleasant to read even for Shrewds with perfect sight! For luxury Shrewdness, you can combine that with setting the browser to full screen. You'll then find yourself Shrewding a lot.
- Manlobbi
Stocks A to Z / Stocks G / Alphabet (GOOG)
No. of Recommendations: 7
An article in Wired on the challenges of using a natural language (ChatGPT) search engine:
https://www.wired.com/story/the-race-to-build-a-ch... Two salient points:
1) It's very expensive to retrain a natural language bot on a new or expanded data set
2) "AI" chatbot search may be 10x more expensive to run than an indexed search because of the amount of computing power required, while delivering questionable results.
Excerpt:
Gary Marcus, a professor emeritus at New York University and a vocal critic of AI hype, believes ChatGPT is unsuited to search because it has no true understanding of what it says. He adds that tools like ChatGPT may cause other problems for search companies by flooding the internet with AI-generated, search engine-optimized text. 'All search engines are about to have a problem,' he says.
Alex Ratner, an assistant professor at the University of Washington and cofounder of Snorkel AI, which works on training AI models more efficiently, calls ChatGPT 'legitimately an inflection' in what software can do. But he also says that it may take a while to figure out how to prevent language models like GPT from making things up. He believes that finding a way to keep them up to date with new information to keep search fresh will most likely involve new approaches to training the underlying AI models.
How long those fixes will take to invent and prove out is unclear. It may be some time before the technology can radically change the way people search for answers, even if other use cases come to pass, such as dreaming up new recipes or serving as a study or programming buddy. 'It's amazing, and I told my team that people are going to see years as pre- and post-ChatGPT,' says Chen of Moveworks. 'But whether it will replace search is a different question.'
No. of Recommendations: 2
I tried ChatGPT, for the time being google search is far more practical for my needs.
I am biased though and added to my GOOG position today given its down 7pct today...
No. of Recommendations: 1
Like map, ChatGPT will serve as an integrated but separated function to search engine. A very useful function indeed! And it would be a risk for google if its Bard isn't as good as ChatGPT.
No. of Recommendations: 1
In this video Microsoft introduced the new Bing integrated with CharGPT. Google investors need to pay attention.
<Introducing your copilot for the web: AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOeRWRJ16yY
No. of Recommendations: 5
"In this video Microsoft introduced the new Bing integrated with CharGPT. Google investors need to pay attention."
I can't crack open a investment news without hearing about AI. Google just shed 100 billion dollars or so in market cap in two days on what I gather is a perceived fear that MSFT will eat its lunch. This new Alphabet board has spoken more about AI than anything else. Just today I saw a headline that AI is not the new "cannabis" or "meme" market, thereby recognizing that the question must be asked.
From my vantage point, the question isn't "can MSFT create a helpful & legal search + integrated AI function"? Presumably the answer to that question is yes.
The question to me is whether MSFT, or another competitor to Google, can creative an alternative product that (1) has enough distance from Google's offerings (2) for long enough that (3) Google's massive market share in search is meaningfully dwindled away before Google -- which has about 100 billion in the bank to buy itself out of problems -- adequately responds.
To the extent Mr. Market is asking that question, I gather its answer is "yes", Google's lunch will be eaten, at least in part. Hence the massive drop after the embarrassing Bard mistake.
I'm skeptical.
I use Chrome on a regular basis. I have more than one gmail account, including through my alumni network (school's choice). I often search via may various web browsers' address bar, which all currently default to Google. I have a host of shared sheets with colleagues, the majority of which originated by others (never with the question, do you have sheets?, because it is assumed). Rarely does a day go by when I don't see a YouTube video. A host of other daily events in my life default to Google. All this despite me living in an Apple-product household (i.e., phones, laptops, a desktop, ipads, and headphones) and being tied to MSFT via my work software.
And all this before we get to the issue of how many will be convinced to re-discover "Bing" and "Edge", both of which have been the butt of jokes for years. Or how we will rediscover MSFT as a consumer facing brand more generally.
Let's take an example: As of today, Microsoft's marketshare of smartphone shipments, despite its once highly touted efforts to enter the market, is very safely under 1%. Android is at around 70%, Apple with almost all the remainder. With tablets, Apple and Google are at about 50/50, with all competitors again safely under 1%. MSFT continues to dominate the desktop market. Further, all of these basic ratios of market share have been very sticky for years.
So I'd like to hear a convincing theory of change. How does MSFT conquer search when the consumer facing side of the digital world is almost all Google & Apple? Apple decides to play kingmaker? Or?
No. of Recommendations: 2
<So I'd like to hear a convincing theory of change.>
If there was a convincing theory of change, Google's market cap would have dropped 50%, not a mere 10%. The chance is still good that Google's Bard will be as good as ChatGPT, therefore no reason for most google users to change habits. But the other chance also exists. No one can be sure at this time before they formally release their AI integrated search.
No. of Recommendations: 5
From what I have read about ChatGPT what seems to impress folks is how "natural" the answers are. Well-formed sentences and an overall flow. If I'm struggling with my term paper a small boost from an AI sounds pretty good, but if I'm trying to buy a widget whose name I don't really know ("It's the thingy that I use to tighten the nut that tightens the sink against the counter-top") then what I need is an interpreter of less-than perfect English. If I were to say the above phrase to a plumber s/he would know exactly what I mean, having had to do that operation many times.
Try typing that phrase into amazon.com and you get a hilarious set of options which include mascara amongst other things. But Google very quickly comes up with basin wrench, which looks like the official name, and has several ads from places like Ace Hardware for just such an item.
So I come back to my original question upstream, how do I effectively monitize AI in a way that eats Google's lunch? Clearly if I'm selling term papers the new kid is a winner. But if I'm selling ads Google seems competent. Again, what am I missing?
Rgds,
HH/Sean
No. of Recommendations: 5
Again, what am I missing?
I think it's a matter of emphasis. In the short term I doubt AI is going to 'eat Google's lunch', but you don't have to kill a company to damage it. Look at what Apple's simple change in 'sharing' wrought with Facebook, the stock cratered almost 75%. (Irrationally, in my view, Facebook still takes in gobs of cash - more than all four of the major television networks, for example.) [Yes, there are other issues, like Zuck's obsession with his goofy headset - but from $400 to $100? Really?]
But say AI does find a way to 'naturalize' search (and more to the point, suppose it's not Google that finds it and suppresses it). Amazon has already found a way to steal those ad dollars that had been flowing to Google. It's small potatoes in the scheme of things, but he, $18B here, $18B there, pretty soon it's real money. If (say) Microsoft's AI somehow encroaches on Google, and don't ask me how, if I knew I'd be getting the big bucks, they can run it 'just because', not even as a money maker - but to the detriment of Google, a thorn in their Bing side since forever. It would be a nice portfolio enhancement even at break even.
(The change in Apple's Privacy rules didn't help Apple nearly as much as it hurt Facebook, for instance.)
OK, I'm scattered here, but I'm just saying it doesn't have to be linear. Weird stuff happens. (Maybe I need an AI bot to help me organize my thoughts! LOL.)
No. of Recommendations: 2
At the risk of abusing a deceased equine I would suggest those interested in learning more about ChatGPT read the following link:
https://acoup.blog/2023/02/17/collections-on-chatg...Bret Devereaux is a Prof. of History at UNC Chapel Hill and writes mostly about ancient history but, since he also teaches classes where essays are on the bill of fare he has some thoughts on essay-generation by ChatGPT and its ilk. TLDR: ChatGPT is really good at generating words that seem to be related to the prompt and are often seen near each other. It doesn't think so has no idea whether the words have any validity. Thus it is capable of stating facts that are clearly wrong and of making up citations that don't exist. Any professor who actually cares what the student is writing will quickly realize that the essay that was handed in was not written with thought in mind, only with probabilities.
As to how this affects Google, IMHO the public will like
shiny! for a while but in the long run its model for indexing the web seems rock-solid and as a result its ability to sell ads better than the competition should remain.
Rgds,
HH/Sean
No. of Recommendations: 1
Regarding Prof. Bret Devereaux's essay about ChatGPT, all he said is that ChatGPT is not a human. We know that. ChatGPT passes duck test: "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.", or more scientifically the Turing test:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test
No. of Recommendations: 3
I came away with a different conclusion, namely that it did not pass the Turing test. Mind you, the professor is asking his students to write about very specific topics and expecting them to include sources. And in this case ChatGPT fails miserably, inter alia, for making up sources. If you are content to ask a sufficiently general question (e.g. write prose the way Hemingway did) then sure, it will cobble together a paragraph of punchy declarative sentences. But since we know Hemingway has shuffled off his mortal coil it too fails the Turing test (or rather, the Hemingway test). I'm sure there are things that ChatGPT are adequate at, but at least one professor has concluded that declaring the death of the college essay is premature.
Rgds,
HH/Sean
No. of Recommendations: 0
The Turing test is vaguely defined. It doesn't define what level of questions to ask and what level of intelligent or expertise the judge is. I would say ChatGPT is more intelligent than a regular high school student on most subjects. Should a high school student be considered an intelligent being?
No. of Recommendations: 0
No. of Recommendations: 3
Not Google specific, but'
Apple Rejects ChatGPT-Powered Email App Update; Demands Age Restriction (Report)
BlueMail can't add AI features to App Store offering without limiting kids' access because of potentially inappropriate content https://www.thewrap.com/apple-rejects-chatgpt-powe...
