Former Google employee says company's AI development is driven by 'extreme panic'

• Google's AI plans are “poorly motivated,” says a former employee.
• “This myopia was not born out of user needs,” said Scott Jenson, who left Google in March.
• “It's sheer frigid panic that they're being left behind,” he continued.

Google may be one of the biggest players in the AI ​​space, but one employee said the tech giant's efforts in the area have been motivated by “stone-cold panic.”

“The 'AI project' I was working on was poorly motivated and driven by a panic that 'AI' alone would be great,” Scott Jenson, a senior UX designer who left Google in March, wrote in a LinkedIn post on Monday.

“This myopia is not born out of user needs,” he continued. “This is extreme panic that users are being left behind.”

Jenson later clarified in an update to his post that he was not a senior leader at Google and that the projects he was working on were “very limited.”

“My comments come from a general dissatisfaction with the industry as a whole and its approach to AI,” he wrote.

According to Jenson's LinkedIn profile, the Stanford graduate has worked at Google for about 16 years, including three stints.

In his first term, which lasted from 2005 to 2011, Jenson managed Google's mobile UX. He then rejoined Google in 2013 and has been focusing on product strategy for over eight years. Jenson's last and shortest stint at Google was from April 2022 to March 2024, where he researched new uses for haptic technology for his Android.

“The vision is that you have a Tony Stark-like Jarvis assistant inside your phone, locking you so tightly into their ecosystem that you can never leave,” Jenson said of the Marvel hero. , he wrote, referring to Iron Man.

“The vision is pure Actinari. The fear is that they can't afford to let someone else get there first,” he added.

And Jenson said this isn't the first time the search giant has found itself in fear and anxiety as it discovers new competitors.

“This exact same thing happened with Google+ 13 years ago (I was there for the fiasco), and it was a similar reaction except for Facebook,” Jenson wrote.

Google+ is a social network launched by the company in June 2011. The company's attempts to compete with Facebook failed, suffering from “low usage and engagement.”

The service finally ended in April 2019.

But Jenson said Google wasn't the only tech giant to make this mistake.

“By the way, Apple is no different. They're also trying to create this AI lock-in with Siri. When the Emperor finally stops wearing clothes, he'll be rapped by someone who has bigger things in mind. '' Jenson said. He worked as a user interface designer at Apple for eight years.

Representatives for Google and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside of normal business hours.

Jenson's scathing assessment comes as big tech companies like Google and Apple struggle to catch up with AI startups like OpenAI. And Google and Apple's deep pockets and early investments in AI don't exactly give either of them a meaningful lead in the AI ​​race.

In fact, Apple's software chiefs spent weeks testing ChatGPT themselves before realizing they needed to upgrade their digital assistant Siri, The New York Times reports.

According to Bloomberg, the Cupertino-based company is also close to a deal with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into the next version of iOS.

Google is no different, and has been repeatedly promoted by OpenAI in product announcements.

Google announced its new AI model Gemini 1.5 on February 15th, and OpenAI retired its text-to-video model Sora just hours later.

Last week, OpenAI announced its new flagship AI model, GPT-4o, a day before Google announced various updates to the model.

“I try not to think too much about our competitors, but I can't help but think about the aesthetic differences between OpenAI and Google,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on May 16th. As mentioned in the X post.