So I started at Google in 2020 (after Sam closed our lab down in 2017 to focus on OpenAI), and if they were hoarding it, I at least had no clue about it. To be clear, my perspective is still limited.
Fair enough, maybe a better way to put it is: why was the current AI boom sparked by ChatGPT and not something from Google? It's clear in retrospect that Google had similar capabilities in LaMDA, the precursor to Gemini. As I recall it was even announced a couple years before ChatGPT but wasn't released (as Bard?) until after ChatGPT.
LaMDA is probably more famous for convincing a Google employee that it was sentient and getting him fired. When I heard that story I could not believe anybody could be deceived to that extent... until I saw ChatGPT. In hindsight, it was probably the first ever case of what is now called "AI psychosis". (Which may be a valid reason Google did not want to release it.)
Google had been burned badly in multiple previous launches of ML-based products and their leadership was extremely cautious about moving too quickly. It was convenient for Google that OpenAI acted as a first mover so that Google could enter the field after there was some level of cultural acceptance of the negative behaviors. There's a whole backstory where Noam Shazeer had come up with a bunch of nice innovations and wanted to launch them, but was only able to do so by leaving and launching through his startup- and then returned to Google, negotiating a phenomenal deal (Noam has been at Google for 25 years and has been doing various ML projects for much of that time).
Thanks for the helpful context. Google being risk averse is definitely a common criticism I've heard. I can't think of what previous problematic launches could have been, but ironically all the ones I remember offhand were after the release of Gemini!
I think "hoarding" is the wrong connotation. They were happy to have it be a fun research project alongside alphago while they continued making money from ads.
