When Google was founded back in 1998, it was called "BackRub," and it didn't have much to say.
The web was a lot smaller, and the startup was tiny. Its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were still undergraduate students, and that they had a long way to go, and lots to do.
The two founders never considered themselves hardcore coders at heart. But regardless, they envisioned something, and grabbed the opportunity. And this time, what they upbrought has successfully matured into something so phenomenal.
Fast forward, following the time OpenAI introduced ChatGPT and awed practically the entire tech ecosystem, the company issued a "code red" warning.
After summoning both founders, this time, Sergey Brin is taking things a bit further.
For the first time, according to Forbes the Google co-founder has made his first request in years.
Both Sergey Brin and Larry Page have relieved themselves from their executive roles at Alphabet.
While Brin and Page remain at Alphabet as co-founders, controlling shareholders, board members, and employees, they are no official roles and duties at the company, and are more focused on the development of personal projects and moonshots.
But following ChatGPT, which has been dubbed the "Google killer," Brin made a request on January 24 for the data that trains Google's natural language chatbot, called LaMDA.
LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications, is an AI that analyzes human speech and recognizes commands in it. Google announced its existence in 2021 and released its beta version in 2022.
While the development of the AI was kind of slow, the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT has prompted Google to prioritize its own AI activities.
Brin's code access was followed by a small technical change, where he filed a "CL," short for "changelist." It was a two line change to a configuration file, where Brin added his username to the code.
Several dozen engineers gave the request LGTM approval, short for "looks good to me."
Some of the approvals came from workers outside of that team, seemingly just eager to be able to say they gave code review approval to the company cofounder.
Brin's request to access the code, is part of his effort to help Google, as the AI battle continues to heat up.
This indicates his willingness to increase his involvement in the company’s AI development.
Before this, it's reported that Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet, announced Monday the release of its direct ChatGPT competitor: Bard.
The AI behind Bard, is LaMDA.
While on paper, Bard should be smarter, since it has access to real-time data, the introduction of Bard was a failure.
Brin's return to the company underlined Google's sense of urgency in its efforts to compete with ChatGPT.
In a business perspective, this is a good thing, especially since the company's value slumped by about $100 billion because of the botched Bard introduction. What's more, it also happened after competitors, like Microsoft, had unveiled a "new Bing", which is powered by an AI engine "more powerful than ChatGPT."
But for employees, they didn't see Brin's return as a positive thing.
"Fix Google first," said an employee, while another said "at least talk to us."
Some employees demand Alphabet to fix some of its existing issues, which include its mass layoffs.
As for Pichai, he remains focused on refocusing the company on artificial intelligence. He has said that the company is prepared to approach AI "boldly and responsibly."