AI is taking over at Google, and the company is changing in big ways to try to make it happen even faster. Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced substantial internal reorganizations on Thursday, including the creation of a new team called “Platforms and Devices” that will oversee all of Google’s Pixel products, all of Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, Photos, and more. The team will be run by Rick Osterloh, who was previously the SVP of devices and services, overseeing all of Google’s hardware efforts. Hiroshi Lockheimer, the longtime head of Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS, will be taking on other projects inside of Google and Alphabet.
David Pierce at The Verge
I don’t know what to make of this. More often than not, these kinds of reorganisations have little impact on us as mere users, but at the same time, the hype around “AI” has grown to such batshit insane proportions that this reorganisation will only lead to even more “AI” nonsense being crammed into every single Google product, whether they benefit from it or not. My nightmare scenario is Android becoming so infested with this stuff that the operating system is going to grow into Clippy in my pocket, suggesting and doing things I have zero interest in, taking control away from me as a user and handing it over to some nebulous set of algorithms optimised for some mythical smartphone user I don’t look like at all.
Using technologies currently labelled as “AI” to make translations better, improve accessibility features, stabilise video recording, that sort of stuff – totally fine, and I’m pretty sure most of us have been using “AI” in that form for many, many years now. What these companies are trying to do now, though, is turn “AI” from a technology into a feature, and I’m just not interested in any of that. It’s just not trustworthy, reliable, or usable enough, and I have my doubts it’ll ever get there with the current technological threads we’re unraveling.
I wish we had a third player in the smartphone market.
AFter listening to financial news today, not suprising, It was inundated with talk of Ai. Now this news. I dont think anybody truly understands what Ai is. Here, financial geniuses rave about this term, and how this mere two letter term will benefit society, jobs, corporations, etc. but There’s zero talk regarding the underlying tech. Now the fear is power consumption. The question is, How will Google and Microsoft solve that on top of that little Proof of concept called ChatGPT.
AI stampede. It won’t be long until it gives someone a bum-steer that results in injury and death.
I wish I hadn’t been one of those hip young things who jumped on the gmail bandwagon all those years ago. Then again, who better to home my inbox of spam, advertising, and phishing emails?
Thom Holwerda,
+1!
I wonder if this duopoly will ever be rectified in our lifetimes. Problem is nobody else has the apps. The set of businesses supporting alternatives is practically empty. Even android compatible forks suffer unless they give into google play services. Meanwhile google are taking a stance against rooted phones. The environment just isn’t conducive to alternative competitors.
And let’s get real. That third player would also be announcing this and that AI feature. Just look at Samsung.
Even if we had thirty players in the smartphone market, they would all be talking about AI. The problem is not about the number of players. It is about the culture dominating the tech and/or corporate scene.
“Player” might be doing a lot of heavy lifting to describe Jolla, but they, too, have boarded the AI train. At the MWC this year they presented a prototype AI device that acts as a mobile phone “assistant” or something like that.
cevvalkoala,
The number of viable players is extremely important though. When it becomes too low corporations stop being competitive because they know consumers have no viable alternatives. This level of consolidation creates noncompetitive markets, and I’m not just talking price but features, anti-features, and other product differentiation.
Alfman,
Samsung builds really solid phone hardware, but their own software quality seems to be very lacking.
If you look at the “sample” of apps on a Galaxy phone, including the application marketplace itself, they are more or less all slower, bloated, and harder to use (ux wise) than the native Google Android ones.
At some point there were rumors about them joining forces with Microsoft, but I would guess they could not agree on distribution of ad and app revenue. These kinds of deals are really hard to master (even IBM blundered back then with OS/2 NT).
It’s actually about Android and Pixel teams being closer together, “AI” is just a facet of it. Google wants Pixel to be the definitive Android phone.