Google staffers praise engineers for I/O, and poke fun at execs AI use

Google employees have been paying close attention to the company’s annual developer conference this week as well as the overwhelmingly positive reaction from Wall Street.

When it comes to handing out credit for the 4.3% stake in the aftermath of Google I/O, many employees preferred the company’s engineers to its CEOs.And According to internal conversations seen by CNBC.

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On Google’s internal site, Memegen, the most popular meme that came out of the event, displayed side-by-side images of the parent company. alphabet Share price. On the left, the slide, which received thousands of upvotes, said, “Execs are cutting costs and buying back shares” on the chart as the share price fell. On the right, a graphic appeared with an arrow rising below the words, “Engineer (Who) Get Things Done.”

Several employees agreed with the sentiment in the comments section, praising colleagues who worked on primetime product readiness as part of a company-wide effort to compete in the artificial intelligence arena.

The event came shortly after workers criticized CEO Sundar Pichai for taking a 2022 equity award of more than $200 million as the company cuts jobs and cuts costs. They also criticized the company for allowing a $70 billion buyback.

Alphabet shares jumped to their highest levels since August and rose 11% for the week, after Google announced its new general-use large language (LLM) model called PaLM 2 on Wednesday as well as a number of advances in AI technology that powers Bard and Search. , some of which were previously reported by CNBC.

Google has been under pressure to showcase its generative AI technology since the public release late last year of Open AI’s ChatGPT. OpenAI supporter Microsoft It embeds GPT-supported technology into its Bing search engine and other products, raising concerns that Google’s days of dominance in its core search market may be numbered.

After an event in February in which Google promoted its AI chatbot Bard, the company’s share price fell 7%. Google employees responded by calling Pichai’s ad “hasty” and “a failure”.

Since then, Google has been working rapidly to bring consumer AI services to market.

After I/O, the staff showed enthusiasm for some of the updates on the Bard, especially features geared towards programmers, such as “dark mode,” which makes the Bard’s display dark instead of light and is an option engineers often prefer. The crowd clapped with applause after the dark mode was announced.

One meme that received several hundred likes said, “Things I learned from I/O” with the following text: “Google can still convince me.” He continued, “Awesome work for those who worked hard” and added, “As someone who expected to make sarcastic memes all the time, it was nice to be impressed.”

In another meme, employees applauded Dave Burke, vice president of engineering, for his Android 14 presentation and the originality he showed on stage, a departure from the company’s canned talk that’s typical at these types of events.

Staff also mocked the repeated use of the acronym AI during Wednesday’s two-hour keynote. One very popular meme included a cartoon character with the text “I/O 2023 INCREASES GOOG stock price,” followed by the phrase “I kept saying AI and it kept going.”

Another meme said, “Let’s sprinkle some AI/ML on that,” and showed a large pile of powder with the text “Google I/O 2023.”

Other employees picked up on cultural references. One of the memes created was a play on the song “Old MacDonald” with the alternate lyrics “Sundar Picha-AI said AIAII/O”. The latest had a photo of “That ’70s Show” character Kitty Forman begrudgingly pouring alcohol with the text, “Take a shot when someone says AI during I/O.”

A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

Alphabet shares are up 33% this year after losing nearly 40% of their value in 2022.

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