Google’s new AI projects aren’t ready for the masses yet. Good!
Google DeepMind is showing off an AI assistant that sees and a Chrome extension that can browse the web on its own. They’re for testing purposes only—and that makes sense.
Few tech-industry traditions are as time-honored as vaporware: stuff that gets publicly demoed well before it’s ready to ship. In some cases, the companies in question are just slower to finish their work than they’d expected. Other times, they’re strategically drumming up enthusiasm for something new and shiny to distract customers from competitive offerings. Either way, any gratification involved is delayed, assuming the product ever ships at all—which is not a given.