Highlights
* Google’s Bard is a new chatbot tool designed to compete with ChatGPT.
* Bard will be available to the general public in the coming weeks.
* Bard is powered by LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications).
* Google aims to compete with ChatGPT by unveiling Bard.
* Google Bard is only available to few selected users.
* It is expected that in future, the AI chatbot will be integrated in Search.
ChatGPT, which took the internet by storm as a popular Al writing tool clocking over 100 million user within two months of its launch, now has competition from Google. Days after people speculated ChatGPT will “kill” Google in the coming months, CEO Sundar Pichai, in his blog yesterday, announced Bard, a new chatbot tool designed to compete with ChatGPT.
Pichai has stated that the company will make it available to trusted testers before it becomes more widely available to the general public in the coming weeks.
ChatGPT has been the most sensational technological offering on the internet in a long time. It is accessible to everyone using an internet browser.
You enter queries or commands, and ChatGPT responds (to almost anything). Within five days of its release, one million individuals had registered to use it.
Chat GPT altering how students are instructed and educated. With this Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool capable of writing academic essays that appear perfect, is it an opportunity, or a threat, or both, for education?
Some users have already evaluated the tool’s capacity to generate persuasive versions of essay question responses and even publishable academic papers. Others argue that students may benefit from learning the inner workings of technology and may use it to investigate the possibilities and limitations of online information sources.
Bard is a conversational Al service that is currently in the testing phase and is powered by LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications).
It provides responses to current and high-quality queries by drawing on information from the Internet. Pichai describes Bard as “a creative outlet and a jumping-off point for inquiry”, allowing users to explain fresh discoveries from NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old or learn more about the finest strikers in football right now and then get workouts to improve their skills.
Pichai stated that the company would first release Bard on a ‘lightweight’ version of LaMDA, which will require substantially less computational power, allowing it to grow to more users and solicit more feedback.
Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner.” CEO Sundar Pichai
What is LaMDA?
LaMDA is “the language model” that people are afraid of.
After a Google employee believed LaMDA was conscious, the AI became a topic of discussion due to the impression it gave off in its answers.
In addition, the engineer hypothesized that LaMDA, like humans, expresses its anxieties through communication.
First and foremost, it is a statistical method for predicting the following words in a series based on the previous ones.
LaMDA’s innovativeness lies in the fact that it may stimulate dialogue in a looser fashion than is allowed by task-based responses.
So that the conversation can flow freely from one topic to another, a conversational language model needs to be familiar with concepts such as Multimodal user intent, reinforcement learning, and suggestions.
How is Bard different from/Better than ChatGPT?
Google’s Bard is an experimental Al service. On the other hand, ChatGPT was developed by Open Al, a startup Al research business.
ChatGPT can only access data through 2021. Meanwhile, LaMDA from Google takes information from the Web to deliver responses.This may offer Bard an advantage when answering questions concerning recent occurrences.
Bard looks like a limited rollout right now. Google is looking for a lot of feedback at the moment around Bard, so it is hard to say whether it can answer more questions than ChatGPT.
Google has also not made clear the amount of knowledge that Bard possesses.
For instance, with ChatGPT, we know its knowledge is limited to events till 2021. Of course, it is based on LaMDA, which has been in the news for a while now. Bard is also built on Transformer technology—which is also the backbone of ChatGPT and other AI bots. Transformer technology was pioneered by Google and made open-source in 2017.
Transformer technology is a neural network architecture, which is capable of making predictions based on inputs and is primarily used in natural language processing and computer vision technology.
Previously, a Google engineer claimed LaMDA was a ‘sentient’ being with consciousness. The engineer, Blake Lemoine Google later fired the engineer. Still, Google has also showcased several capabilities of LaMDA last year, including a new project called Wordcraft which was being used to help write fiction.
Last September, Google revealed that it “teamed up with professional writers who used the Wordcraft editor to create a volume of short stories.”
These stories are available online for reading. But Google had also cautioned that LaMDA was not very good at writing fiction by itself and right now was more of a helper to human writers.
How to Access Google Bard?
Google Bard is currently unavailable for public testing, but select users have access. We can expect Google to gradually open the service to public. Google is releasing a “lightweight model version of LaMDA” which requires much less computing power, and will will help the company receive more feedback.
CEO Pichai also mentioned that users would soon be able to use Al-powered features in
Google Search that condense complex data into simpler formats. Individual developers, creators, and corporations will be onboarded first so they may try the company’s Generative Language API, which will be powered by LaMDA at first, with various models to follow. Google said it aims to establish a suite of tools and APIs that will make it easier for people to build more inventive Al apps in the future.
Bard is based on LaMDA and Google’s own conversational AI chatbot. It is what Pichai termed an “experimental conversational AI service,” and Google will be “opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.”
If you are wondering how to sign up for it now, keep in mind that it’s not yet publicly available. Given Google has taken such a slow and cautious approach with LaMDA – it has been in testing for nearly two years – the Bard rollout is actually quite fast in comparison.
Google is also hosting an AI event on Wednesday, where more details and confirmations will be revealed.
According to the blog post, Bard “draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.”
In short, it will give in-depth, conversational and essay-style answers just like ChatGPT does right now.
A user will be able to ask Bard “to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills,” according to the blog post.
However, Google has also said that the model is currently a “lightweight” version of LaMDA, and the one being “requires significantly less computing power.
Enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback.” Remember running these models also requires significant computing power. For instance, ChatGPT is powered by Microsoft Azure Cloud services. This also explains why the service often runs into errors at times, because too many people are accessing it.
Google says it will look at external feedback, along with “internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.” So yes, Bard is now in a testing phase.
Google Bard vs ChatGPT
With Microsoft reportedly investing $10 billion in the startup Al research centre OpenAl, the tech giant’s flagship search company is facing new competition due to this revelation. Google’s management is said to have declared a “code red” scenario for its search company due to the enormous attention ChatGPT has received.
The main distinction between Google Bard AI and ChatGPT is Google Bard AI’s ability to take real-time events into account when generating its responses. Google’s Bard AI has yet to make its appearance. But here’s what you should expect to be different from ChatGPT, according to the recent updates:
* Google Apprentice Bard AI will be able to answer real-time questions.
* You need to make one minor adjustment to your Google settings to get your regular search results when using Google Bard AI. In ChatGPT, only text responses are returned.
* Google Apprentice Bard is based on Lambda. ChatGPT, on the other hand, is based on GPT.
* ChatGPT has its own plagirim detector called AI Text Classifier .This feature is not yet available for Apprentice Bard AI.
* Google Apprentice Bard AI is, for now, completely free. OpenAI recently launched its paid plan to users called ChatGPTPlus.
Why has Google announced Bard right now?
The timing of this announcement is critical. It comes as Microsoft is preparing to announce an integration of ChatGPT into its Bing Search engine.
Microsoft announced a surprise event today, just one day ahead of Google’s own AI event.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also posted a picture with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella ahead of this. The event takes place at 11.30 pm IST.
Microsoft has already invested $10 billion this year in OpenAI and the integration of ChatGPT into Bing will pose a new headache for Google and its core Search business.
Google might have invented the ‘Transformer’ technology, but it is now being seen as a latecomer to the AI revolution.
ChatGPT in many ways is being called the end of Google Search, given that conversational AI can give long, essay style and sometimes elegant answers to a user’s queries. Of course, not all of these are correct, but then AI is capable of correcting itself as well and learning from mistakes.
For Google, whose core business is search, this has resulted in a ‘code red’ at the company as New York Times reported.
In fact, another New York Times report said that Google executives called in founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to review plans around AI.
The founders have mostly not been involved in the day-to-day running of Google, but clearly, some sort of alarm bells have gone off at the company.
It is also becoming clear that many see ChatGPT as being superior right now, and the onus is now on Google to prove that LaMDA and Bard are actually ahead and can do better.
It also doesn’t help that Microsoft has invested so significantly in OpenAI and plans to offer ChatGPT to its enterprise customers as part of the Azure Cloud services.
So for Google, the Microsoft-OpenAI threat comes from multiple angles.
Google has also announced it plans to bring AI features to search results. The blog post notes, “Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner.”
Again, these features will roll out soon. What this means is that when searching for information on Google in the future, one can expect chunks and nuggets of information, likely sourced from blogs or articles.
Google Bard AI use cases
The Google AI chatbot has several potential uses that can simplify your life and fill in knowledge gaps. The followings are just some of the most expected ones:
* Get answers: If you have a query, you can ask the chatbot, which will use its sophisticated AI algorithms to generate a thoughtful and appropriate response.
* Find information with the familiar engine: Whether you’re looking for a weather report or the latest sports scores, the Google Bard AI chatbot can help powered by the search engine.
* Automate tasks: The chatbot is powered by Google AI and can take care of several activities automatically, such as making a restaurant reservation or booking a flight. Google was already finding them for you, with this new chatbot it is also expected to be able to buy them for you.
* Your personal AI assistant: The Google Bard AI chatbot can assist you in managing your time and ensuring that you never miss an appointment or forget to complete a critical step in a process.
* Social hub: The chatbot can also function as a social hub, facilitating user conversations in both group and one-on-one settings.
Bard’s Availability
Google is releasing Bard initially with a lightweight model version of LaMDA, which requires less computing power, making it easier to scale to more users and get more feedback.
The company plans to combine external feedback with its internal testing to enhance Bard’s responses and to ensure higher ‘quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information’.
Trusted testers will be given access to Bard in the coming weeks, before it becomes more widely available to the public. Google’s introduction of Bard comes a day before Microsoft is conducting an event at its headquarters. The company is expected to introduce OpenAI’s ChatGPT to its own search engine, Bing.
Concerns About AI
The initial criticisms of ChatGPT, that Bard may also face are twofold.
First, there are concerns that creativity and labour may become indistinguishable to readers.
For example, a teacher may it challenging to go through essays submitted by a tech-savvy younger generation and distinguish between AI-generated works and originals. To address this, OpenAI launched AI Classifier that distinguishes between AI-text and human text last week. Bard may also need to launch a similar software.
Second, AI is prone to bias because they are trained on existing data and the data reflects societal inequalities of the times. AI generated artwork on portraits of couples at weddings in different parts of India produced biased outputs that social media users criticised for highlighting stereotypes.
Both OpenAI and Google acknowledge the concern, and are investing resources to address the issue, but neither has found a solution.
In India, digital adoption does not mean digital literacy, and there are several constraints to digital access.
Students may have access to ChatGPT or Bard, but teachers may not have access to or the skills to understand the AI Classifier solution.
Second, AI generated content amplifies bias and readers may consume biased information as truth.
Bard will need to address these concerns before it rolls out in India to win the trust of Indian users and the government.
FAQ’s on Google Bard AI
1) What is Google Bard AI?
Ans) Meet the expected “ChatGPT killer.” Using a set of deep learning algorithms known as “large language models,” the Google Bard AI chatbot can respond to questionnaires provided via text. The chatbot is built on LaMDA technology and is programmed to use the web to find the most “recent” answers to questions. An experimental conversational AI service developed by Google, Bard AI learns from its encounters with humans to improve its performance.
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai introduced the Google Bard AI chatbot in a blog post, showcasing the company’s recent priority on AI. Pichai has expressed his enthusiasm for adapting cutting-edge AI research and development to real-world problems.
Other organizations, such as OpenAI, have surpassed them in terms of AI developments and applications because of the rate of technology advancement and delayed decision-making at huge firms like Google. OpenAI concentrated on generating high-quality models and letting people discover their own uses for them, while Google worked on incorporating AI into their existing business plans.
2) What is LaMDA?
Ans) LaMDA is “the language model” that people are afraid of. After a Google employee believed LaMDA was conscious, the AI became a topic of discussion due to the impression it gave off in its answers. In addition, the engineer hypothesized that LaMDA, like humans, expresses its anxieties through communication.
3) How to use the Google Bard AI chatbot?
Ans) If you are chosen as a beta tester, all you have to do to use the Google AI chatbot is open the Google app on your smartphone and tap on the chatbot icon. Like ChatGPT
enter your prompt and hit enter!
4) How to access Google Bard AI?
Ans) Currently, only a small number of people have access to the Google Bard AI link for testing purposes. To reduce the amount of time and energy spent on computation, Google is developing a “lightweight model version of LaMDA.”
Google Bard AI chatbot, known as Bard, is unfortunately not yet widely available for use. However, once the Google Bard AI link is shared, it will likely be integrated into Google Search and can be accessed by asking questions through the search bar. The chatbot draws information from the web to provide up-to-date answers to text prompts.
It is designed to provide easy-to-digest answers to complex questions and can help with tasks such as planning a baby shower, comparing movies, and getting lunch ideas. It is not yet known if the chatbot will be available through other Google products such as Google Assistant or Google Maps.
5) Is there an Android app for ChatGPT?
Ans) There is no official ChatGPT app for Android phones at the moment.
6) How to access ChatGPT?
Ans) If you already have an account at labs.openai.com or beta.openai.com, you may use the same login credentials to access chat.openai.com. If not already you must create one at chat.openai.com.
