CEO of Google Sundar Pichar in a company-wide memo implored employees to put all hands on deck to test “Bard”, its new ChatGPT rival.
The memo is coming a day after the tech giant announced the plan to launch its artificial intelligence Chatbot technology which will be rolled out in the coming weeks.
The technology is powered by Google’s large language model LaMDA or language model for dialogue applications which the CEO disclosed that the company would soon begin enlisting developers and enterprises to test an API based on the same underlying LaMDA technology.
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In an email sent to employees, he wrote,
“Next week, we’ll be enlisting every Googler to help shape Bard and contribute through a special company-wide dog food.
(”Dogfood” is a colloquial expression that describes a company using its products or services for its internal operations”).
“We’re looking forward to getting all of your feedback in the spirit of an internal hackathon more details coming soon”.
Google CEO via a blog post, revealed that the company’s AI chatbot will need to be rigorously tested so it can meet a “high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information.”
Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of Google’s large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.
Google revealed that Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping users to explain discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the current best strikers in football, and so on.
With the initial release of the Chatbot, Google revealed that it will be rolled out with its lightweight model version of LaMDA, noting that this much smaller model requires significantly less computing power, enabling the company to scale to more users, and allowing for more feedback.
Google will combine external feedback with its internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information.
According to reports, the overnight success of ChatGPT has designated a “code red” threat at Google with founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page who left several years ago, brought back to brainstorm ideas and fast-track a response to avoid being displaced as a search engine giant.
Before the emergence of ChatGPT, which was released in late November, Google had been reluctant to launch its own language-based AI, for the fear of the reputational risk of releasing technology that wasn’t ready.
Lately, Google and its parent company, Alphabet, have participated in several meetings around Google’s AI strategy, which has seen numerous groups in the company refocus their efforts on addressing the threat that ChatGPT poses to its search-engine business.