Over the weekend, Google co-founder Sergey Brin took part in a Q&A session with a mostly male audience, and one of the attendees sparked an internet uproar when he wore a shirt depicting a naked female body. .
Brin has been an elusive figure since his retirement in 2019, but the technology pioneer is currently working at Google, helping the company’s artificial intelligence projects. Brin made a rare appearance at an artificial intelligence hackathon in San Francisco over the weekend, where he spoke and answered questions from the audience.
During the Q&A session, an attendee asked Brin about recent controversies Around Google’s Gemini image generator.Last week, there were widespread anger Before users realize that artificial intelligence is Hesitant to make images of white meneven in situations where this is traditionally the most accurate response, such as being prompted for an image of America’s “Founding Fathers.”
“Open fire, what’s the problem?” Brin asked. As one of the event organizers encouraged the audience, he scanned the crowd. “The man in the naked shirt,” Breen said, calling one user to nervous laughter from the crowd.
in a Video posted on X/TwitterThe camera pans to a thin, blond man wearing a shirt depicting a life-size, realistic image of a woman’s naked breasts. “What do you think about what’s, uh, happening in Gemini art?” the man asked with a smile.
Brin’s response was decidedly calm. “I don’t really want to talk about this, but we did screw up the image generation. I think that was largely due to incomplete testing, and for good reasons, it certainly upset a lot of people,” Brin said.
“Honestly, if you deeply test any text model, whether it’s ours, ChatGPT, Grok, yours, it’s going to say some really weird things that, like, absolutely feel left-field,” Brin said. “But to be fair, the model definitely has work, so we don’t yet fully understand that it tends to lean left in a lot of cases.” Brin went on to say that after the model’s latest update, as of this weekend, the problem should be “at least 80 percent better.” %”.
The former Google CEO apparently joined the campaign at the last minute, with some prominent users on X speculating that the man was deliberately provoking Brin. Still, some say the bizarre situation is representative of a larger problem, and videos and images of the exchange have sparked heated debate on social media.
Kerri Linsenbigler, a senior editor on the RevOps team who works in tech, contacted Gizmodo directly and said that Brin’s failure to criticize the “highly offensive” shirt “suggests that we may not be where we think we are yet.”
“These hackathons are designed to provide a space for top professionals in gaming to exchange ideas, collaborate and discuss advances in artificial intelligence, regardless of gender or background,” said Linsenbigler. “It’s hard to imagine if a colleague felt If it’s appropriate to dress like this and know that they can get away with it without being judged by their colleagues, many women will feel comfortable sharing the space with such colleagues.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Even before the controversy surrounding the Gemini image generator, the AI craze of the past 18 months had put Google in an unusually precarious position. The rise of OpenAI and recent developments in augmented and virtual reality pose an unprecedented challenge to Google’s position as the dominant force on the internet. Google was reportedly blindsided by ChatGPT’s launch and surprising rise, and it’s likely that the company was forced to release its AI model much earlier than it wanted. Many believe that Brin’s return to Google itself is a sign that the company is uncertain about the path forward.
Several times, viewers asked Brin which applications of artificial intelligence he was most interested in. The billionaire could not elaborate on anything specific.
“I think it’s hard to predict,” Breen said. “I mean, people think of obvious industries like customer service, or, I just think of, you know, analyzing different lengthy documents, and some kind of workflow automation. I guess those are the obvious ones, but I think there will be some that are not obvious as well.”
Some viewers also viewed Brin’s appearance as a rare opportunity to ask the technology leader to reflect on his history with the company.One attendee asked Google Glassthe company’s controversial early experiments with AR glasses turned out to be a huge failure, and the product has gained renewed attention given interest in virtual universes and virtual worlds. Apple’s latest Vision Pro headphones.
“I messed up Google Glass. I think I made some bad decisions. Definitely too early,” Brin said.Not only “in the overall evolution of the technology, but I think, in hindsight, I was trying to push this as a product in and of itself when it was more of a prototype. I should have set those expectations around it.” He continued said he remains interested in the product’s lightweight, minimalist design as a less powerful but more resource-intensive alternative to the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Task 3.
Brin went on to make dogmatic remarks on several issues surrounding the future of artificial intelligence. Overall, his vague answers painted a picture of a man who is no more certain about the technology than Google’s billions of users.
“Broadly speaking, we don’t know where the future of artificial intelligence is going to go. It seems to be helpful for a lot of professions, whether it’s graphic artists, customer support, executives, you know, whatever you want,” Brin said . “If you’re talking about, you know, what should you be doing to prepare for, you know, the next few decades, etc.? I mean, it’s hard to say.”