| From: Glenn Petersen | 11/8/2023 1:50:09 PM | | | | | | AI Startup Anthropic to Use Google Chips in Expanded Partnership
By Julia Love and Matt Day
Bloomberg
November 8, 2023 at 4:50 PM UTC
Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic will be one of the first companies to use new chips from Alphabet Inc.’s Google, deepening their partnership after a recent cloud computing agreement.
Anthropic will deploy Google’s Cloud TPU v5e chips to help power its large language model, named Claude, the companies said on Wednesday. Such software uses a flood of data to train AI interfaces, letting them field questions and generate conversational text.
As the race to build ever-larger AI models heats up, tech giants like Google are cultivating relationships with the startups at the cutting edge of the field. Anthropic recently agreed to spend more than $3 billion on Google’s cloud computing services over four years, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Separately, Google has committed to invest $2 billion in the startup, Bloomberg has reported.
Anthropic has used Google Cloud services since 2021, the year the startup was founded. As part of the new agreement, Anthropic will use more of Google Cloud’s infrastructure and security features, the companies said.
“We’re really excited about the efficiency of the TPUs,” Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei said, referring to the Google chips. “Those are starting to show gains for us already.”
Amazon.com Inc., Google’s rival in cloud services, also is an Anthropic backer. That company said in a filing that it invested $1.25 billion in the form of a convertible note, with the ability to invest $2.75 billion more in a second note.
Amazon also has a deal with Anthropic that lets the startup use its AWS cloud services and chips. The e-commerce giant has said that Anthropic plans to run “the majority of its workloads on AWS.” Amodei emphasized to Bloomberg that Anthropic is taking a “multi-cloud” approach, meaning it won’t get exclusive with any one provider.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said he wasn’t bothered by Anthropic’s work with AWS.
“Large companies always want to choose multiple clouds — it helps them use the best of each,” he said. “We are used to competing and also collaborating with other cloud providers.”
Kurian added that he views the latest TPU chips as a selling point for Google’s cloud. In addition to Anthropic, AI startups Hugging Face and AssemblyAI are using the chips. Google also uses the technology to support its own products, such as the chatbot Bard.
AI Startup Anthropic to Use Google Chips in Expanded Partnership - Bloomberg (archive.ph) |
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| To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (15802) | 11/8/2023 6:38:26 PM | | From: Glenn Petersen | | | | Google is bringing its AI-powered search to more than 120 new countries and territories
/ The Search Generative Experience is going to be available to a lot more people.
By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.
The Verge
Nov 8, 2023, 12:00 PM CST|1 Comment / 1 New
Google is bringing its Search Generative Experience (SGE) to more than 120 new countries, including Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, according to a blog post from Google’s Hema Budaraju. SGE will also support four new languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, and Indonesian, which add to its current support for English, Hindi, and Japanese.
The expansion means that a lot more people can choose to mess around with SGE. You’ll still need to jump through some hoops to try it: you have to opt in via Google’s Search Labs program, and once you have, you can only use SGE on Chrome on desktop or the Google app on Android and iOS. (In the newly added countries, SGE is accessible on Chrome on desktop beginning Wednesday and will be available in the Google app “over the coming week,” according to Budaraju’s blog.)
In an interview, Budaraju declined to share if or when SGE might be available in more browsers. However, she did say that “in the future, we probably will have to come back to you.”
Interestingly, on my Search Labs page, there are notes that say that SGE and SGE while browsing experiments end in December 2023. I asked Google about it. “Our goal with this phase of SGE is to get feedback and iterate on the experience alongside our users,” Google spokesperson Craig Ewer said in a statement to The Verge. “We don’t have anything further to share on future plans.”
That doesn’t exactly clear things up. But given this major expansion and CEO Sundar Pichai’s previous statement that SGE will eventually be “just how search works,” I doubt that SGE is going away anytime soon.
Google is also adding a handful of new features to SGE.
- The company is testing a new “ask a follow up” text box that appears right on the SGE results page, meaning you won’t have to go to SGE’s separate conversational window to ask. This will begin to roll out “over the coming weeks,” first in English in the US, according to Budaraju’s blog.
- When asking for translations, Search can now prompt you to clarify a single word that may have multiple meanings (“tie,” for example). This feature will be available for English-to-Spanish translations sometime “soon” in the US, with more countries and languages down the line, Budaraju writes, though you’ll have to be signed up to SGE through Search Labs to get it.
- In SGE search results, Google will let you hover over certain coding and health terms to learn more about them, which adds to the previously announced ability to hover over certain science, economic, and history terms. This feature is rolling out in English in the US “over the next month,” with “more countries and languages expected to follow soon.”
SGE results, when they’re good, answer your queries without requiring you to click out to other sources, which is a pretty fundamental shift to search. While Budaraju didn’t have any specific metrics to share about whether SGE results have changed click-through rates from search results to other sources, Google has already updated SGE to improve how it surfaces and contextualizes links.
Google’s AI-powered search is coming to a lot more countries - The Verge |
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| From: Glenn Petersen | 12/6/2023 10:58:30 AM | | | | | | Google debuts powerful Gemini generative AI model in strike at OpenAI, Microsoft
DANIEL HOWLEY
Yahoo Finance
December 6, 2023 at 10:00 AM
Google ( GOOG, GOOGL) on Wednesday debuted its new Gemini generative AI model. The platform serves as Google’s answer to Microsoft-backed ( MSFT) OpenAI’s GPT-4, and according to DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis it's the company’s “most capable and general model” yet.
Gemini is what is referred to as a natively multi-modal model, meaning it can analyze text, audio, video, images, and code. While other multi-model offerings exist, Google says Gemini stands apart because the model was designed to take all of those mediums into account from the beginning.
Other platforms, the company says, train separate models to tackle things like text, video, and photos and then string them together into a single model.
This difference, according to Hassabis, means that Gemini is able to better understand multimodal data and produce better results for everything from handwritten content, images, and videos.
As part of the announcement, Google released a series of videos demonstrating Gemini’s capabilities. In one video, a presenter shows a program running Gemini with a drawing of a blue duck, as well as a rubber blue duck, both of which the AI is able to identify.
In another demonstration the presenter shows the AI a hand drawn picture of a roller coaster without a loop and another one with a loop. When the presenter asks which one is likely more fun, the AI says the one with the loop, which is the right answer unless you hate going around loops or roller coasters in general.
A series of servers powering Google's Gemini AI platform. (Image: Google) (Google)
-------------------------------
Another example shows how parents can use Gemini to help their children with their homework. Not only is the AI able to read a student’s written answers to math questions, it is also able to tell if they are correct or not and explain where the student went wrong and why.
On the coding front, Google says Gemini is one of the leading models for coding around, claiming that the AI can understand programming languages such as Python, Java, C++, and Go.
Google is rolling out three different versions of Gemini: Gemini Ultra, Gemini Pro, and Gemini Nano. Gemini Ultra is the top-of-the-line, data center version of the AI model meant for what Google says are highly complex tasks. Gemini Pro is the mid-range version of the model, while Nano is the version designed to run on devices such as Google’s Pixel 8 Pro.
The company says the smartphone will use Gemini Nano to power Summarize in its Recorder app, which will allow it to understand content in a recording and provide a bulleted summary. The model will also power Smart Reply in Gboard starting with WhatsApp and eventually coming to other apps later next year.
Gemini Pro, meanwhile, is available as part of the English language version of Google’s Bard chatbot beginning today. The feature, Google says, will make Bard better at “understanding, summarizing, reasoning, coding, and planning.”
Next year, the company says it will roll out a version of Bard powered by Gemini Ultra called Bard Advanced.
Importantly, Google says it’s already experimenting with Gemini in Search via its Search Generative Experience, a version of Google Search that adds generative AI capabilities. According to the company, Gemini has reduced latency in the English language version of the app in the U.S. by 40%.
Gemini will also be coming to Search, Chrome, Ads, and Duet AI in the months ahead.
Gemini is a massive undertaking for Google, serving as the company’s biggest shot at both OpenAI and its backer Microsoft.
Ever since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in Nov. 2022, Google has been playing catch-up to its rivals. Microsoft has already added its GPT-powered Copilots to a number of its services, giving it an early lead in the new AI wars. But with Gemini, Google could have what it takes to make and even exceed OpenAI and Microsoft.
But what truly matters is how well the AI model integrates into Google’s products, and whether that will help drive consumers to continue to take advantage of platforms like Google Search, Google Workspaces, YouTube, and other products.
And while you might not notice the changes at first, Gemini is meant as a means of securing Google’s dominance into the future. And there’s little chance OpenAI and Microsoft aren’t already preparing their own responses to Gemini.
Daniel Howley is the tech editor at Yahoo Finance. He's been covering the tech industry since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @DanielHowley.
Google debuts powerful Gemini generative AI model in strike at OpenAI, Microsoft [Video] (aol.com) |
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| To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (15805) | 12/7/2023 5:24:45 PM | | From: Glenn Petersen | | | | Google shares pop 5% after company announces Gemini AI model
PUBLISHED THU, DEC 7 202311:02 AM EST
UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
Ashley Capoot @IN/ASHLEY-CAPOOT-02496B173/
CNBC.com
KEY POINTS
- Google shares jumped Thursday, a day after the company announced its latest artificial intelligence model called Gemini.
- Google executives said Gemini outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, but the company did not share how it compares with OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4.
- Analysts are encouraged by Google’s progress in AI, but questions remain about how the company will monetize the technology in the long term.
Shares of Google closed up 5% Thursday, a day after the company announced its latest artificial intelligence model called Gemini that will compete with products from OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta.
The stock is on pace for its best day since Aug. 29. Wells Fargo’s trading desk said the announcement “should be enough to quiet down the ‘where is GOOG on AI’ chatter” and that Gemini “is clearly causing a pre-mkt bid to GOOGL this morning as sell side notes read positive.”
But Wells Fargo’s trading desk also said the big question is what Google’s monetization for Gemini looks like. “In short, I’d summarize GOOG as proving that they still have some bite.”
Analysts at Bank of America said Wednesday that Alphabet has been under pressure from concerns over Google’s AI capabilities this year, so a “well-branded,” competitive model could have upsides for its consumer search activity and Cloud enterprise sales.
“We think Google has strong AI capabilities, and data suggesting that Google has best in class, proprietary, AI capabilities can be positive for the shares in 1H'24,” the analysts wrote in a note.
It’s still unclear whether Google plans to monetize Gemini through all of its products in the long term, though it will start by licensing Gemini to customers through Google Cloud later this month.
Google executives said Gemini outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 chatbot, but the company didn’t share how it compares with OpenAI’s latest model GPT-4 Turbo. Still, Gemini shows there’s an opportunity to further monetize AI.
Microsoft, for example, recently launched Copilot, powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is embedded in Word, Excel and other Office programs and will cost $30 per person per month. Piper Sandler analysts said in October that Copilot could add up to more than $10 billion in annualized revenue for Microsoft by 2026.
JPMorgan analysts wrote that while Wall Street “mostly yawned” at the announcement Wednesday, they are “encouraged” to see Google’s progress in “this major technology shift.” They note, however, that there will be pushback over “uncertainty around the monetization path in Search.”
“While it remains early, the Gemini launch represents significant innovation for Google as we enter year 2 of commercialized and widely distributed availability of Generative AI,” the analysts wrote in a Thursday note.
Analysts at KeyBanc said they view Gemini as the “culmination” of Google’s many AI announcements this year, but that they believe it will take time for AI to meaningfully influence its growth and profitability.
“Today’s announcements suggest that Gemini is still making its way into core products like Search, so we would advise patience in inferring impact to estimates,” they wrote in a note Wednesday. “While we believe 2024 will be more about results than headlines, we also believe it is still early innings in changing advertiser, consumer, developer, and enterprise behaviors.”
— CNBC’s Michael Bloom and Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.
Google stock up after company announces Gemini AI model (cnbc.com) |
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| From: Glenn Petersen | 12/11/2023 8:21:06 PM | | | | | | Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight
/ The jury decided Google’s sweetheart deals were too much.
By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
The Verge
Dec 11, 2023, 6:17 PM CST|29 Comments / 29 New
Three years after Fortnite-maker Epic Games sued Apple and Google for allegedly running illegal app store monopolies, Epic has a win. The jury in Epic v. Google has just delivered its verdict — and it found that Google turned its Google Play app store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly.
After just a few hours of deliberation, the jury unanimously answered yes to every question put before them — that Google has monopoly power in the Android app distribution markets and in-app billing services markets, that Google did anticompetitive things in those markets, and that Epic was injured by that behavior. They decided Google has an illegal tie between its Google Play app store and its Google Play Billing payment services, too, and that its distribution agreement, Project Hug deals with game developers and deals with OEMs were all anticompetitive.
It’s a historic victory, particularly because Epic mostly lost its fight against Apple two years ago when Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers decided that fight had nothing to do with apps.
Here are the top 20 things we learned in the Epic v. Google trial.
But Epic v. Google turned out to be a very different case. It hinged on secret revenue sharing deals between Google, smartphone makers, and big game developers, ones that Google execs internally believed were designed to keep rival app stores down. It showed that Google was running scared of Epic specifically. And it was all decided by a jury, unlike the Apple ruling.
Mind you, we don’t know what Epic has actually won quite yet — that’s up to Judge James Donato, who’ll decide what the appropriate remedies might be. Epic never sued for monetary damages; it wants the court to tell Google that every app developer has total freedom to introduce its own app stores and its own billing systems on Android, and we don’t yet know how or even whether the judge might grant those wishes. Both parties will meet with Judge Donato in the second week of January to discuss potential remedies.
Judge Donato has already stated that he will not grant Epic’s additional request for an anti-circumvention provision “just to be sure Google can’t reintroduce the same problems through some alternative creative solution,” as Epic lead attorney Gary Bornstein put it on November 28th.
“We don’t do don’t-break-the-law injunctions... if you have a problem, you can come back,” Donato said. He also said he did not intend to decide what percentage fee Google should charge for its products.
Although Epic didn’t sue for damages, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney suggested Epic stood to make hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars if it doesn’t have to pay Google’s fee.
Here’s the verdict form that jurors had to fill out in Epic v. Google. The document can be accessed at the link posted below,
We’ll replace it with the final signed form once we have access to a digital copy.
It’s quite likely that Google will appeal this case; we’ll update this story once we hear. Google didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.
Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight - The Verge |
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| To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (15807) | 12/12/2023 7:37:28 PM | | From: Glenn Petersen | | | | Google’s Epic Legal Defeat Threatens $200 Billion App Store Industry- Jury decision poised to accelerate crumbling of business model
- Case takes aim at app store commissions of up to 30%
By Mark Gurman and Davey Alba
Bloomberg
December 12, 2023 at 6:04 AM UTC
Updated on December 12, 2023 at 1:48 PM UTC
Google’s legal defeat at the hands of Fortnite maker Epic Games Inc. threatens to roil an app store duopoly with Apple Inc. that generates close to $200 billion a year and dictates how billions of consumers use mobile devices.
The loss — handed down by a San Francisco jury on Monday — is a blow to the two companies’ business model in apps, where they charge commissions of as much as 30% to software developers who typically have few other options. Google shares were down about 1% in premarket trading.
Epic has spent years railing against the practice and got a federal jury to agree that Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit had acted unfairly as a monopoly. The case is likely to accelerate the weakening of app store rules, which have already come under fire from regulators and lawmakers around the world.
“The dominoes are going to start falling here,” Tim Sweeney, chief executive officer of Epic, said in an interview after the verdict. “The end of 30% is in sight.”
Though Apple won a similar case against Epic in 2021, that ruling was made by a single judge. The nature of the Google suit — where a jury sided unanimously with Epic — let actual consumers weigh in on the world of smartphone apps. In under four hours of deliberations, they found that Google had engaged in anticompetitive conduct, harmed Epic and illegally forced its own billing system on developers.
The battle began in 2020, when Fortnite was kicked off the Apple and Google Play app stores because the game developer had secretly installed its own payment system. The idea was to bypass the up-to-30% revenue share that the two tech giants take from in-app purchases and subscriptions on their platforms. In response, Epic sued both companies.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney won a legal victory against Google on Monday.Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
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Google also has drawn criticism for making side deals with big developers like Spotify Technology SA where it offers lower commissions. In Monday’s decision, the jury found that Google shouldn’t require Android app developers to use its billing system for software sold through its store — and that it shouldn’t offer custom agreements to certain developers.
“The immediate aftereffect is we will see a shift in the marketplace where big tech companies will have to make accommodations — whether it is more access, better terms, more options for developers — to stave off legal exposure,” said Paul Swanson, a partner at Holland & Hart who specializes in technology and antitrust law.
The case also underscores a sentiment among many consumers that major technology companies have gained too much power. Google also faced scrutiny from a Justice Department judge this fall over its power in search, though the outcome of that trial won’t be clear for months.
Epic’s Sweeney predicted that — as Google starts making changes to its operations and public pressure mounts — its app store peer will be forced to act as well. “The same thing will start happening with Apple,” he said.
And that will ultimately help consumers, Sweeney said. “The economics is real,” he said. “When you remove a 30% tax from an ecosystem, consumer prices will get better. Or quality will get better and selection will increase.”
But there were significant differences between the two trials. During the current case, Epic highlighted agreements Google reached with top game developers, including Activision Blizzard Inc. and Nintendo Co., for smaller fees. Every developer should now demand one of those deals, Sweeney said.
“Revenue sharing deals among Google, smartphone makers and game developers came to light during the trial,” Justin Patterson and other analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets wrote in a note to clients. “We believe this was a key difference between the cases that contributed to Apple’s victory and Google’s loss.”
In Apple’s App Store, the same 30% take rate was applied evenly, while Google was attempting to steer traffic away from rival app stores on Android, analysts at Jefferies wrote in a note. “Meanwhile, Apple simply does not allow any rival app stores whatsoever.”
There’s a fortune at stake for both Apple and Google. In-app spending is forecast to reach $182 billion next year and $207 billion in 2025, according to research firm Sensor Tower. Google will get about $10.3 billion in revenue from app sales and in-app purchases from the Play Store in 2023, according to analysts at Wells Fargo. For every 5 points that the Play Store fee rate decreases, Google loses about $1.3 billion in operating income or 9 cents of earnings per share, the analysts wrote.
Already, the Digital Markets Act in the European Union will spur changes. For the first time, Apple will need to allow third-party app stores and billing systems in the region. A ruling against Apple or requirements imposed by the EU’s DMA “represent more meaningful potential changes for the industry,” than the Google
Even before the DMA takes effect next year, the two companies have been making adjustments. Apple now lets so-called reader apps — such as software for cloud storage, watching video and reading books — link to outside websites to let users pay. That bypasses Apple’s revenue cut.
Both Apple and Google also have changed their policies to take a commission on subscription apps. And Apple has been forced to let dating apps in the Netherlands bypass its billing system.
But the Epic win against Google has the potential to bring major changes to the companies’ home country. That includes shifting internet software back to a more open environment, rather than the app stores’ closed ecosystems, according to Stanford Law professor Mark Lemley.
“The last two decades have seen a profound shift away from the open internet towards walled gardens,” Lemley said. “That is one of the things that has kept the internet market so concentrated. This verdict just knocked a big hole in the garden wall.”
Though Apple won nine out of 10 counts against Epic when that decision was made in 2021, one issue is still up in the air: whether Apple should let all third-party developers point customers to websites to pay for purchases, bypassing Apple’s fees. It may now be harder for the iPhone maker to avoid that fate.
Google, which plans to appeal its verdict, said it “will continue to defend the Android business model and remain deeply committed to our users, partners and the broader Android ecosystem.” Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Apple has said it doesn’t have any side deals with developers, though it offers discounted rates to some video streaming partners like Amazon.com Inc. During the trial, Epic’s lawyers said Google also didn’t properly retain some internal records relevant to the case.
“I don’t think there’s much of a debate that the monopoly finding with Google holds true with Apple too,” said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade association for digital content companies. “The distinction that will be pored over is whether or not Apple abused that.”
— With assistance from Leah Nylen, Malathi Nayak, and Subrat Patnaik
(Updates with premarket shares and analyst comments) |
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| From: Julius Wong | 12/13/2023 10:57:21 AM | | | | | | Google is rolling out new AI models for health care. Here’s how doctors are using them
Google on Wednesday announced MedLM, a suite of new health-care-specific artificial intelligence models designed to help clinicians and researchers carry out complex studies, summarize doctor-patient interactions and more.
The move marks Google’s latest attempt to monetize health-care industry AI tools, as competition for market share remains fierce between competitors like Amazon and Microsoft. CNBC spoke with companies that have been testing Google’s technology, like HCA Healthcare, and experts say the potential for impact is real, though they are taking steps to implement it carefully.
The MedLM suite includes a large and a medium-sized AI model, both built on Med-PaLM 2, a large language model trained on medical data that Google first announced in March. It is generally available to eligible Google Cloud customers in the U.S. starting Wednesday, and Google said while the cost of the AI suite varies depending on how companies use the different models, the medium-sized model is less expensive to run.
Google said it also plans to introduce health-care-specific versions of Gemini, the company’s newest and “most capable” AI model, to MedLM in the future.
Aashima Gupta, Google Cloud’s global director of health-care strategy and solutions, said the company found that different medically tuned AI models can carry out certain tasks better than others. That’s why Google decided to introduce a suite of models instead of trying to build a “one-size-fits-all” solution.
For instance, Google said its larger MedLM model is better for carrying out complicated tasks that require deep knowledge and lots of compute power, such as conducting a study using data from a health-care organization’s entire patient population. But if companies need a more agile model that can be optimized for specific or real-time functions, such as summarizing an interaction between a doctor and patient, the medium-sized model should work better, according to Gupta.
Real-world use cases
A Google Cloud logo at the Hannover Messe industrial technology fair in Hanover, Germany, on Thursday, April 20, 2023.
Krisztian Bocsi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
When Google announced Med-PaLM 2 in March, the company initially said it could be used to answer questions like “What are the first warning signs of pneumonia?” and “Can incontinence be cured?” But as the company has tested the technology with customers, the use cases have changed, according to Greg Corrado, head of Google’s health AI.
Corrado said clinicians don’t often need help with “accessible” questions about the nature of a disease, so Google hasn’t seen much demand for those capabilities from customers. Instead, health organizations often want AI to help solve more back-office or logistical problems, like managing paperwork.
“They want something that’s helping them with the real pain points and slowdowns that are in their workflow, that only they know,” Corrado told CNBC.
For instance, HCA Healthcare, one of the largest health systems in the U.S., has been testing Google’s AI technology since the spring. The company announced an official collaboration with Google Cloud in August that aims to use its generative AI to “improve workflows on time-consuming tasks.”
Dr. Michael Schlosser, senior vice president of care transformation and innovation at HCA, said the company has been using MedLM to help emergency medicine physicians automatically document their interactions with patients. For instance, HCA uses an ambient speech documentation system from a company called Augmedix to transcribe doctor-patient meetings. Google’s MedLM suite can then take those transcripts and break them up into the components of an ER provider note.
Schlosser said HCA has been using MedLM within emergency rooms at four hospitals, and the company wants to expand use over the next year. By January, Schlosser added, he expects Google’s technology will be able to successfully generate more than half of a note without help from providers. For doctors who can spend up to four hours a day on clerical paperwork, Schlosser said saving that time and effort makes a meaningful difference.
“That’s been a huge leap forward for us,” Schlosser told CNBC. “We now think we’re going to be at a point where the AI, by itself, can create 60-plus percent of the note correctly on its own before we have the human doing the review and the editing.”
Schlosser said HCA is also working to use MedLM to develop a handoff tool for nurses. The tool can read through the electronic health record and identify relevant information for nurses to pass along to the next shift.
Handoffs are “laborious” and a real pain point for nurses, so it would be “powerful” to automate the process, Schlosser said. Nurses across HCA’s hospitals carry out around 400,000 handoffs a week, and two HCA hospitals have been testing the nurse handoff tool. Schlosser said nurses conduct a side-by-side comparison of a traditional handoff and an AI-generated handoff and provide feedback.
With both use cases, though, HCA has found that MedLM is not foolproof.
Schlosser said the fact that AI models can spit out incorrect information is a big challenge, and HCA has been working with Google to come up with best practices to minimize those fabrications. He added that token limits, which restrict the amount of data that can be fed to the model, and managing the AI over time have been additional challenges for HCA.
“What I would say right now, is that the hype around the current use of these AI models in health care is outstripping the reality,” Schlosser said. “Everyone’s contending with this problem, and no one has really let these models loose in a scaled way in the health-care systems because of that.”
Even so, Schlosser said providers’ initial response to MedLM has been positive, and they recognize that they are not working with the finished product yet. He said HCA is working hard to implement the technology in a responsible way to avoid putting patients at risk.
“We’re being very cautious with how we approach these AI models,” he said. “We’re not using those use cases where the model outputs can somehow affect someone’s diagnosis and treatment.”
Getty Images
Google also plans to introduce health-care-specific versions of Gemini to MedLM in the future. Its shares popped 5% after Gemini’s launch earlier this month, but Google faced scrutiny over its demonstration video, which was not conducted in real time, the company confirmed to Bloomberg.
In a statement, Google told CNBC: “The video is an illustrative depiction of the possibilities of interacting with Gemini, based on real multimodal prompts and outputs from testing. We look forward to seeing what people create when access to Gemini Pro opens on December 13.”
Corrado and Gupta of Google said Gemini is still in early stages, and it needs to be tested and evaluated with customers in controlled health-care settings before the model rolls out through MedLM more broadly.
“We’ve been testing Med-PaLM 2 with our customers for months, and now we’re comfortable taking that as part of MedLM,” Gupta said. “Gemini will follow the same thing.”
Schlosser said HCA is “very excited” about Gemini, and the company is already working out plans to test the technology, “We think that may give us an additional level of performance when we get that,” he said.
Another company that has been using MedLM is BenchSci, which aims to use AI to solve problems in drug discovery. Google is an investor in BenchSci, and the company has been testing its MedLM technology for a few months.
Liran Belenzon, BenchSci’s co-founder and CEO, said the company has merged MedLM’s AI with BenchSci’s own technology to help scientists identify biomarkers, which are key to understanding how a disease progresses and how it can be cured.
Belenzon said the company spent a lot of time testing and validating the model, including providing Google with feedback about necessary improvements. Now, Belenzon said BenchSci is in the process of bringing the technology to market more broadly.
?[MedLM] doesn’t work out of the box, but it helps accelerate your specific efforts,” he told CNBC in an interview.
Corrado said research around MedLM is ongoing, and he thinks Google Cloud’s health-care customers will be able to tune models for multiple different use cases within an organization. He added that Google will continue to develop domain-specific models that are “smaller, cheaper, faster, better.”
Like BenchSci, Deloitte tested MedLM “over and over” before deploying the technology to health-care clients, said Dr. Kulleni Gebreyes, Deloitte’s U.S. life sciences and health-care consulting leader.
Deloitte is using Google’s technology to help health systems and health plans answer members’ questions about accessing care. If a patient needs a colonoscopy, for instance, they can use MedLM to look for providers based on gender, location or benefit coverage, as well as other qualifiers.
Gebreyes said clients have found that MedLM is accurate and efficient, but it’s not always great at deciphering a user’s intent. It can be a challenge if patients don’t know the right word or spelling for colonoscopy, or use other colloquial terms, she said.
“Ultimately, this does not substitute a diagnosis from a trained professional,” Gebreyes told CNBC. “It brings expertise closer and makes it more accessible.”
cnbc.com |
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| To: Ron who wrote (15810) | 12/20/2023 10:38:31 AM | | From: Glenn Petersen | | | | | The state AGs were bought off cheaply. And here I thought that the Google and Apple app stores were particularly vulnerable to antitrust action. |
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