Google is working on reasoning AI, chasing OpenAI’s efforts

Google is working on artificial intelligence software that resembles the human ability to reason, similar to OpenAI’s o1, marking a new front in the rivalry between the tech giant and the fast-growing start-up.

In recent months, multiple teams at Alphabet’s Google have been making progress on AI reasoning software, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Such software programmes are more adept at solving multistep problems in fields such as maths and computer programming.

AI researchers are pursuing reasoning models as they search for the next significant step forward in the technology. Like OpenAI, Google is trying to approximate human reasoning using a technique known as chain-of-thought prompting, according to two of the people. In this technique, which Google pioneered, the software pauses for a matter of seconds before responding to a written prompt while, behind the scenes and invisible to the user, it considers a number of related prompts and then summarises what appears to be the best response.

Google declined to comment on the effort.

Google and OpenAI have been locked in an intense fight for dominance in AI, particularly since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a popular chatbot that some investors worry will eventually obviate the need for Google search. Google has taken various steps to regain its lead, including merging its premier research labs to form the Google DeepMind unit and fortifying relationships between researchers and product teams.