Microsoft, Google Q1 results
Plus: help me get unbanned from Twitter!
Microsoft and Google reported earnings for Q1. The good news for corporate America is that the sky is not falling with respect to business conditions. Both companies had fairly good results relative to somewhat muted expectations.
Microsoft had a very nice quarter in their “more personal computing” division. This is not a division most investors are focused on, given it is dominated by a declining Windows business. The focus for Microsoft investors is Cloud, which had okay results and guidance, but nothing the afterhours stock reaction would merit. I found a specific Microsoft answer to a question about OpenAI telling, and disappointing. Microsoft’s CFO said one of the ways to look at OpenAI is as an Azure customer, like everyone else. Hmm.
Google’s advertising business had another flat y/y quarter. It’s abundantly clear LLMs will be superior to search engines for many use cases. The alarming part of the Google call was the nonchalance management indicated. There was no acknowledgment of any problem, which Google’s deep discount to peers would strongly suggest the existence of. Instead, we heard, “we’ve been doing AI a long time”. I think it is time for Sundar to go. Google flubbed the product launch for Bard, which still has a ‘waitlist’. With 200,000 employees, Google was outfoxed by 100 OpenAIers. Nothing personal against Mr. Pichai (who has AI in his name!), but heads will roll for this underwhelming product development effort. Soon, the Board will decide it is the CEO that ultimately bears the responsibility for seemingly missing the biggest platform transition in computing history.
I have been streaming on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@realmartinshkreli
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@jason
Hey Martin! As a non-practicing physician, I've been exploring the capabilities of drgupta.ai and am currently in the process of launching a related product. However, I believe that the market may become saturated quickly, as most of these products largely a polished user interface built around large language models. Additionally, we should be cautious of potential HIPAA violations arising from patients providing information via APIs. While it's difficult to predict how this landscape will evolve, we can be certain that language models will continue to grow in size and generalization. The notion that individual tasks in healthcare, law, and accountancy necessitate specialized models may not hold water in the long run. Your chat interface is quite impressive, and with the recent announcement of the GPT-4 API for businesses, it seems that HIPAA concerns could be mitigated. I'm personally developing a product similar to yours, utilizing Vicuna 13b within an AWS VPC. However, my concern is the potential challenge of monetizing these products at scale, given that there is little to prevent major players like Amazon from offering a free version of your product as an entry point to their medical services. "What a time to be alive." If you know, you know. Glad you're thriving. Learned a lot from you in the old days.
Loved the interview on the my first million pod Martin