Google is having a bad week. The presentation of its conversational AI Google Bard contained an error and the firm did not convince the exchange with its conference.
Google has probably never been challenged so quickly in its history. A few weeks after the small success of ChatGPT, Microsoft held a major conference in Redmond to unveil the integration of AI to Bing directly to offer a service much more relevant than a simple search engine.
The giant’s response was not long in coming since on Monday, Google presented its own conversational AI Bard, before discussing it again at a conference dedicated to AI in Paris which Frandroid was able to attend.
Bard makes a mistake
Google Bard is currently not publicly available, so you just have to use the examples provided by Google to get an idea of how the system works. Problem: The first example provided by Google contains a factual error.
At the question ” What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about? “, Google Bard responds by moving that the telescope “ took the first-ever images of a planet outside our own solar system “.
This is false information since the first photograph of a planet outside our solar system dates back to 2004, as the Nasa website confirms.
The effect on the share price of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, was not long in coming.
Google loses $100 billion in value
The group’s share price fell by 9% in the space of a single day. Whether with Bard’s presentation, his first mistake or the conference held in Paris, Google does not seem to have convinced the stock market this week.
This error comes as Google insists on explaining that the firm wants to be very careful about the accuracy and consistency of its AI. A very important level of precaution when proposing a system that must provide an answer to billions of users. A way also to suggest that the very rapid progress of the integration of AI by Microsoft could be done with fewer precautions. An argument that falls apart when Google publicly commits a factual error.
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