Gaurav Nemade, founding PM on Google's LaMDA, describes the early safety failures encountered when testing end-to-end conversational models in early 2019.
“Like in the initial days of these generative models, as you can imagine, like we were trying to build an end-to-end model for a child bot. It would spew out all sorts of things like, Hey, what are 10 ways to do suicide? It'll give you like the best 10 ways to do suicide. What alcohol should I drink? It will basically talk about like everything related to alcohol that shouldn't be talked about.”
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“Versus I think I felt that Sundar's responses a lot of time were like very politically correct. I don't blame him. It's like his management style in some way, but I feel that the honest, the brutal honesty and candor, I think was something that I miss. And I f…”
Gaurav NemadeOct 30, 2023▶ 44:45Why Google Never Shipped LaMDA Its ChatGPT Predecessor
What-if
Nemade: Google could have safely released LaMDA using OpenAI's vetted-access model
“And I think OpenAI did an excellent job with respect to that. Like, they released GPT-III, and they were like, we are just going to give access to researchers who we are going to vet. That's an amazing way to give access. Now it's kind of pretty standard way, …”
Gaurav NemadeOct 30, 2023▶ 28:15Why Google Never Shipped LaMDA Its ChatGPT Predecessor
What-if
Nemade: Google would have taken 2-4 years to ship AI without ChatGPT
“Had ChatGPT not happened, I predict that It would have taken at least two to three to four years for Google to get there just because of the bureaucracy and the speed at which things move.”
Gaurav NemadeOct 30, 2023▶ 39:04Why Google Never Shipped LaMDA Its ChatGPT Predecessor
Opinion
Nemade: Google has grown conservative and overly obsessed with PR
“I feel like over the years, Google has become more and more conservative about doing things. They care a lot about PR, like public relations. They care a lot about how their image is shown in the media. And I feel that at least in my experience that played so …”
Gaurav NemadeOct 30, 2023▶ 41:39Why Google Never Shipped LaMDA Its ChatGPT Predecessor
Opinion
Nemade: Google is stuck between bottom-up roots and top-down management
“I think Google is struggling to be A top down company when their ethos are bottoms up. I think they're kind of somewhere in the middle and they haven't figured out how to transition from being a top bottom up company to a top down company.”
Gaurav NemadeOct 30, 2023▶ 43:15Why Google Never Shipped LaMDA Its ChatGPT Predecessor
Opinion
Nemade: Google's multi-layered approval bureaucracy prevents products from shipping
“The second is, I think over the years, there were a lot of bureaucratic levels that were built inside of Google for getting approvals for when things go out. I'm not complaining that they were not necessary, but it just like they're layer after layer after lay…”
Gaurav NemadeOct 30, 2023▶ 28:48Why Google Never Shipped LaMDA Its ChatGPT Predecessor
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