Even Google’s own employees have doubts about Bard

Google is one of the biggest AI companies on the planet, and it’s one of the leaders in the generative AI race. Bard is the company’s flagship user-facing generative AI product at the moment, and it’s a powerful product. However, it seems that Google’s own employees actually have doubts about Bard.

So far, Bard has exhibited much of what we’ve seen from most other LLMs. It’s able to generate answers and responses in a very humanistic tone. While much of the information it produces is correct, it’s still susceptible to hallucinations. So, it’s your run-of-the-mill chatbot that populates the internet. On the surface, it seems that Google has a lot of faith in it. However, that’s not the case with some of its employees.

Some of Google’s employees have doubts about Bard

When Google’s own staff stand on stages and give keynotes about Bard, they all sound confident about its capabilities. However, on a less public-facing front, some of the company’s employees expressed their concerns with the chatbot.

According to a report from Bloomberg (via Search Engine Journal), several Google employees discussed Bard in an invite-only Discord chat. It consisted of Google designers, engineers, and product managers. In the conversation, Bard senior product manager Dominik Rabiej said, “My rule of thumb is not to trust LLM [large language model] output unless I can independently verify it… Would love to get it to a point that you can, but it isn’t there yet.”

This statement reflects the feelings that most people have toward AI-generated results. It’s nice having answers served up on a silver plate for you. However, you can’t always trust those results. People want to be able to verify where the information comes from.

Some employees wonder if Bard will actually have the sort of impact that the company intends. Cathy Pearl, Bard’s user experience lead said “Like really making a difference. TBD!”

That statement also speaks volumes about the company’s doubts about Bard. Again, when Google is on stage, we hear a lot about how its generative AI prowess will have a major effect on the tech industry. However, folks within Google are having trouble believing that. That says a ton, seeing as they’re the ones developing the chatbot.