Well, folks, it looks like Google Bard the new AI chatbot had a rough start. Its parent company, Alphabet, lost billions in market value due to a mistake made by the chatbot in its very first demonstration.
Bard was introduced as a competitor to Microsoft’s popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT. But its debut didn’t go quite as planned.
In a Twitter ad for the chatbot, Google described Bard as a tool to “help simplify complex topics” and a “launchpad for curiosity.” Google Bard was asked about new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope and, unfortunately, it made a mistake. It claimed that the telescope had taken the first pictures of exoplanets.
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
However, this was not accurate. NASA confirmed that the European Southern Observatory’s large telescope captured the first images of exoplanets back in 2004.
As soon as the mistake was pointed out on social media, Alphabet’s shares took a hit, dropping by 9%. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s shares rose by 3% after announcing their plans to incorporate ChatGPT into their products.
AI technology is taking the tech world by storm, but it’s not without its challenges. There are concerns about the potential for biased answers and the spread of misinformation. AI chatbots like Google Bard are meant to fill in gaps, but sometimes they make mistakes and incorrectly state information as fact.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned in a blog post that Google Bard would be available to “trusted testers” before its official release to the public in the coming weeks.
In short, Google Bard AI chatbot had a rocky start, causing billions in losses for Alphabet. The mistake raises questions about the reliability of AI technology and its impact on the job market.
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