San Francisco. In the movie “Her,” a man fell in love with AI software. Today’s chatbots can sometimes converse with people in a similarly fluent manner. Will this lead to relationships? Yes, says the Google boss.
Google boss Sundar Pichai believes that people will develop an emotional connection to programs with artificial intelligence. It will be a very powerful technology, said Pichai on the sidelines of the Google I/O developer conference. Over time, some people will develop a “deep relationship with AI assistants.” You have to prepare for this and mitigate possible negative consequences of the technology.
In a question and answer session with journalists, Pichai was specifically asked about the decade-old film “Her,” in which the protagonist played by Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an AI software named Samantha. A new version of the competing chatbot ChatGPT, which caused a lot of stir the day before Google’s AI announcements, was now being compared with it.
The Google boss said that at the current turning point in the development of artificial intelligence, a day apart doesn’t matter. “It’s about one of the most profound technologies that humanity will ever work on.” His company has long invested in artificial intelligence, developed leading models and made them accessible to billions of people. “This is our mission,” Pichai said. At the same time, innovations from other companies drive Google to perform better. “Innovation is good for everyone, everywhere.”
“They come with more questions”
At the developer conference, the Internet giant announced, among other things, AI innovations in its search engine, which dominates the market. For many search queries, all users in the USA and soon in other countries will first receive a summary with source references written by artificial intelligence before the usual web links. This raises concerns among many website operators that fewer users than before will reach them via the search engine.
Google counters this. One of the group’s experiences with the AI overviews is that they encourage users to make more searches, said the responsible Google manager Liz Reid. “They come with new types of questions, they come with more questions.” People often searched Google for the answer to just one specific question – and the results then inspired them to dig deeper. The websites that are mentioned in the AI overviews receive more traffic than the traditional blue links in the search results, said Reid.
The innovation could also have consequences for Google’s own business model: After all, the company makes a lot of money from advertising customers who buy space in the search results area for their web links. Reid downplayed the risk to the company. Since Google wanted to place ads that were helpful to users, they continued to interact with them after the AI overviews were introduced. “And every time we introduced new usage scenarios in search, the ads team found new ways to make money.”
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240516-99-51437/2 (dpa)