Google co-founder Sergey Brin says in rare public appearance that company ‘definitely messed up’ Gemini image launch

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
so
exciting.”

Brin,
50,
spoke
to
entrepreneurs
on
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
to
the
same
level,
or
a
step
above,
humans.

In
taking
questions
from
the
crowd,
Brin
discussed
AI’s
impact
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
last
month
of
Google’s
image
generator,
which
the
company
pulled
after
users
discovered
historical
inaccuracies
and
questionable
responses.

“We
definitely
messed
up
on
the
image
generation,”
Brin
said
on
Saturday.
“I
think
it
was
mostly
due
to
just
not
thorough
testing.
It
definitely,
for
good
reasons,
upset
a
lot
of
people.”

Google
said
last
week
that
it
plans
to
relaunch
the
image
generation
feature
soon.

Brin
co-founded
Google
with

Larry
Page
in
1998,
but
stepped
down
as
president
of
Alphabet
in
2019.
He
remains
a
board
member
and
a
principal
shareholder,
with
a
stake
in
the
company
worth
about
$100
billion.
He’s

returned
to
work
at
the
company
as
part
of
an
effort
to
help
ramp
up
Google’s
position
in
the
hypercompetitive
AI
market.

In
some
cases
on
Saturday,
Brin
said
he
was
giving
“personal”
answers,
as
opposed
to
representing
the
company.

“Seeing
what
these
models
can
do
year
after
year
is
astonishing,”
he
said
at
the
event,
a
recording
of
which
was
viewed
by
CNBC.

Regarding
the
recent
challenges
with
Gemini
that
led
to
flawed
image
results,
Brin
said
the
company
isn’t
quite
sure
why
responses
have
a
leftward
tilt,
in
the
political
sense.

“We
haven’t
fully
understood
why
it
leans
left
in
many
cases”
but
“that’s
not
our
intention,”
he
said.
The
company
has
recently
made
accuracy
improvements
by
as
much
as
80%
on
certain
internal
tests,
Brin
added.

Brin’s
comments
represent
the
first
time
a
company
executive
has
spoken
on
the
Gemini
matter
in
a
live
setting.
The
company
previously
sent
prepared
statements
from

Prabhakar
Raghavan, Google’s
head
of
search,
and
CEO

Sundar
Pichai
in
response
to
the
controversial
rollout.

Here’s
what
Raghavan
said
in
a
blog
post
on
Feb.
23:

“So
what
went
wrong?
In
short,
two
things.
First,
our
tuning
to
ensure
that
Gemini
showed
a
range
of
people
failed
to
account
for
cases
that
should
clearly not show
a
range.
And
second,
over
time,
the
model
became
way
more
cautious
than
we
intended
and
refused
to
answer
certain
prompts
entirely
—
wrongly
interpreting
some
very
anodyne
prompts
as
sensitive.
These
two
things
led
the
model
to
overcompensate
in
some
cases,
and
be
over-conservative
in
others,
leading
to
images
that
were
embarrassing
and
wrong.”

Google
declined
to
comment
for
this
story.
Brin
didn’t
immediately
respond
to
a
request
for
comment. 

Brin
said
Google
is
far
from
alone
in
its
struggles
to
produce
accurate
results
with
AI.
He
cited
OpenAI’s
ChatGPT
and

Elon
Musk’s
Grok
services
as
AI
tools
that,
“say
some
pretty
weird
things
that
are
out
there
that
definitely
feel
far
left,
for
example.”

Hallucinations,
or
false
responses
to
a
user’s
prompt,
are
still
“a
big
problem
right
now,”
he
said.
“No
question
about
it.”

“We
have
made
them
hallucinate
less
and
less
over
time,
but
I’d
definitely
be
excited
to
see
a
breakthrough
that’s
near-zero,”
Brin
said.
“But
you
can’t
just
like
—
count
on
breakthroughs
so
I
think
we’re
just
going
to
keep
doing
the
incremental
things
we
do
to
bring
it
down,
down,
down
over
time.”

When
asked
by
an
attendee
if
he
wants
to
build
AGI,
Brin
answered
in
the
affirmative,
citing
the
ability
for
AI
to
help
with
“reasoning.”

Brin
was
also
asked
how
online
advertising
will
be
disrupted
considering
ad
revenue
is
core
to
Google’s
business.
The
company
has
reported
slowing
ad
growth
in
the
last
few
years.

“I
of
all
people
am
not
too
terribly
concerned
about
business
model
shifts,”
Brin
said.
“I
think
it’s
wonderful
that
we’ve
been
now
for
25
years,
or
whatever,
able
to
give
just
world
class
information
search
for
free
to
everyone
and
that’s
supported
by
advertising,
which
in
my
mind
is
great
for
the
world.”

He
did
acknowledge
that
the
business
is
likely
to
change.

“I
expect
business
models
are
going
to
evolve
over
time,”
he
said.
“And
maybe
it
will
still
be
advertising
because
advertising
could
work
better,
the
AI
is
able
to
better
tailor
it.”

Brin
is
confident
in
Google’s
position.

“I
personally
feel
as
long
as
there’s
huge
value
being
generated,
we’ll
figure
out
the
business
models,”
he
said.

Beyond
AI,
Brin
was
asked
about
Google’s
difficulties
in
hardware
given
recent
advancements
in
virtual
reality.
Google
was
notoriously
early
to
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,
Brin
said,
he
would
have
the
treated
Google
Glass
as
a
prototype
instead
of
a
product.
“But,
I’m
still
a
fan
of
the
lightweight”
form,
he
said.

In
regards
to
the

Apple
Vision
Pro
and


Meta’s
Quest
headsets,
Brin
said,
“They’re
very
impressive.”

When
asked
about
how
he
sees
Gemini
impacting
spatial
computing
or
products
like
Google
Maps
or
Street
view,
Brin
responded
with
as
much
curiosity
as
anything.

“To
be
honest,
I
haven’t
thought
about
it,
but
now
that
you
say
it,
yeah
there’s
no
reason
we
couldn’t
put
in
more
3D
data,”
Brin
said,
to
laughs
from
the
crowd. “Maybe
somebody’s
doing
it
at
Gemini
—
I
don’t
know.”

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