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Om Malik On OpenAI and Google’s Events
Om Malik, on On my Om:
This is precisely what happens when you let another company take control of the narrative. This is precisely what happens when you don’t have a clear vision, or ability to lead the industry. Ironically, there was a time when Google used to do what OpenAI is now doing — and make everyone a fast follower.
Om makes the case that OpenAI and Google had two different events, a product announcement and a developer conference, but they were perceived differently. I think he nails it. I also thought that Google’s event was a bunch of stuff things still not together in a coherent vision. Even worse, for a company as important as Google, a lot of it seemed like vaporware.
As I play with a disjointed group of apps, all which use APIs and require a lot of fiddling of prompts to work mostly correctly, this paragraph tied 3 decades of geeking out together:
Make no mistake — the reason OpenAI is achieving all this success (and hype) is because they have a product that for now is stellar. Nonetheless, OpenAI has created excitement that reminds me of the emergence of Palm, and later social networks. They stoked the imagination, and possibilities. Of course!