Google CEO says Bard AI chatbot will soon get upgrades

Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that the company’s AI chatbot Bard would soon get upgrades. The Bard upgrades are probably a part of Google’s plan to catch up with Microsoft Bing, which is now running on OpenAI’s GPT-4

Speaking on The New York Times’ Hard Fork podcast, Pichai said developers are currently busy with upgrading Bard, and users will see improvements in the course of next week. “Pretty soon, perhaps as this [podcast] goes live, we will be upgrading Bard to some of our more capable PaLM models, which will bring more capabilities; be it in reasoning, coding, it can answer maths questions better,” Pichai added.

Google has recently opened up its own AI language model PaLM, which is believed to be more powerful than LaMDA. The tech giant says PaLM can better solve coding problems and common-sense reasoning. The Google Bard, however, is now running on a “lightweight and efficient version of LaMDA.” Pichai says it’s like putting a souped-up Civic against more powerful cars in a race.

Google Bard gets an upgrade to compete with Microsoft Bing

Microsoft’s Bing chatbot could outperform Google Bard in many ways and become the most powerful AI chatbot globally. Meanwhile, Google’s CEO says this is because they tried to be very cautious with Bard’s development. “To me, it was important to not put [out] a more capable model before we can fully make sure we can handle it well,” he said.

The AI race has also caused concerns among the world’s tech leaders and university professors. Recently, Elon Musk and many other executives wrote an open letter to warn about the “out of control” AI race. They argued that AI experiments must be halted for at least six months. And AI labs and experts should apply better safety protocols.

Sundar Pichai also alluded to the letter. Saying the topic needs a lot of debate and it’s important to hear the concerns. But Google CEO does not endorse specific regulations for AI and believes the current privacy and health regulations seem enough.

Regarding the AI capabilities for distorting the truth and spreading misinformation, Pichai said they’re not worried about AI safety because “you have to anticipate this and evolve to meet that moment.”