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Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking

49 points by leumon 2 hours ago | 18 comments

glimshe 2 minutes ago

I'm disappointed with "Extended Thinking" for 3.8 Flash. On the plus side, it's a strong general-purpose model and the cost-benefit is still compelling.

However, the "Extended Thinking" should be renamed to "Slightly Extended Thinking". Considering that it's the maximum thinking option for Gemini in the chat UI, it doesn't actually think a whole lot, leading to an uncomfortably high number of incorrect replies.

bronlund 2 minutes ago

They should just give up at this point, it's just embarrassing to watch.

As PrimeTime said, these are the guys that invented the 'T' in 'GPT', that deployed their first TPU in 2015, that is using hundreds of billions of dollar on AI - and they are beaten by 300 people startup named Moonshot AI even.

People are going to write books about this complete fumble.

rdtsc 12 minutes ago

I wonder when/if we’ll see Gemini beating Fable and Astra. Last year I would have confidently bet Google will overtake the others just because they have the data, the hardware (TPUs) and a fat advertising money pipe and yet they are still behind. Anyone anonymous at Google want to hint when Gemini 4 will be out?

WarmWash 3 minutes ago

As an "everyday mans AI" I'd say 3.8 Flash definitely already has. Smart enough for the vast swath of people, and only slightly eeked out by Astra(Max) on vision capabilities, like the kind of "Point your camera at something and ask questions" that non-tech people like to do. It's crazy fast and very compute light, so not getting bogged down constantly.

I can't think of a better general purpose model than 3.8 flash right now. It also talks more naturally than the other big models too.

_s_a_m_ 10 minutes ago

If Google didnt have their ad buisness theiy'd be out by now. They're like BlackBerry and Nokia at this point almost.

haberdasher 41 seconds ago

Maps, Waymo, TPUs, YouTube, Docs, GMail, Cloud, Android, Chrome, Photos...

deviation 21 minutes ago

Not a great impression to have your demo video demonstrate how one of your 'most advanced' AI models loses to the most common check-mate pattern in all of chess.

monroewalker 9 minutes ago

Seems more than good enough for a live model though! I can imagine this demo being extended to be a lot nicer to play with. You can just feed the model engine analysis and it can make as high of quality moves as needed. No longer any correlation between the model's understanding of the position and the moves that would be made but I think that's still a really nice improvement when thinking about this as adding live voice interaction to existing chess vs computer functionality rather than adding chess to possible interactions with the latest live voice model.

Zsfe510asG 18 minutes ago

Gemini is underrated in that it produces the only prose that is somewhat bearable to read.

WarmWash 10 minutes ago

For heavyweight work I have been using Astra, but for rabbit holes and brain storming Gemini is far more enjoyable to interact with.

I'm worried in their push to catch up on the SOTA front, it's going to lose that natural sounding touch it currently has.

blovescoffee 5 minutes ago

Great tech but the voice is like nails on a chalkboard to me

sahaskatta 17 minutes ago

Our company's Google Workspace Business only offers 3.6 flash & thinking in the Gemini App. Has anyone else seen 3.7 or 3.8 roll out?

cnobody 8 minutes ago

I have access to both, benchmarks are actually better on 3.7 for my task, but happy improvement over the others.

doodlesdev 16 minutes ago

Gemini's Live Mode is already much better than GPT Voice in my personal experience, even though it was much dumber. It really does feel like talking to a real person. ChatGPT keeps humming to whatever I say and has some weird voices.

Excited to try this out! Shame on Google for not releasing Gemini 3.8 for Google AI Plus users yet, though.

attels33 15 minutes ago

When will it be available on Vertex?

SomeonesAccount 13 minutes ago

vertex is dead, for good reason too

tiahura 7 minutes ago

Ensure transparency with SynthID watermarking

All audio generated by our AI products is watermarked with SynthID. This imperceptible watermark is woven directly into the audio output, ensuring AI-generated content remains detectable to help prevent misinformation. For details on our approach to safety and responsibility, review the model card.

varispeed 33 minutes ago

"Thinking" Good one.