Google employees criticize Bard, rival of ChatGPT – 04/21/2023 – Tech

“Pathological liar” and “embarrassing” were some of the adjectives that Google employees used to describe the Bard chatbot shortly before its launch in March.

The criticisms, however, did not change the company’s strategy to try to embed its own generative artificial intelligence. The race to integrate Bard into its products has raged since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November, four months earlier.

According to Bloomberg, which had access to the company’s internal messages, the rush to win this dispute makes Google provide low-quality information and set aside its ethical commitments.

One of the 18 employees interviewed by the news agency said that, to explain how to land a plane, the Bard would give suggestions that would lead to an accident.

According to employees and former employees, the group that works with ethics within the company is demoralized. Ethical and product safety officers have been instructed not to disrupt or attempt to cancel generative AI tools under development.

The team working on responsible AI development laid off at least three members in the company’s round of layoffs in January, including the head of governance and programs. In all, the cuts affected about 12,000 employees at Google and its parent company, Alphabet.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Google said developing responsible AI remains a top priority at the company. “We continue to invest in the teams working to apply our AI Principles to our technology,” said a spokesperson.

Google declared a “red alert” in response to the launch of ChatGPT to put artificial intelligence products to work – its top priority right now, according to The New York Times. The company’s goal is to make its generative AI integrate with other products and revitalize its search engine, put in check with the launch of the OpenAI chatbot and then the new Bing, by Microsoft.