As ChatGPT wave garners momentum, the belief that it poses a big threat to Google is rapidly growing. Gmail creator, Paul Buchheit, is one of the believers that the web search giant doesn’t stand a chance when the AI-powered chatbot is fully developed.
Buchheit said ChatPGT has the potential to destroy Google in two years at max. He said Google’s downfall will come from the depletion of its search-based revenue, which is the most profitable part of the tech giant’s business.
“Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption. AI will eliminate the Search Engine Result Page, which is where they make most of their money,” Buchheit wrote on Twitter, adding that “even if they catch up on AI, they can’t fully deploy it without destroying the most valuable part of their business!”
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Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption. AI will eliminate the Search Engine Result Page, which is where they make most of their money.
Even if they catch up on AI, they can't fully deploy it without destroying the most valuable part of their business! https://t.co/jtq25LXdkj
— Paul Buchheit (@paultoo) December 1, 2022
His assessment is based on the quality of responses given to queries by ChatGPT. The chatbot imbibes GPT-3.5, a large language model released last year, to generate answers and authentic-looking responses to queries about all topics. It also enables users to accomplish tasks such as creating poems, composing college essays and writing code.
“The way I imagine this happening is that the URL/Search bar of the browser gets replaced with AI that autocompletes my thought/question as I type it while also providing the best answer (which may be a link to a website or product),” Buchheit said.
ChatGPT set off an alarm when it was launched in November 2022, racking up more than one million users within its first month. The AI-powered machine has triggered concern across sectors, putting educators on high alert as its widening impact threatens critical thinking. But Google seems to be the only company in the tech industry being rattled by the chatbot.
Microsoft made a whopping $1 billion investment in OpenAI, ChatGPT’s parent company, in 2019, and has increased funding early this year with additional investments worth billions of dollars. Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI includes deal to incorporate ChatGPT with its search engine, Bing.
Google, which reportedly issued “code red” following the unprecedented rise of ChatGPT, has been exploring ways to deal with the chatbot’s emergence. CEO Sundar Pichai is said to have reached out to the company’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin to help accelerate AI projects at Google. The company is reported to be also working on plans to “demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year” and is developing more than 20 AI products to seemingly counter ChatGPT, per New York Times.
Financial Express reported that more details of the plans are expected to be revealed during the upcoming Google I/O 2023 developer conference.
But ChatGPT is grappling with shortfalls impeding its reliability. It only has information of events that took place post 2021. OpenAI cofounder and CEO Sam Altman said the chatbot cannot be trusted at this time because it is still prone to misinformation and biases. But it recently announced that it’s working to expand ChatGPT, creating a professional version that will correct its lapses.
However, Buchheit said ChatGPT’s abilities pose existential threat to Google, and will potentially kill it just as Google did to Yellow Pages, a dominant pre-internet business.
“The old search engine backend will be used by the AI to gather relevant information and links, which will then be summarized for the user. It’s like asking a professional human researcher to do the work, except the AI will instantly do what would take many minutes for a human,” he said.
“One thing that few people remember is the pre-Internet business that Google killed: The Yellow Pages!
“The Yellow Pages used to be a great business, but then Google got so good that everyone stopped using the yellow pages. AI will do the same thing to web search,” he added.
Let’s tone down the hysteria a bit, because at the moment, there’s no way of verifying whether ChatGPT is telling you nonsense within the platform. Once you challenge it, it surrenders and apologizes, it does not provide proof or reference, so we are still far from where we think we have arrived.
What I see here is an emerging trend, first it was Apple, and then Tesla, now ChatGPT is next in that special throne. What do they all have in common? They don’t buy ads or pay for news, but everyday they keep dominating news, enjoying free media. How do they do it? It’s still part of the rigged world, and the cycle keeps repeating.
Google should be on high alert, because those who want to destroy it are ferocious and unrelenting, it’s not just about innovation, it’s also a highly orchestrated undertaking; don’t take everything you read on its face value.
Plenty things will be AI motivated soon, then we become more confused, and then mental health will skyrocket, and we will start searching for humans who can help bring many lost people back to their senses, if there’s still some chance anyway.
What crypto and blockchain couldn’t pull off, it seems the Open AI gang and its constituents will finally divide the ocean…
We die here.