Hands Off Google

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Hands Off Google

This week the This Week in AI section has a lot of great content. Norman Lewis leads with an essay against the apocalyptic views of the dangers of AI and is joined by Nathan Lands and Noah Smith. Meanwhile, Dwarkesh Patel and Christoph Janz take the opposite stance, quoting Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures in diatribes against Marc Andreessen.

Lewis asks:

... why such intelligent people can only imagine the worst when it comes to this remarkable technology. Why would a superhuman intelligence, if that indeed is what is being created, seek to destroy us? Wouldn't an AI system aim to surpass, rather than destroy, the achievements of human civilisation?

indeed. Regular readers know where my views lay. Take risks, but be smart. And trust the innovators to do so.

But for me, the news of the week was an EU regulators threat to break up Google's advertising business from its other interests, accusing Google of favoring its own interests in determining the inputs and outputs from algorithmic advertising.

After a two-year investigation into the company's ad-tech business, the regulator concluded that Google had abused its monopoly in online advertising by favouring its own ad exchange, AdX, in the auctions held by its own ad server, DFP, and in the way its ad-buying tools, branded as Google Ads and DV360, place bids on such exchanges.

Google only has one business - advertising. Everything else it does are loss-making services designed to grow the advertising business. You cannot break up Google into an advertising business and the rest. Only one would survive. Then all of the benefits we get from Android, Android TV, Youtube, Google Workspaces, Deepmind, the Google Cloud, and the rest would disappear due to lack of revenue.

The idea itself is inane. And the EU, no stranger to inanity, has yet again demonstrated a staggering lack of understanding of how technology is funded and supported.

The state really has no business telling Google how to run its business. It claims the right by trying to claim Google has a monopoly but fails to make a convincing case. Google itself points out how its share of advertising has been declining due to competition from Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, and others. The revenue it receives from "cost per click" programs has been in price decline for years.

And so this week's cover is "Hands Off Google," with an AI image generated from a prompt by Adobe Express. I, for one, have no faith that Government can be the friend of humanity when it addresses innovation and technology. The EU is even less qualified than others.

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