Google lags behind OpenAI because its employees are not motivated enough? Former Google CEO apologizes, netizens say management is the biggest problem
2024-08-17
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
Eric Schmidt, former CEO and executive chairman of Google (Visual China data map)
Google's former CEO has retracted his earlier comments criticizing his former employer for not being competitive enough.
Recently, Eric Schmidt, former CEO and executive chairman of Google, said in a speech at Stanford University that Google lost to startups such as OpenAI in the AI (artificial intelligence) competition because Google's remote work policy caused employees to not work hard enough: "Google believes that work-life balance, leaving get off work early and working from home are more important than winning. But startups can succeed because people work desperately." One day after the video was released, Schmidt apologized for his remarks.
In his speech, Schmidt repeatedly emphasized that having employees work in the office is a key factor to success: "If you start a business and want to compete with other startups, you won't let your employees work from home and only come to the company one day a week." But in fact, since 2022, Google and OpenAI have adopted a similar hybrid work system, requiring employees to come to the office three days a week.
At the same time, Schmidt said somewhat sarcastically that AI start-ups can first "copy" other people's mature works, and then "hire a large number of lawyers to clean up the mess" after the product becomes popular.
According to data, Schmidt served as Google CEO from 2001 to 2011 and served on the board of directors until 2019. Currently, Schmidt, who has a net worth of $31.4 billion, is still a shareholder of Google's parent company Alphabet, holding about 147 million shares of Alphabet, worth about $24 billion.
There is no doubt that Schmidt's overly straightforward remarks were widely criticized. Many netizens who have worked at Google said that Google's management is the company's biggest problem. Subsequently, Schmidt quickly apologized publicly, and the relevant video was also set as a private video by Stanford University. Schmidt said in his apology statement: "I made a mistake in my statement about Google and its working hours, and I regret it."
In response, the Alphabet Workers Union posted a message on X (original Twitter) saying: "Flexible work arrangements do not slow down our work progress. Understaffing, frequent changes in priorities, constant layoffs, no salary growth, and management's lack of execution on projects are the factors that slow down Google employees every day."
It is worth noting that many well-known American entrepreneurs actually hold similar views to Schmidt. For example, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have publicly complained about remote work policies. Dimon once wrote in his annual shareholder letter that it is impossible for company management to sit in front of a screen and lead the team.
From another perspective, Schmidt's remarks may also be his true words as a Google shareholder. Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT at the end of 2022, Google has been playing the role of "chaser" in the AI competition. The company's large model Gemini released earlier this year has also been criticized for a large number of errors in the generated images.
Recently, Google released the Pixel 9 series of mobile phones before Apple, integrating new AI features such as screenshot search and Gemini chatbot, under the shadow of the court ruling that its search business violated US antitrust laws. Android users will be able to open Gemini on their phones and overlay it on another application to answer questions or generate content. As the basic model of the series, the 6.3-inch Pixel 9 starts at $799.
On August 15, local time, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) stock price rose 0.7% to $163.17 per share, with a total market value of $1.99 trillion. Wind data shows that Google's stock price has risen 15.91% since the beginning of this year.
In addition, Schmidt also shared some investment advice about Nvidia in this speech, saying that he saw an obvious trend in the stock market that large technology companies are planning to make larger and larger investments in Nvidia: "I'm talking to big companies and they tell me that the company needs $20 billion, $50 billion, $100 billion - very, very urgently." Schmidt added that he is a "close friend" of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Schmidt said that although Nvidia will not be the only winner in the field of AI, there are not many other options. He believes that large companies that can invest more in Nvidia chips and data centers will be technologically ahead of smaller competitors: "There are only three leading-edge models, and the gap between them and all other models seems to be getting wider and wider. Six months ago, I was sure that the gap was narrowing, so I invested a lot of money in small companies. Now, I am not so sure."
Hu Hanyan, reporter of The Paper
(This article is from The Paper. For more original information, please download the "The Paper" APP)
