Google announced on Monday February 6 the launch in the test phase of its conversational robot, called Bard, a few months after that of ChatGPT, the software of the American startup OpenAI which unleashes passions.
ChatGPT has the answer. AI, in which Microsoft has just invested billions, has become a Societal phenomenon. Its users use this system to write scenarios or press articles. Students jumped at the chance to ask ChatGPT to do their homework for them.
And Google decided to counterattack with its own robot, Bard. “ Bard’s ambition is to combine the breadth of knowledge of the world with the power, intelligence and creativity of our great language models. “, explained Sundar Pichai, general manager of Alphabet, parent company of Google, quoted in a press release.
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The software ” draws on information from the web to provide up-to-date, high-quality answers “, indicated the person in charge, for whom “ Bard can be a playground for creativity and a launching pad for curiosity “.
Explaining NASA Discoveries to a 9-Year-Old
The chatbot is able to explain the latest NASA discoveries from the James Webb telescope to a 9-year-old child, or learn about the best strikers in football today, then offer you specific training to improve yourself “.
Bard relies on LaMDA, a computer program designed by Google to generate conversation robots (chatbots), the first version of which was unveiled by the Mountain View (California) group in 2021. LaMDA was talked about in June 2022 when a Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, had claimed that artificial intelligence programs were becoming ” aware “. An opinion much criticized in the middle, which considered it absurd or, at best, premature.
The ChatGPT Revolution
While artificial intelligence has been pervasive in the tech industry and beyond for years, if not decades, the release of ChatGPT in November changed the general public’s view of its capabilities. It is not the first software of its kind, but it surprised by the quality of its responses, whether writing a text on a given topic, explaining a complex subject in an intelligible way, or even create a poem or the lyrics to a song.
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Already Open AI partnerthe creator of ChatGPT, Microsoft announced at the end of January that it would invest several billion dollars to extend their collaboration, after having made two investments in 2019 and 2021. Microsoft, Google, but also Meta and Amazon are among the most important players in artificial intelligence, a technology to which they are devoting colossal investments.
According to several American media, the arrival of ChatGPT has shaken up Google, which already had LaMDA but which has since worked hard to offer, within tight deadlines, a product similar to the OpenAI conversational robot.
Between fascination and concern
Google said on Monday that it was launching Bard with a lite version of LaMDA, ” requiring less computing power to allow use by a ” more users ” And “ process a larger volume of returns “. For now, the use of the software will be limited to ” trusted testers, before making it more widely available in the coming weeks “Said Sundar Pichai. This test phase aims in particular to ensure that Bard’s responses achieve a high standard in terms of quality, security and grounding in real-world information “, according to him.
Like ChatGPT, conversational robots fascinate as much as they worry, between tools likely to save humans tedious tasks and a threat to many jobs whose usefulness they could question.
(With AFP)