AI: Google's bagful of AI releases including Gemini 2.0. RTZ #567

...matching and raising the AI upgrades flow by OpenAI et al

Google responded to OpenAI’s 12 days of Shipmas, video LLM Sora et al, with a plethora of LLM AI releases kind of all at once, including Gemini 2.0 of its flagship AI models.

Bloomberg summarized it thus:

“Google debuted a new version of its flagship artificial intelligence model that it said is twice as fast as its previous version and will power virtual agents that assist users.”

“The new model, Gemini 2.0, can generate images and audio across languages, and can assist during Google searches and coding projects, the company said Wednesday. The new capabilities of Gemini “make it possible to build agents that can think, remember, plan, and even take action on your behalf,” said Tulsee Doshi, a director of product management at the company, in a briefing with reporters.”

“Alphabet Inc.’s Google has been working to ensure that the latest wave of AI tools pushed by OpenAI and other startups do not loosen its hold on search and advertising. The company has so far held onto its market share in search, but OpenAI is weaving more search features into ChatGPT, putting pressure on the industry leader. Both companies’ ultimate aim is to build artificial general intelligence, or software that can perform tasks as well or better than humans.”

AI Reasoning and Agents is of course the roadmap that OpenAI laid out on the long-term road to AGI a few months ago. And the LLM AI industry is laser focused on the template in this AI Tech Wave.

Axios lay it out the details in “Gemini 2.0 is the next chapter for Google AI”:

“Google, like others in the industry, is heavily touting the potential of AI agents. But the technology needs a boost in performance and accuracy if it's going to be able to act reliably with less human supervision.

• "You actually want a system to not just give you information, but actually go and be able to complete tasks for you," Hassabis said this week in a video interview from Sweden, where on Tuesday he accepted this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry.

  

“Catch up quick: Google Wednesday introduced Gemini 2.0 Flash, which the company says is twice as fast as its predecessor and more powerful than the larger "pro" version of Gemini 1.5.”

• “It also announced a number of prototypes and products built on top of the new technology, with additional versions of Gemini 2.0 set to debut in January.”

“The big picture: Hassabis said building AI systems that can take action on their own has been DeepMind's focus since its early days teaching computers to play games such as chess and Go.”

• "We were always working towards agent-based systems," Hassabis said. "From the beginning, they were able to plan and then carry out actions and achieve objectives."

• “Hassabis said AI systems that can act as semi-autonomous agents also represent an important intermediate step on the path toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) — AI that can match or surpass human capabilities.”

• "If we think about the path to AGI, then obviously you need a system that can reason, break down problems and carry out actions in the world," he said.”

“Zoom in: Google is now incorporating Gemini 2.0 in a variety of ways into both research projects and shipping products.”

• “The new model is beginning to power the AI Overviews shown atop Google search results.”

Google had other AI products and software to roll out as well:
”Google is also using Gemini 2.0 in a new version of its experimental Project Astra interactive AI assistant. (Read our hands-on look at the updated Astra.)”

• “The company also debuted agents for gaming and coding, as well as Project Mariner, an experimental Chrome plugin that can take action across various websites.”

“Between the lines: Hassabis acknowledged that Google and others are running out of room to improve large language models just by increasing their size.”

• "There is evidence of diminishing returns I think across the industry," Hassabis said, noting that at least when it comes to text, companies are running out of new sources for training data.”

“Yes, but: Though the new generation of models may not be delivering leaps as staggering as their predecessors, the improvements are still meaningful, Hassabis said — but he believes large language models alone won't get the industry to AGI.”

And Google underlined its expectation on the timeline to AGI:

• "It's always been my expectation and my contention for years that we still need probably two or three more big breakthroughs of the level that we came up with in the past with deep reinforcement learning and transformers specifically...to get to AGI," he said.”

  

More details on the Google line up available here, including a new Trillium AI chip that delivers higher processing speeds for Gemini 2.0.

It’s like Santa unloaded a full bag of AI goodies all at once vs OpenAI pacing itself this month. Google is more than holding its own in the AI upgrades race.

The pace of LLM AI products by the leading LLM AI products has barely begun to accelerate this AI Tech Wave. Expect a lot more from all the major companies, and the smaller startups early next year. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)