Sergey Brin, president of Alphabet and co-founder of Google
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
google Co-founder Sergey Brin, in a rare public appearance over the weekend, told a group of artificial intelligence enthusiasts that he came out of retirement “because the trajectory of AI is very interesting.”
Byrne, 50, spoke to entrepreneurs Saturday at the “AGI House” in Hillsborough, California, just south of San Francisco, where developers and founders were testing Google’s Gemini model. AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence and refers to a form of AI that can complete tasks at the same level, or a step above, humans.
Taking questions from the crowd, Byrne discussed the impact of AI on search and how Google can maintain its leadership position in its core market as AI continues to grow. He also commented on the flawed launch of Google’s image generator last month, which the company pulled after users discovered historical errors and questionable answers.
“We’re definitely spoiled for image generation,” Byrne said on Saturday. “I think a lot of it was just not doing a thorough check. This certainly, for good reason, confused many people.
Google said last week that it plans to relaunch the photo generation feature soon.
Byrne co-founded Google with Larry Page in 1998, but stepped down as president of Alphabet in 2019. He is a board member and a principal shareholder, with a stake in the company worth about $100 billion. He has returned to work at the company as part of an effort to help accelerate Google’s position in the hyper-competitive AI market.
In some cases on Saturday, Byrne said he was responding “personally,” as opposed to representing the company.
![Google's random AI rollout](https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/107379015-17090529661709052963-33501375868-1080pnbcnews.jpg?v=1709052966&w=750&h=422&vtcrop=y)
“It’s amazing to see what these models can do year after year,” he said at the event, a recording of which was seen by CNBC.
Regarding recent challenges with Gemini that led to inaccurate imaging results, Byrne said the company isn’t sure why there is a left-leaning tilt in the responses, in a political sense.
“We don’t fully understand why it’s been left in so many cases” but “that’s not our intention,” he said. Byrne added, the company has recently improved accuracy to 80 percent on some internal tests.
Byrne’s comments represent the first time a company executive has spoken on the Gemini matter in a live setting. The company previously sent a prepared statement from Prabhakar Raghavan, Google Search chief and CEO Sundar Pichai reacts to the controversial rollout.
Here’s what Raghavan said in a blog post on February 23:
“So what went wrong? In short, two things. First, our tuning to make sure that Gemini failed to show a range of people in accounting cases that clearly should have been. No Show range. And secondly, over time, the model became more cautious than we intended and refused to respond to some cues at all – mistakenly interpreting some very anodyne cues as sensitive. These two things lead the model to overcompensate in some cases, and to be more conservative in others, leading to images that were embarrassing and inaccurate.
Google declined to comment for this story. Byrne did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
‘Some Pretty Strange Things’
Byrne said Google is alone in its struggle to produce accurate results with AI. He cited OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s Groove services as AI tools that, “are some pretty amazing things that are out there that definitely make sense, for example.”
Hallucinations, or false responses to the user’s urges, are still “a big problem now,” he said. “There’s no question about it.”
“We’ve misled them less and less over time, but I’d certainly be excited to see a progression that’s close to zero,” Byrne said. “But you can’t just like — count on successes, so I think we’ll just keep doing the incremental things that we do down, down, over time.”
When asked by an audience member if he wanted to create an AGI, Byrne responded in the affirmative, referring to AI’s ability to help with “reasoning.”
Byrne was also asked how online advertising will be disrupted so that ad revenue is core to Google’s business. The company has slowed ad growth in the past few years.
Sergey Brin, Google Inc. Co-founder, left, Larry Page, Google Inc. Co-founder, Center, and Eric Schmidt, Google Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer attends a news conference at the 28th Annual Sun Valley Inn. Allen & Company Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, US on Thursday, July 8, 2010.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“I of all people am not too worried about the business model shift,” Byrne said. “I think it’s amazing that now that we’ve been around for 25 years, or whatever, just world-class information has been able to be found for free by anyone and it’s been supported by advertising, which I think is the world. is great for.”
He acknowledged that the business is likely to change.
“I expect that business models are going to evolve over time,” he said. “And maybe it will still be advertising because advertising can do better, AI is able to do it better.”
Byrne is confident in Google’s position.
“I personally feel as long as there is enough value being created, we will explore the business model,” he said.
Beyond AI, Byrne was asked about Google’s hardware difficulties with recent advances in virtual reality. Google aggressively pioneered the augmented reality market with the now defunct Google Glass.
“I feel like I made some bad decisions,” he said, referring to Google Glass. If he were doing it differently, Byrne said, he would have treated Google Glass like a prototype instead of a product. “But, I’m still a fan of the lightweight” form, he said.
Regarding Apple Vision Pro and Meta The Quest headsets, Byrne said, “are very impressive.”
When asked about how he sees Gemini influencing spatial computing or products like Google Maps or Street View, Byrne responded with just as much curiosity.
“To be honest, I haven’t thought about it, but now that you say it, there’s no reason why we can’t insert more 3D data,” Byrne said, to laughs from the crowd. “Maybe someone is doing it.” Gemini – I don’t know.”
see: Google vs. Google
![Google vs. Google: The internal struggle will hold back its AI](https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/107381341-22140230_TC_DIGITAL_TECHCHECK_TITLE_THUMBNAILS_GOGL_REV2.png?v=1709326142&w=750&h=422&vtcrop=y)