How Google Bard Could Lose the Battle of AI Chatbots
Google has recently released Bard, its experimental chatbot service that lets you collaborate with generative AI. Bard is powered by a large language model (LLM) called LaMDA, which is supposed to provide realistic and helpful responses to questions you might ask it. However, Bard faces some serious challenges that could prevent it from becoming a successful competitor to other AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Here are some of the reasons why Google Bard might fail to win the AI race.
Lack of innovation
One of the main criticisms of Google Bard is that it lacks innovation and originality. It seems to be a late attempt by Google to catch up with ChatGPT and OpenAI, which have been developing and improving their LLMs for years. ChatGPT’s GPT-3.5-turbo language model is widely regarded as the most advanced and versatile LLM in the world, capable of generating coherent and diverse texts on almost any topic. Bing Chat has also integrated GPT-4 into its search engine, offering users a seamless and natural way to interact with information.
Google Bard, on the other hand, does not seem to offer anything new or exciting that would make it stand out from its rivals. It uses a lightweight and optimized version of LaMDA, which is based on Google’s Transformer neural network architecture — the same architecture that ChatGPT’s models are built on. However, LaMDA is not as powerful or scalable as GPT-3.5, which has 175 billion parameters compared to LaMDA’s 137 billion parameters. Moreover, Google Bard does not have any unique features or applications that would make it more useful or appealing than other chatbots.
Lack of reliability
Another major problem with Google Bard is that it lacks reliability and accuracy. Because LLMs learn from a wide range of information that reflects real-world biases and stereotypes, they sometimes produce outputs that are inappropriate, offensive or false. For example, during its preview demonstration on February 6th 2023, Google Bard made a mistake in answering a question about the James Webb Space Telescope’s recent discoveries. It claimed that it had been the first to take a picture of an exoplanet outside of our solar system, but in fact this happened many years earlier.
This error caused heavy criticism of Google Bard and raised doubts about its credibility and quality. Although Google claims that Bard is grounded in its understanding of quality information, it seems that Bard does not have an effective way to verify or correct its outputs before presenting them confidently. Unlike Bing Chat which often provide sources or references for their statements , Google Bard does not seem to do so. This makes it harder for users to trust or evaluate its responses.
Lack of availability
A final challenge for Google Bard is that it lacks availability and accessibility. At the time of writing this blog post (March 22nd 2023), Google Bard is only available to early access on waitlist. It is also only available in English for users in the U.S. and U.K., with plans to expand to more countries and languages over time. This means that most people cannot use or experience Google Bard yet.
Conclusion
Google Bard is an ambitious project by Google to create a chatbot service that lets you collaborate with generative AI. However, it faces some serious challenges such as lack of innovation, lack of reliability and lack of availability that could prevent it from becoming a successful competitor to other AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Unless Google can address these issues quickly and effectively, it might fail to win the AI race.
You’ve just learned why Google Bard might fail to win the AI race. But we want to hear from you: What do you think about Google Bard and other AI chatbots? Do you use them in your business? What are the biggest challenges and benefits of using them? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments!
