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AI models are still a work in progress, and Google\u2019s Gemini is no exception, cofounder Sergey Brin said in a recent video<\/a> taken at San Francisco\u2019s AGI House. \u201cWe definitely messed up on the image generation and I think it was mostly due to not thorough testing and it definitely, for good reasons, upset a lot of people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n This was, of course, Brin speaking about Gemini\u2019s recent gaffe in which it produced historically inaccurate pictures<\/a>, including of racially diverse Nazis, prompting Google to pause the program altogether.<\/p>\n This is not good. #googlegemini<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/LFjKbSSaG2<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 John Lussier (@johnlu0x) February 20, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Gemini meltdown prompted a $90 billion selloff<\/a> in the stock of parent company Alphabet after largely right-wing backlash about the AI model\u2019s error showing a racial bias. The overly \u201cwoke\u201d algorithm users claimed, just kept producing non-white images for clearly inappropriate and inaccurate prompts, from Adolf Hitler to the pope to medieval Viking warriors, according to some users<\/a>. The influential tech blogger Ben Thompson, of Stratechery, was particularly scathing, calling for the resignation of CEO Sundar Pichai because of the rotten culture exposed by Gemini\u2019s \u201cabsurd<\/a>\u201d performance issues.<\/p>\n Brin, the 50-year-old Google cofounder, said he \u201ckind of came out of retirement just because the trajectory of AI is so exciting,\u201d although he cautioned in his appearance at AGI House that much work remains to be done.<\/p>\n He said the company is still not sure why its AI model \u201cleans left in many cases,\u201d but added that it is not intentional. Brin said that while Gemini\u2019s error was clearly bad, the same could also happen with other large language models.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you deeply test any text model out there, whether it\u2019s ours, ChatGPT, Grok, what have you, it\u2019ll say some pretty weird things that are out there that you know definitely feel far left, for example,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Google did not immediately respond to Fortune<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Brin\u2019s words follow Pichai\u2019s stern message to staff, in an internal memo first reported by Semafor<\/a>, that Gemini\u2019s strange AI images had \u201cshown bias\u201d and were \u201ccompletely unacceptable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Brin said that Google had already made progress in changing Gemini to help avoid similar errors in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you try it starting over this last week it should be at least 80% better, of the test cases that we\u2019ve covered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Still, Brin admits that criticisms of AI often intersect with politics. He pointed out that while AI models should avoid spreading inaccurate information<\/a>, the definition of misinformation can vary depending on the person.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of complicated political issues in terms of what different people consider misinformation versus not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Despite the recent stumbles with Gemini, Brin said that he is excited about the future of AI and has even been writing some code, although, \u201cIt\u2019s not really code that you would be very impressed by,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n He said that while training costs are high, he thinks betting on AI is important because of the long-term utility and time savings it could bring to employees across industries.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf it saves somebody an hour of work over the course of a week, that hour is worth a lot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n