I feel like the title of this post is slightly misleading. It’s not like there was any kind of official Google statement saying they have no moat. It was some random Google Researchers whose private document leaked.
A better title would be “Unknown Google researcher says Google has no moat, and neither does OpenAI”. I think people seem to be taking this a lot more seriously because they don’t know who wrote it, and are treating it as some kind of consensus within Google.
Thanks for making this comment. I had a similar comment in mind. You’re right nobody should assume any statements in this document represent the viewpoint of Google, or any of its subsidiaries, like DeepMind, or any department therein. Neither should be assumed that the researcher(s) who authored or leaked this document are department or project leads. The Substack post only mentions that a researcher leaked the document, not that any researcher authored it. The document could’ve been written up by one or more Google staffers who aren’t directly doing the research themselves, like a project manager or a research assistant.
On the other hand, there isn’t enough information to assume it was only one or more “random” staffers at Google. Again, nothing in the document should necessarily be taken as representative of Google, or any particular department, though the value of any insights drawn from the document could vary based on what AI research project(s)/department the authors of the document work on/in.
That might not be a useful question to puzzle over much, since we could easily never find out who the anonymous author(s) of the document is/are. Yet that the chance the authors aren’t purely “random” researchers should still also be kept in mind.
I feel like the title of this post is slightly misleading. It’s not like there was any kind of official Google statement saying they have no moat. It was some random Google Researchers whose private document leaked.
A better title would be “Unknown Google researcher says Google has no moat, and neither does OpenAI”. I think people seem to be taking this a lot more seriously because they don’t know who wrote it, and are treating it as some kind of consensus within Google.
Agreed: although I didn’t choose the title myself, just copied the original blog post title.
Thanks for making this comment. I had a similar comment in mind. You’re right nobody should assume any statements in this document represent the viewpoint of Google, or any of its subsidiaries, like DeepMind, or any department therein. Neither should be assumed that the researcher(s) who authored or leaked this document are department or project leads. The Substack post only mentions that a researcher leaked the document, not that any researcher authored it. The document could’ve been written up by one or more Google staffers who aren’t directly doing the research themselves, like a project manager or a research assistant.
On the other hand, there isn’t enough information to assume it was only one or more “random” staffers at Google. Again, nothing in the document should necessarily be taken as representative of Google, or any particular department, though the value of any insights drawn from the document could vary based on what AI research project(s)/department the authors of the document work on/in.
That might not be a useful question to puzzle over much, since we could easily never find out who the anonymous author(s) of the document is/are. Yet that the chance the authors aren’t purely “random” researchers should still also be kept in mind.