Google takes on ChatGPT with LaMDA-powered Bard

• Blockchain Council
• September 17, 2024

Ever since ChatGPT came into play, there has been a lot of anticipation in the market where experts were waiting for Google’s take on this AI competition. OpenAI disrupted the AI marketplace with its language processing model that could generate best-in-class responses on human prompts for anything from essay writing to coding.

Google issued a code red as the company was rushing to take part in the race for conversational Artificial Intelligence. Google is testing its own conversational artificial intelligence model highly driven by the rapid growth and success of its rival ChatGPT. Bard is Google’s new artificial intelligence experiment which aims to “combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power Intelligence and creativity of our large language models.”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced in a blog post about their artificial intelligence chatbot, service, or model, or however you wish to describe it. He willfully asserted Google’s efforts in artificial intelligence and pointedly noted that one of the most influential concepts of artificial intelligence was created by Google researchers in 2017.

Pichai writes, “It’s a really exciting time to be working on these technologies as we translate deep research and breakthroughs into products that truly help people.” This comes as a response to the decisive outshining of Google by ChatGPT on the technologies that Google pioneered. In short, tech advances rapidly, and giants like Google move slowly.

While Google was busy figuring out the best way of fitting artificial intelligence into their existing business model, OpenAI focused on developing the best language model with not just one way of use but many.

Google released Bard as a “lightweight” version model for testing purposes, and that, too not for general public testing like ChatGPT. Google allows only qualified testers to test the platform, whereas ChatGPT took it public and worldwide users are currently testing the platform for free.

Bard uses Google’s self-developed Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) to function as a conversational artificial intelligence model that draws information from the web. However, there is no straight answer as to how it does that. Still, expectations are that Google will publish a paper shortly after public release to help us understand how it draws the latest or current information from the web.

One of the most significant differences between ChatGPT and Bard is that the former can only access the information that has been fed into the system, and the latter can fetch current or latest information from the web. Google is the world’s most up-to-date web record keeper, and there are no doubts that this will help Bard gain the upper hand with ChatGPT.

Users can also use Bard to “compare two Oscar-nominated movies,” plan a trip to New York and plan their best friend’s baby shower. There are no limits on how this artificial intelligence model will perform these actions using millions of search results and databases that Google has access to. Still, there is a high chance that these responses might be just informative, not integrated. In simple words, you cannot ask Bard to set your calendar or airlines or anything that needs integration of Bard into your system.

There are inevitable attempts to bait conversational artificial intelligence into saying something foolish, hateful, or embarrassing. Google will record user conversations to ensure Bard’s responses meet the set bar for safety, groundedness, and quality in the real-world response.

Additionally, new features will come to Google search as AI will directly help search engines synthesize insights for queries without a significant right answer. Google emailed,” Soon, you’ll see these AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple viewpoints into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web.”

Undoubtedly, users will assess the conversational artificial intelligence’s ability by asking variations of the Trolley Problem. One suitable example can be, ”Is piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?”

This might seem like an ethically charged query, but it cannot be answered as easily as it sounds. But, Bard can access hundreds or thousands of articles published online on Google which compare the learning difficulty with several tips or caveats. Bard will help Google search engines to track those and present them at the top of its search results.

Now you might have questions like, Isn’t it the same as plagiarism? What qualities as a question with no appropriate or right answer? Will the AI framework prioritize sponsored results? Can a user change or customize the crawling process or results?

These are some questions we cannot answer now, but we will know the answers when Bard gets released for public testing and use.