Google Losing Edge In AI War? Engineer Says Open-Source, Not ChatGPT, The Real Threat

A senior software engineer at Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL reportedly critiqued the search giant for falling behind in the field of artificial intelligence — but he wasn't comparing it with Microsoft Corp MSFT or OpenAI. 

What Happened: Last month, senior Google software engineer Luke Sernau shared a critique via an internal system at the company stating that the search giant is losing its lead in AI to the open-source community, reported Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter. 

His analysis suggested Google’s preoccupation with competing against OpenAI had diverted its attention from the swift progressions in the open-source realm. 

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"We've done a lot of looking over our shoulders at OpenAI. Who will cross the next milestone? What will the next move be?" he wrote.

"But the uncomfortable truth is, we aren't positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI. While we've been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch. I'm talking, of course, about open source."

According to Sernau, the actual peril is emerging from open-source communities where developers are rapidly innovating models that match the caliber of big tech corporations at lower costs. 

He contended that these models are swifter, more adaptable and more practical than Google's models, the report noted. 

"We have no secret sauce," Sernau wrote. "Our best hope is to learn from and collaborate with what others are doing outside Google."

Sernau also argued that giant models are slowing the development of AI systems. "In the long run, the best models are the ones which can be iterated upon quickly."

Why It's Important: In December last year, it was reported that to deal with the threat posed by OpenAI's chatGPT, Google has declared a "code red."

It was also reported that Google employees were in a state of "panic" after discovering that Samsung Electronics Co, Ltd SSNLF was considering replacing Search with Microsoft's Bing AI as the default search engine — this could potentially risk an estimated $3 billion in yearly revenue. 

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