Bard went to a game of AI and scored a massive own-goal, wiping $100 billion in the market capitalization of Alphabet (Google parent company): “Alphabet Inc lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday after its new chatbot shared inaccurate information in a promotional video and a company event failed to dazzle, feeding worries that the Google parent is losing ground to rival Microsoft Corp. Alphabet shares, which slid as much as 9% during regular trading, were flat after hours. Microsoft shares rose around 3% before paring gains. They were also flat in post-market trading.”
Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, has heralded Bard, Google’s planned rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, as a category-king AI system, but during its first play on stage (a promotional ad), Bard was really bad, blowing calls with underwhelming performance. Investors panicked and when all was done, more than $100 billion had been wiped out.
Remember what I wrote two days ago: “It is all about perception until it becomes about results.” Yes, in the evolution of disruptive technologies, your heritage will give you a seat at the game but when the play begins, your results are the only thing that will matter. And that is the message to Google: you have been an amazing engineering powerhouse and people will give you the benefit of the doubt, but in the end, you have to deliver results through engineering. If you fail to do that, the end will come. It is that simple.
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It is all about perception until it becomes about results. Yes, IBM went to the mountain, trumpeting the new age of exponential computing, as IBM Watson touched the face of the future when it won Jeopardy! Fast forward today, no one remembers IBM as Big Tech enters an injury time on who wins the race of natural language computing.
And before I go: “Bard, how much was spent on your development?” I hope it includes this $100 billion that was taken off the market cap today.
Google’s much-hyped new AI chatbot tool Bard, which has yet to be released to the public, is already being called out for an inaccurate response it produced in a demo this week.
In the demo, which was posted by Google on Twitter, a user asks Bard: “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9 year old about?” Bard responds with a series of bullet points, including one that reads: “JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.”
Bard is an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA. Built using our large language models and drawing on information from the web, it’s a launchpad for curiosity and can help simplify complex topics ? https://t.co/fSp531xKy3 pic.twitter.com/JecHXVmt8l
— Google (@Google) February 6, 2023
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It’s either that the guys who trained Bard no know book, or one OpenAI fella smuggled himself in and confused Bard during training.
But again, why would a misspoke from AI cause such a massive wipe out in market value? Even when a CEO misspeak, the loss isn’t usually this big. There is trouble in Alphabet’s empire, now Bard will play catch up for a considerable time, let it not be another Google+ in the making…
Could it be that Google rushed the release, just to be part of trending topic? This is a serious bad play, some people need to vacate their positions.
Well, the dance continues, more launches and unveiling are on the way, it’s AI or nothing.