Looks like Google just played the 'AGI reverse card' on OpenAI with the release of Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. This new model comes with advanced reasoning capabilities, alongside showcasing its thoughts. Logan Kilpatrick, senior product manager at Google, said that the model “unlocks stronger reasoning capabilities and shows its thoughts”.
According to Kilpatrick, the model can “solve complex problems with Flash speeds” while displaying its internal planning process and allowing for greater transparency in AI problem-solving.
The experimental model is still in its early stages. Kilpatrick, however, provided an example of its potential and showcased how it can tackle a challenging puzzle involving both visual and textual clues.
Developers can try the model out in Google AI Studio and the Gemini API. “This is just the first step in our reasoning journey, [I'm] excited to see what you all think!” Kilpatrick added.
“Google [is] giving away a reasoning model for free to users in AI Studio simply to show their power. They are back,” a user commented on X.
“Our most thoughtful model yet,” Google chief Sundar Pichai posted on X.
“We’ve been *thinking* about how to improve model reasoning and explainability,” said Noam Shazeer, VP engineering of Gemini co-lead at Google Deepmind.
Breaking news from Chatbot Arena⚡🤔@GoogleDeepMind's Gemini-2.0-Flash-Thinking debuts as #1 across ALL categories!
— lmarena.ai (formerly lmsys.org) (@lmarena_ai) December 19, 2024
The leap from Gemini-2.0-Flash:
- Overall: #3 → #1
- Overall (Style Control): #4 → #1
- Math: #2 → #1
- Creative Writing: #2 → #1
- Hard Prompts: #1 → #1… https://t.co/lO1DiTiOOj pic.twitter.com/cq2MRMbWZ1
Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, which builds on Google’s Gemini series, is set to compete with OpenAI’s o1 model. It is known for its impressive reasoning capabilities at a level similar to PhD students in physics, chemistry, and biology.
Google recently launched Gemini 2.0 Flash, which supports multimodal inputs, including images, video, and audio, as well as multimodal outputs, such as natively generated images combined with text and steerable text-to-speech (TTS) multilingual audio. It can also natively call tools like Google Search, code execution and third-party user-defined functions.
This development comes against the backdrop of OpenAI releasing the full version of the o1 model as part of its 12 days of 'Shipmas'. Besides this, it also released the o1 model in the API, upgraded with function calling, structured outputs, reasoning effort controls, developer messages, and vision inputs.
A few benchmarks have been suggesting that o1 is the most powerful AI model yet and even outperforms the Claude 3.5 Sonnet in coding tasks.
O1 BLOWS EVERYONE ELSE AWAY - IT IS A BEAST IN REASONING AND IS ALSO THE BEST IN CODING!!
— Bindu Reddy (@bindureddy) December 19, 2024
The new o1 model from 12/17 is #1 on Livebench AI and scores 91.58 in Reasoning!!
Finally, OpenAI also BEATS Sonnet in Coding. 🤯
Pretty much the only drawback to o1 is that it takes too… pic.twitter.com/roMDMPckCR
Google Won’t Let OpenAI Win
Google now seems to be ahead in the AGI race, while OpenAI is now playing catchup. On the 11th day of ‘12 Days of OpenAI,’ the startup announced an update to the ChatGPT desktop application for Mac. The announcement came from John Nastos, who followed it up by playing the saxophone, and Justin Rushing of OpenAI’s ChatGPT desktop team.
Nastos described the native app as "lightweight and easy to use" without disrupting ongoing tasks. A standout feature of the app is its seamless integration with various applications on the user’s computer, which makes it easier to interact with multiple tools directly from ChatGPT.
“Our desktop app can now work with apps like Xcode, Warp, Notion, Apple and approximately 30 more. ChatGPT can see, understand, and automate your work in other apps – a step along the path to a more agentic ChatGPT,” said OpenAI chief product officer, Kevin Weil.
“We all copy and paste things into ChatGPT all the time,” Rushing said. “This feature makes that way smoother by automatically pulling context from the apps you're working with, so you can focus on asking your question, and we’ll handle the rest.”
The app’s utility extends to coding tasks. Nastos demonstrated its ability to integrate with IDEs like Xcode, showcasing how ChatGPT can assist with live coding challenges.
One of the app’s standout features is voice interaction, enabling users to communicate directly with ChatGPT through an advanced voice mode for faster and more natural conversations.
With only one day remaining in OpenAI 'Shipmas', everyone is eagerly anticipating what OpenAI will unveil next to wrap up 12 days of nonstop shipping. However, so far, Google has countered every move made by OpenAI.
While OpenAI has been making announcements during its ‘12 Days of OpenAI’, Google has introduced its own series of innovations, including the quantum chip Willow, Gemini 2, 3D world model Genie 2, video generation model Veo 2, Project Astra as a universal agent, Project Mariner, Google Deep Research, and Android XR for AR/VR development.
On the other hand, OpenAI has unveiled several significant updates, including the improved OpenAI o1 reasoning model, a new $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro subscription, and Sora, their text-to-video AI generator.
Other notable releases include ChatGPT Search for all users, a new Projects feature for organising chats, Canvas for collaborative writing and coding, and real-time video capabilities for ChatGPT.
Moreover, OpenAI launched a range of new capabilities, such as Advanced Voice Mode with a Santa Claus voice option, a toll-free number to call ChatGPT from landline, and ChatGPT’s integration with Apple Intelligence.
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