Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google is sure: Google will add conversational artificial intelligence functions to its search engine. Responding to questions from Wall Street Journal“/em>, it allows us to learn more about Google’s plans and goals for conversational AI.
Since the beginning of the year, it’s been the AI war, generated by OpenAI and ChatGPT, its chatbot ” cleverwhich offers several uses. But if there is a battle, it is also and above all between Microsoft and Google. The first is going very quickly: Bing has merged with ChatGPT and its Copilot promises to improve productivity on the Office suite. As for the second, it seems that he takes his time more, to avoid making blunders (which does not necessarily work). At the head of the bow, Google Bard, its AI conversational system which wants to compete with ChatGPT. Google seems ready to add it to its search engine, if we are to believe Sundar Pichai’s confidences with the wall street journal .
Google wants to have answers to everything
What Sundar Pichai highlights is that chatbots such as Bing, ChatGPT or the more confidential You search engine do not represent a threat to Google as a search engine. An assurance that it must however display: the American newspaper recalls that this activity “represents more than half of the turnover of the parent company Alphabet”, or 162 billion dollars for advertising revenues directly linked to search. The stakes are therefore high for Google: to miss the integration of such a powerful tool into the service that made it what it has become would almost be to bury itself.
He adds, however, thatadvances in artificial intelligence would strengthen Google’s ability to meet a wide range of search queries”, finding more opportunities today. Indeed, Google has been working on so-called language models for a long time.extended», abbreviated as LLM. Its most famous model is undoubtedly LaMDA, which had made itself known by an engineer who declared to anyone who would listen that this AI was endowed with sensitivity. But so far, apart from demonstrations, we haven’t seen any real application of this model, especially in research. Sundar Pichai confides that “Google is currently testing several new search products, such as versions that allow users to ask follow-up questions to their initial queries.Also, we know that Google is carrying out AI integration tests in Gmail, to write its emails automatically.
Unfortunately, Sundar Pichai refused to give a deployment date without a waiting list: for the moment, you have to register. We can assume that the CEO reserves the big announcements for the Google I / O, the company’s major annual conference which will take place on May 10.
Why Google wants to spend the second on AI
Google faces several threats hovering over its market today. The biggest is obviously its main competitor in online research: Microsoft. Its Bing Chat has created a competitive advantage for the search engine over Google. Beyond the question ofperformanceof the service, it gives Microsoft a reason why we will use it more than Google. The latter must then resolve this imbalance as soon as possible.
The other threat is economic: in a context of inflation and cost rationalization, Google announced last January the dismissal of 12,000 employees, or 6% of its payroll. However, the web giant is far from the only tech player affected: since 2022, 300,000 employees in the sector would have been laid off. At Google, it might not stop: thewall street journalwrote that “Google chief financial officer Ruth Porat told employees last week that they should expect further spending cuts“. Reductions that range from catering, to the benefits offered to employees through a slower pace of hiring. During the interview, Sundar Pichai did not directly mention a new wave of layoffs. However, he said he was continuing with long-term savings efforts, adding that there was still work to be done. Going faster in the deployment of Bard in Google would be a way for the company to see its stock market rating go up and become a little more attractive again.
Google’s reservations about artificial intelligence
On the other hand, the company has some reservations about AI tools. In this regard, Google could be trapped by… itself. If Google is not going as fast as Microsoft, it is not only because of a lack of vision, or technical mastery. There is of course the image issue: putting an unreliable artificial intelligence online, which can say anything like ChatGPT or the new Bing can do. The stakes are also financial: the blunder of Google Bard during its presentation cost the company 100 billion dollars, following a fall in its stock market valuation. To go further, Google must also think of a way to monetize Bard in its search engine. If users use traditional search less, it also means that they click less on advertising links and therefore Google earns less money.
We were addressing the economic question and it also affects Google’s investments in AI. Sundar Pichai recalls that “AI technology requires enormous computing power to process the calculations used to produce a human-like conversation.The CEO adds that Google must adapt the use of its resources dedicated to AI while managing its costs.
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