🔮 Exponential View #519: Google’s silicon curtain; people’s prompt; good crisis; AI tag team; Waymo in Japan, unstoppable solar & brain research++
An insider's weekly guide to AI and exponential technology
Hi, it’s Azeem with our weekend email which will give you the much-needed distance from the headlines. Google is going from strength to strength, releasing its new Ironwood TPU, while a looming economic squeeze might accelerate AI adoption in ways we’ve seen before with past technologies. And all the while, individuals seem to be racing ahead in using AI tools day-to-day, even as big organizations struggle to keep up. Let’s dive in.
Google caught the wave
Two years ago, I warned that Google could be facing a tidal wave like never before. I wrote:
It can be hard for successful firms like Google to address threats like [OpenAI]. The firm has some of the best research, development and engineering in this field. So too did many firms facing competitive pressure before it. Digital Equipment led in minicomputers as IBM launched the PC. Microsoft had tons of online and Internet know-how. Nokia knew more about smartphone operating systems than either Apple or Android. [...] If the start page of the Internet is shifting further from the browser and Google.com (or its preferential position on iPhones), that is more of a challenge. [...] Microsoft, under Bill Gates, survived the Internet tidal wave. Google, too, could prosper during the GPT tidal wave. But there is a lot to play for.
This week, Google has shown us that it’s clearly pulling ahead in terms of model performance. The chart below shows the Pareto frontier of LLM models – that is, for every combination of price vs performance, which model performs the best. Google’s family of Gemini models trounce everyone else… for now. Undoubtedly, there is some good research driving these gains, but is Google’s secret weapon its decade-long investment in custom hardware?
Undoubtedly, there is some good research driving these gains, but is Google’s secret weapon its decade-long investment in custom hardware?