Episode 10: Google's Gemini and the Agentic AI revolution

[00:00:00] Yesterday, finally, I got Gemini in my Google Suite, Google Workplace, whatever it's called, account. I have bought it before and tried it for a month. I wasn't impressed. But now I've got it. Now it's included, which I think is a good idea. And I thought, let me give this a go. This is really good. Well done, Google. Let me give it a go. Here's my journey. And I think it's safe to say we're not quite there yet, right? We're simply not quite there, unfortunately.

[00:00:27] Have a look at this. I've got Gemini on the right-hand side now of my Google Suite. Lovely. I take a chance and on the bottom, down the bottom, I type, this is in Gmail. I type, When did I sign up for Arabian Business subscription? Now, the Arabian Business newsletter is one I really value. I really enjoy it. It keeps me up to date with what's moving in the GCC region. And I just happened to be reading the newsletter

[00:00:55] when I saw the Gemini stuff. I thought, do you know what? I'll just check. When did I subscribe for it? I thought it was about a year or so in my mind. Right? What do you think, Gemini? Go and have a look. It responds within about five seconds, which five seconds, in my view, way too long. But anyway, it says, I could not find when you signed up in your emails. I thought, that is straight. There must be a subscription email confirmation. Surely, surely.

[00:01:22] I go to the search bar. Right? One of the reasons I love Gmail and use Google Workspace for my business email is because the search is brilliant. Right? So I type in Arabian Business subscription. And then very quickly, the pop-down comes. Now look, can anyone, anyone see, if you're watching this,

[00:01:47] can anyone see a hint on when my subscription might have been made? Right there, the first result. So well done, Google search. It's brilliant. Well done. The first result. Just to be sure, because that's basically, that's the answer I was looking for. I looked at 14.01.2024. I thought it was about a year anyway. Now, I click in. There is the answer. Look, this is very clear.

[00:02:13] Thank you for subscribing to Arabian Business. Now, that was a year ago at 9.27, roughly. Come on. Why I'm doing this and why I've taken the time to record this is we have a lot of buzz and a lot of excitement in the marketplace about AI and rightly so in many cases. But that was a simple query.

[00:02:42] That was a simple question. Okay. Gemini has access to all of my email. Right? That's the power of this stuff. Right? It's got all of my data. Yeah. A simple question. When, when did I subscribe to Arabian Business? Couldn't find that in your email. Couldn't find it. So for all this lovely

[00:03:05] conversation, lovely talk, an exciting talk about an agentic revolution, an AI first world, yes. Many situations, especially, for example, with conversational AI, internal uses of AI, generative AI in particular, to help summarize and so on. But set your expectations. This is the best

[00:03:28] that a multi, multi, multi billion dollar company, Google, can deliver. You may argue open AI or others might have a slightly different approach. They may have a different result. I think, you know what? It doesn't matter. Okay. Any consumer that sits down, I think it is reasonable to expect you should be able to ask a query, a query, and have it be able to execute that query. So this is January 17,

[00:03:58] 2025. I'm sure we'll see improvements. I'm sure we will. But right now, how mission critical is this? How good is this? We have a long way to go. It might be short in terms of time, but set expectations, ladies and gentlemen. That's why I'm recording this. Just so we're clear, it's not amazing yet.