According to a document written by a senior software engineer, Google is losing its artificial intelligence (AI) advantage to the open-source community, asserting that this third AI competitor, open source, was superseding Google and OpenAI.
Luke Sernau, a software engineer at Google, published a document on an internal system in early April. In the following weeks, the document was widely distributed to Google employees.
A source who requested anonymity, because they were not authorized to discuss company matters claimed that the document had been distributed thousands of times. The document was released by the consulting firm SemiAnalysis on Thursday and began to propagate in Silicon Valley.
According to Sernau, Google’s rivalry with OpenAI diverted attention away from the rapid development of open-source technology.
Sernau wrote in his document that Google was excessively focused on monitoring OpenAI’s progress and that while the two companies competed to surpass one another, open-source technology silently advanced.
Sernau asserted that this third AI competitor, open source, was superseding Google and OpenAI.
Google is well-known for its investments in futuristic technologies, and its laboratories have been instrumental in developing the current AI-powered chatbots.
However, the startup OpenAI has emerged as a leader in generative artificial intelligence, which entails software that can generate images, text, and videos.
OpenAI introduced ChatGPT in November and rapidly gained popularity. Its abrupt success has forced Google to race to catch up in a crucial subfield of technology.
However, Serna argued that open-source communities pose a significant challenge to Google because engineers are developing models that can compete with the quality of those at large technology companies at a faster rate and a lower cost.
According to him, these models are more adaptable, quicker, and beneficial than Google’s. Additionally, he feared that clients might not be willing to pay for high-quality technology if it is freely accessible in open-source communities.
