Two Google researchers, Daniel De Freitas and Noam Shazeer, developed a powerful chatbot years before rival ChatGPT went viral. After management stalled its release, they quit. The chatbot was built on technology more powerful than anything else available at the time, and could confidently debate philosophy and banter about its favorite TV shows. The researchers believed that chatbots like theirs would revolutionize the way people search the internet and interact with computers.
