Google kicked off Google I/O this afternoon by talking for more than an hour about its numerous advances in artificial intelligence. The company discussed its new PaLM 2 large language model (LLM) for generative AI, which powers the Bard chatbot tool. This is a foundational pillar for adding AI-infused features across Google's product portfolio, including Google Maps, Google Photos, and Gmail (among others).
With that in mind, there is a need for some serious horsepower in the cloud to power models in the wild, as millions (and eventually billions) of users send requests for operations as mundane as removing a person lingering in the background of a picture to composing an entire email for you based on a short text prompt. That's where Google's new A3 GPU supercomputer comes into focus. Google says the new A3 supercomputers are "purpose-built to train and serve the most demanding AI models that power today's generative AI and large language model innovation" while delivering 26 exaFlops of AI performance.
