Ex-googler: I doubt it, but am curious for rationale (i know there was a round of PR re: him “coming back to help with AI.” but just between you and me, the word on him internally, over years and multiple projects, was having him around caused chaos b/c he was a tourist flitting between teams, just spitting out ideas, but now you have unclear direction and multiple teams hearing the same “you should” and doing it)

Please, Google was terrible about using the tech the had long before Sundar, back when Brin was in charge.

Google Reader is a simple example: Googl had by far the most popular RSS reader, and they just threw it away. A single intern could have kept the whole thing running, and Google has literal billions, but they couldn't see the value in it.

I mean, it's not like being able to see what a good portion of America is reading every day could have any value for an AI company, right?

Google has always been terrible about turning tech into (viable, maintained) products.

Their unreleased LaMDA[1] famously caused one of their own engineers to have a public crashout in 2022, before ChatGPT dropped. Pre-ChatGPT they also showed it off in their research blog[2] and showed it doing very ChatGPT-like things and they alluded to 'risks,' but those were primarily around it using naughty language or spreading misinformation.

I think they were worried that releasing a product like ChatGPT only had downside risks for them, because it might mess up their money printing operation over in advertising by doing slurs and swears. Those sweet summer children: little did they know they could run an operation with a seig-heiling CEO who uses LLMs to manufacture and distribute CSAM worldwide, and it wouldn't make above-the-fold news.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA#Sentience_claims

[2] https://research.google/blog/lamda-towards-safe-grounded-and...

The surprise was not that they existed: There were chatbots in Google way before ChatGPT. What surprised them was the demand, despite all the problems the chatbots have. The pig problem with LLMs was not that they could do nothing, but how to turn them into products that made good money. Even people in openAI were surprised about what happened.

In many ways, turning tech into products that are useful, good, and don't make life hell is a more interesting issue of our times than the core research itself. We probably want to avoid the valuing capturing platform problem, as otherwise we'll end up seeing governments using ham fisted tools to punish winners in ways that aren't helpful either

ChatGPT really innovated on making the chat not say racist things that the press could report on. Other efforts before this failed for that reason.

Well, I must say ChatGPT felt much more stable than Meena when I first tried it. But, as you said, it was a few years before ChatGPT was publicly announced :)