Ben Thompson, author at technology analysis firm Stratechery, writes that Google needs a transformation of its culture, similar to the way Satya Nadella did at Microsoft.He says the point of the company should not be to tell users what to think, but to help them make important decisions, as Larry Page (Google co-founder) once promised. “That means, first and foremost, exercising the company of employees attracted to Google’s power and its potential to help them execute their political programme, and return decision-making to those who actually want to make a good product. That, by extension, must mean removing those who let the former run amok, up to and including CEO Sundar Pichai,” he said.
Helios Capital founder Samir Arora writes in a post on X, “My guess is he (Pichai) will be fired or resign – as he should. After being in the lead on AI he has completely failed on this and let others take over.” A recent Business Insider article says the Gemini debacle has strengthened the narrative that Google is suddenly behind in the AI race, “and now there’s a growing chorus of voices calling for CEO Sundar Pichai to be replaced”.
It quotes a current senior employee (without naming the person) as saying, “It’s a PR nightmare for the company. Googlers are pissed.”
There have been multiple problems with Gemini. Its image generator first produced images of Nazi armed forces with blacks and Asians in them, which was historically incorrect. Many found that offensive, even though Gemini’s intent may have been admirable – to counteract the biases typical in large language models given the data that is publicly available and on which it is trained.
US conservatives have been outraged by Gemini’s text-based output, which appears to treat Republican politicians and right-leaning people more negatively than their Democrat counterparts.
In India, many were offended by the way it responded to questions about PM Narendra Modi. Google has responded immediately in most cases, by pausing the image generation service, and recalibrating Gemini’s responses to certain questions. Pichai called Gemini’s responses unacceptable.
Google SVP Prabhakar Raghavan said in a blogpost that he can’t promise that Gemini won’t occasionally generate embarrassing, inaccurate or offensive results.