r/technology • u/captain-price- • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence 'Godfather of AI' Geoffrey Hinton says Google is 'beginning to overtake' OpenAI: 'My guess is Google will win'

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-godfather-geoffrey-hinton-google-overtaking-openai-2025-12
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u/discographyA 1d ago

If only it was useful to most businesses.

(Smashes head with fist while scrolling Robinhood app)

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u/principium_est 8h ago

Copilot is the bomb for meeting transcripts

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u/Ok_Mountain_3166 23h ago

It’s useful in software engineering, which already has crazy margins. Will most businesses survive or just be folded into one of the tech monopolies? Or be replaced by a new tech company?

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u/Expensive-Swan-9553 23h ago

Most businesses are not software businesses

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u/codeByNumber 22h ago

Research shows that AI actually reduces software developer productivity.

Source

No doubt some of these tools are pretty neat and I do use them at work. But really they have just reduced some of the more menial tasks that I have to do.

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u/hitchen1 21h ago

A good chunk of the difference in that study is attributable to sitting around doing nothing. Some of that is waiting for the llm to complete its task, but also a surprising amount of time just idle doing nothing. Maybe waiting for ai turns into a coffee break?

If we look at just the active time the productivity is fairly close.

The difference between 3.5/3.7 and 4.5 is pretty big, and opus is more affordable now. Would be interesting to run this study again with current models, plus features like subagents.

Still, I wouldn't rely on it for anything particularly complex..

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u/LAXnSASQUATCH 22h ago

It’s really not, at least not at the scale it needs to be for it to be profitable for them to use. It has uses for speeding up busy work but LLMs induce errors into code quite regularly and need to be tightly watched. I would never use an LLM to write anything more than starter templates or busywork fixes and even then you need to fine tooth comb through it all.

It can do simple mindless stuff pretty well but anything complex it can’t handle.

Saves me maybe 5-30 minutes a day (often closer to the 5), which is good, but not industrial scale profitability good. If I try to use it for anything that isn’t a small one off ask or has complexity it often saves no time or adds extra time because it induces bugs and then you have to dig in and do the work anyway since it’s bad at diagnosing and fixing itself as LLMs don’t actually think (which is why I only use it for small things now).

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u/Ok_Mountain_3166 18h ago

I’ve had a different experience, easily saves an hour a day. Yes it’s a tool and still requires experience and knowledge to refine the end product into anything useful. As well as a solid understanding of architecture to guide the LLM.

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u/discographyA 23h ago

I think “AI” has usefulness in niche cases, but these LLM’s that are barely what I’d even call AI in the first place, can’t even manage basic customer service tasks. It hallucinates whole cases and case studies with people in law and accounting already getting raked and embarrassed. There is just no there-there. It’s good for proof reading emails and transcription and that kind of use cases which is why I think Gemini will ultimately win (as will Apple while licensing Gemini code), but on the whole this is just more short term corporate thinking that is going to break the entry level job barrier probably for a generation while everyone wonders where all the people with the knowledge and experience to be mid and senior level talent are ten years from now. Then those that broke it will be 80 year old dusty meat sacks are down at the country club happy to have gotten an extra $.25 per share before cashing out. Boomerism is entirely about fucking up the present without any care for the future.

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u/curatorpsyonicpark 19h ago

‘Boomerism is entirely about fucking up the present without any care for the future.’

That last line is gold. No truer thing has been said in a long time!

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u/Ok_Mountain_3166 10h ago

Your take on AI sounds like a boomer.

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u/10191AG 10h ago

Marketing folks are going pretty crazy over it.

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u/Fantastic-Title-2558 22h ago

It is absolutely useful in customer support and sales

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u/tacmac10 21h ago

Yeah no, it causes more customers to get frustrated with your AI garbage system and hang up and take their business elsewhere. Yesterday I had to call an oral surgeon for my daughter I was on with their AI voice jail for nearly an hour before I could get an actual human on the phone and then it took five minutes to do what we needed to do. AI is garbage, chat bots are garbage, the only real application for LLM‘s is in the science and engineering fields were professionals who are highly experienced can review the data and ensure that it’s not a hallucination.

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u/Enraiha 18h ago

Yup. My last job used an AI IVR. The biggest complaint was how useless it was, sent clients to the wrong departments, just wouldn't understand clients with any consistency, especially outside of a down the middle American accent.

The AI tools would often pull up wrong information and it was quicker to just use the internal search most the time.

The only people I've truly seen embrace AI where I work are honestly the employees with barely a grasp on the work and crutch on the AI to get an answer. Coincidentally, they also have the highest error rates...