Google is working on artificial intelligence software that resembles the human ability to reason, similar to OpenAI’s o1, marking a new front in the rivalry between the tech giant and the fast-growing startup. In recent months, multiple teams at Alphabet Inc.’s Google have been making progress on AI reasoning software, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Such software programs are more adept at solving multistep problems in fields such as math and computer programming. AI researchers are pursuing reasoning models as they search for the next significant step forward in the technology. Like OpenAI, Google is trying to approximate human reasoning using a technique known as chain-of-thought prompting, according to two of the people. In this technique, which Google pioneered, the software pauses for a matter of seconds before responding to a written prompt while, behind the scenes and invisible to the user, it considers a number of related prompts and then summarizes what appears to be the best response. Google declined to comment on the effort. Google and OpenAI have been locked in an intense fight for dominance in AI, particularly since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a popular chatbot that some investors worry will eventually obviate the need for Google search. Google has taken various steps to regain its lead, including merging its premier research labs to form the Google DeepMind unit and fortifying relationships between researchers and product teams. Yet the search giant continues to move more slowly when it comes to releasing AI products, pausing to consider ethical problems, the need to live up to the public’s expectations of trust in its brand, and the competing interests of multiple similar efforts in the vast organization.
Full exclusive : Though Google has made progress on AI reasoning, similar to OpenAI’s o1 some in its DeepMind unit are worried over falling behind.
