Sources describe how Google stalled the release of a powerful chatbot for years due to the risk AI demos could pose to its reputation and search ads business
Researchers developed a powerful chatbot years before rival ChatGPT went viral. After management stalled its release, they quit.
The reported departures connect product-release governance to talent retention. Rather than a lack of research capability, the account frames Google’s constraint as management’s concern that a public chatbot could undermine trust and its search-ad business.
First-order effects
Google delayed a capable chatbot while researchers who had built it reportedly left after management blocked release.
Google’s search and reputation teams became central gatekeepers over whether its AI research could reach users.
Second-order effects
OpenAI gained room to establish ChatGPT as the consumer reference point, forcing Google into the catch-up effort described in later coverage of Silicon Valley’s post-ChatGPT scramble.
Google’s internal AI teams faced a sharper trade-off between publishing or shipping work and protecting the company’s core search business.
Third-order effects
If major platforms continue treating public model access as a threat to their existing products, frontier-model competition will be shaped as much by release governance and distribution control as by research output.
The pattern points toward AI labs competing for researchers partly on whether their models can be deployed, not only on the resources available to build them.
The trend: Consumer AI is shifting frontier-model advantage toward companies willing to manage public-release risk and control distribution, rather than simply those that develop capable systems first.
When working for Google, Ray Kurzweil was working on an AI chatbot in *2013* called Danielle -> Interesting article describing how Google stalled the release of an AI chatbot for years due to the risk AI demos could pose to its reputation & search ads biz: https://www.wsj.com/...…
@venkatananth
Venkat Ananth on x
a good, detailed read on Google's chatbot efforts over time and how the company grew wary about integrating it to its products (Google Assistant etc) and frustrating engineers who left the company to start their own ventures https://www.wsj.com/...
@carnage4life
Dare Obasanjo on x
As expected, the official narrative is slowly becoming that AI ethics is why Google fell behind OpenAI and Bing. This is a much more appealing narrative than the company wanted to protect ad revenue and got too slow & bureaucratic to ship software. https://www.wsj.com/...
@pkedrosky
Paul Kedrosky on x
But, but ... I kept hearing nitwits on Wall Street yapping that OpenAI had some sort of edge, that Google had missed out. No, the latter's edge was mostly in ... not caring about AI's consequences. #xp https://twitter.com/...
@henrychilds2
Henry Childs on x
Is it better to be first or to be right? https://twitter.com/...
@emilymbender
@emilymbender on x
“A lot of the coverage talks about them as not yet ready or still underdeveloped—something that suggests that this is a path to something that would work well, and I don't think it is,” me to @haydenfield in this piece for Tech Brew: https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/ ...
@chetanchawla
Chetan Chawla on x
#GOOG underwent textbook #InnovatorsDilemma leading to delayed productizing of its own #AI research. 🔑Q: with a predominantly ads driven model, is that dilemma in the past? Really needs to spin-off AI products as separate company to prevent further internal roadblocks. https://tw…
@hkanji
Hussein Kanji on x
Researchers developed a powerful chatbot years before rival ChatGPT went viral. After management stalled its release, they quit. https://www.wsj.com/...
@edzitron
Ed Zitron on x
Yeah and then the second they had to compete with Microsoft they threw all that ethics crap in the garbage https://ez.substack.com/... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@pmddomingos
Pedro Domingos on x
Read it and weep. https://www.wsj.com/...
@noahpinion
Noah Smith on x
How did Google end up spending so much money hiring people to convince them to be scared of shipping products? https://www.wsj.com/...
@saudenobr
Alexandre Chiavegatto Filho on x
Darwin Awards, corporate edition. https://www.wsj.com/...
@tunguz
Bojan Tunguz on x
So many questions. Google remains so wary about the potential downsides of AI that it ceded the early-mover advantage to one of its biggest rivals @WSJ https://www.wsj.com/...
Vox
Shirin Ghaffary on x
Silicon Valley's AI frenzy isn't just another crypto craze
@marie_haynes
Dr. Marie Haynes on x
This is a good read about the AI technology that Sundar Pichai has called “more profound than fire or electricity”. “Google wants to make sure that it's not the Xerox Parc of its era,” says Desai. “All the innovation happened there, but https://www.bloomberg.com/...... https://tw…
@aaronwall
Aaron on x
AI is the new Google+ https://www.bloomberg.com/...
@marie_haynes
Dr. Marie Haynes🐧 on x
This is a good read about the AI technology that Sundar Pichai has called “more profound than fire or electricity.” “Google wants to make sure that it's not the Xerox Parc of its era,” says Desai. “All the innovation happened there, but https://www.bloomberg.com/...... https://tw…
@daveyalba
Davey Alba on x
—Workers are pulling late nights to deliver; some products have been rejiggered to include generative AI elements —As one worker said: “There is an unhealthy combination of abnormally high expectations and great insecurity about any AI-related initiative” https://www.bloomberg.co…
@jimpethokoukis
James Pethokoukis on x
As one current employee puts it: “There is an unhealthy combination of abnormally high expectations and great insecurity about any AI-related initiative.” https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @BW
@daveyalba
Davey Alba on x
New from me & @byJuliaLove: —Pichai is weighing in on details of gen AI products, w/c would usually be 3 or 4 levels beneath him —There's a new directive that products w/ 1B+ users must incorporate generative AI within months Our look inside “code red”: https://www.bloomberg.com/…
@rustybrick
Barry Schwartz on x
Google AI stuffing... https://twitter.com/...
@thestalwart
Joe Weisenthal on x
So funny how OpenAI was ostensibly all about safe development of AI (and maybe it is) but the real effect is to set off an arms race so publicly traded companies rush out products to satisfy investors https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/...