Google has opened up waitlist for its conversational AI service Bard, which is considered to be a ChatGPT rival. Built on LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), the waitlist will allow users in only US and UK to access it. 

Join the waitlist here.

Sundar Pichai previously stated that Bard’s goal is to blend the extensive scope of the world’s information with the potency, intellect, and inventiveness of their expansive language models. As per his statement, Bard utilizes data from the internet to deliver new and excellent answers. 

ChatGPT creator OpenAI unveiled GPT-4 last week and Microsoft has already added it to Bing Search.

Will Bard Continue to Hallucinate?

According to the official announcement, Bard is an “experiment” that can generate may give “inaccurate or inappropriate responses”. This is a similar move to that of OpenAI which also acknowledged the hallucinating tendency of it GPT-4. 

Bard had already cost the company $120 million when it gave an inaccurate response during launch and many of its employees believe that it was being ‘rushed’ to compete with ChatGPT. 

But are these AI models even worth the hype they get, especially when they continue to hallucinate? “There are a lot of people freaking out about the way large language models (LLMs) are doing things like writing college essays, etc. The harm is, these things are just bullshit generators,” said former AI ethicist at Google, Alex Hanna, in an exclusive interview with Analytics India Magazine.

Hanna raised concerns about the high cost and environmental impact of training large language models and questioned their relevance in supporting marginalised communities. Instead, she advocates for using AI in welfare allocation and providing useful services to communities, which could prevent discrimination based on economic, social, or political factors.

With the highly-anticipated release of GPT-4 and Baidu’s Ernie Bot, all eyes are on Google to see if it has learned from its expensive mistake. Has the company taken the time to upgrade its technology and address its shortcomings, or is it still in a rush to stand out from the crowd? Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure – the stakes are higher than ever, and the pressure is on for Google to step up its game.