AI Cold War - Microsoft vs Google
Abraham George Musings
I just finished watching an interesting video released by Cold Fusion about the artificial intelligence face-off between Microsoft and Google. The punch line in the video was, "Google has everything to lose and Microsoft has everything to gain." Indeed, as you may be aware, Google recently lost 7% of its market capitalization in a single day, or $100 in bio, due to market participants' concerns that Google is falling behind the curve in AI innovations.
Google did not take that long to come out with its own generative AI in response to the success of Open AI’s ChatGPT, named Bard. Microsoft, which has been watching all of Google's moves, has made a countermove. They announced that ChatGPT has been integrated into their search engine, Bing. We all know about Bing, but how many of us really use it? But that may all change now with this new move from Microsoft.
Google is viewed as the 800-pound gorilla in the online search industry. As per the latest analysis, Google holds more than 92% of the market share, while Bing is a poor second at just above 3%.
Microsoft made a $10 billion investment in Open AI for no reason. ChatGPT integration into Bing could be a game changer. It could soon topple the apple cart for Google and could be a major concern for Alphabet, the parent company of Google. 80 percent of all of Alphabet’s revenue comes from online advertising.
ChatGPT is not only aiding Bing, but it’s making its debut in Microsoft Teams as well. This is very interesting. The generative AI is capable of having intelligent conversations with humans. They can "listen" to human speech and, with a high level of accuracy, participate in and help the conversation.
Microsoft announced that ChatGPT will attentively listen to every conversation and take notes in the process. It will provide a full transcript as well as a list of the highlights from each call. How cool is that?
The AI will also put together a suggested list of tasks that need to be done as a result of the call. In addition, it will track the level of participation from each caller.
One of the biggest problems corporations and other companies face with remote work is that it is difficult to "keep an eye" on all employees. ChatGPT-powered Teams could address that. Though remote work took off due to the pandemic, it is now here to stay. Such technology will give employers greater surveillance over the behavior of employees. The AI will be able to monitor the engagement of employees even down to the second.
The new version of Microsoft Teams will be a big threat to companies like Zoom. This will be widely picked up by enterprise customers. Microsoft calls this premium version of Teams "intelligent recap technology."
This technology will have its fair share of downsides too. Different companies will employ this kind of technology in different ways. If used improperly, it will change the attitude and work ethics of the employees. The employees could "game" the system so that they don’t get flagged by Human Resources and Operations. and that surely is not a good trend going forward.
Google will indeed have to come up with something big to neutralize this Microsoft move. Satya Nadella’s body language and the glee on his face clearly stated that he is on to something massive, and he is like a kid in a candy store.
I think this advancement in technology is really important for productivity and further development in all parts of our lives. The users will be the biggest beneficiaries.
Let us also not forget that it won’t be all moonlight and roses with this technology. The regulators will come hard on this technology in many different ways, and a new body of regulatory compliance can also emerge.
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Abraham George is a seasoned investment manager with more than 40 years of experience in trading & investment and multi-billion dollar portfolio management spanning diverse environments like banks (HSBC, ADCB), sovereign wealth fund (ADIA), a royal family office, and a hedge fund.