Google’s businesses are very broad and durable. But Google being the only company in the world without access (except for GDM+labs) to a competent coding agent will take a toll.
We’ll see how long Google can hold out hoping for GDM to create something that is competitive.
I’m guess that within 6 months Google will give up on coding and finally let their devs use Claude/Codex.
This isn’t a security problem, this is a GDM issue with GDM’s promises being far beyond their ability.
> But Google being the only company in the world without access (except for GDM+labs) to a competent coding agent will take a toll.
I doubt it. I use Gemini CLI daily because Gemini is what work pays for, and I have a personal Claude account. The difference is not that great, especially if you're not doing full vibe-coding. It's unlikely to have the kind of effect you're describing.
I look forward to seeing that play out in the market, if true. But from what I've seen, it really isn't.
If you're talking about the ability to churn out low-stakes systems like websites, or variations on existing widely available systems, then perhaps. But once you get to more complex systems, especially large already existing systems, all LLMs today need significant ongoing assistance to prevent them from going off the rails and down rabbit holes. At that point, the advantage you're claiming tends to evaporate.
Many of the Chinese companies are doing very impressive open-loop sim2real. They make great demonstrations. They are not great at dealing with the real world and unpredictable environments.
(That's not true of all Chinese companies - some are doing really impressive work with closed loop systems in unpredictable environments. But many of the highly viewed ones with coordinated dance performances or martial arts are intended more as theater to government financial sponsors than useful function. The technically impressive performances do not look as visually impressive.)
those were impressive but were also RC. I think an important part of robotics is not just the mechanics of humanoid motion, but the independent control of those mechanics.
Most people don't understand how powerless police are to find criminals. That they catch them at all is often amazing. I have firsthand knowledge of this from a tragic loss in my family. The investigation was severely hindered because investigators could not utilize cell location data, despite knowing someone was present at the scene. Police spent an extensive amount of time trying to identify them without success. When the identity was eventually discovered through entirely different avenues, it confirmed the individual had a cell phone on them. The location data would have resolved the identification trivially. We should enable this capability and put strict "guardrails" on its use.
I have no doubt this geo fencing data solves crimes and I don't even think it's as bad as e.g. the long surveillance in Carpenter.
The problem is that the police are going to start using like they do with much more precise DNA data, and more innocent people are going to caught in the net.
The bar to convict someone (or, more likely, to convince an innocent person to take a plea deal) is not as high ("beyond a reasonable doubt") as some people think. Get caught apparently contradicting hard data or even a witness and there goes your reasonable doubt.
Here is the LLM's summary of the current legal issue at hand:
Attempting to determine the identity of an unknown individual co-located with a victim at a specific time requires a reverse-location query. Because the Supreme Court has not yet established a unified national doctrine for these searches post-Carpenter, lower courts are highly fragmented. Many magistrates systematically refuse to authorize geofence warrants or tower dumps, citing the lack of individualized probable cause for the peripheral, innocent devices swept up in the geographic net.
And indeed, in my case, the police were not able to conduct this geofenced investigation (which would have instantly idenitied the person).
> Conversely, Meta is ruthless about cutting those management identifies as low performers.
Thats what the normal Meta up-or-out promo/comp structure is for. This sort of thing hasn't been about that for a while. Sure, they will say they stack ranked the company and fired the bottom 10%, but given how many layoffs they've done, at this point it's just an ongoing brain drain.
(I departed when the writing was on the wall for the '21 layoffs)
When Meta was a question mark, or a star performance was all about growth. But now it is a cash cow, performance has a different meaning. Efficiency is the name of the game, and efficiency is not synonymous with high salaries or headcount.
A few flops, like Apple Vision Pro and their confusion with AI. But that's ok given the wins.
Overall, as a non-founder he's near the tops in CEOs over the last couple of decades. The only non-founders I would put above him are Satya (although he has a had a couple of rough years), Bob Iger, Jamie Dimon and maybe Andy Jassy.
Taking a fair lens to this he is "first round hall of fame non-founder".
I'm not sure it's fair to call the Apple Vision Pro a flop in the traditional sense.
While it may not have sold millions of units and been a household staple.
It certainly focused the entire org on manufacturing a suite of chips and hardware that are on a completely different level than their competitors. Apple's now has a clear advantage in all dimensions that matter: compute, power consumption, size, capabilities, etc.
Apple Vision helped created a moat that will be hard for anyone else to cross for at least a decade.
At least the Vision Pro wasn't a $70 billion boondoggle like the Metaverse was.
The flops include the mid-to-late 2010s thinness era of Macbooks. Touch Bar, butterfly keyboard, 12" Macbook, no Macbook Air. At least this got corrected but it was a flop era.
I think AI is Tim Apple's biggest flop. Apple can make their own hardware. Apple could've invested in their own hardware like Google's TPUs. Siri has really stagnated. If anybody should be doubling down on an AI assistant, it's Apple.
"As of two years ago they were still liquidating out of it"
I get that people are scared of investing in China. But if I still made single stock investments, I would seriously consider BABA, it seems well positioned.
Cynicism makes you sound smart. Optimism makes you successful.
The cynicism around this technology is everywhere, even though it clearly has real power to solve problems. It is a technology which enables so many use cases that were impossible before, that makes it very highly hyped/expected. And that is causing an immune (over) reaction by natural skeptics, that's an error.
People need to take a measured, reality based, view of how the technology is being used today, the adoption curve, and the increase in capabilities over time.
It's clearly being used strongly, and may even be revolutionary.
Bubbles burst when there's no 'there' there. AI has an undeniable 'there'—the only question is the timing of the ROI.
He made a follow up after the pushback by GDM.
Google’s businesses are very broad and durable. But Google being the only company in the world without access (except for GDM+labs) to a competent coding agent will take a toll.
We’ll see how long Google can hold out hoping for GDM to create something that is competitive.
I’m guess that within 6 months Google will give up on coding and finally let their devs use Claude/Codex.
This isn’t a security problem, this is a GDM issue with GDM’s promises being far beyond their ability.
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