Google’s Bard demo leads to 7% share decline due to a factual error – TechEngage

Google has hopped on the search chatbot bandwagon with Bard. The search giant is ready to go head to head with the new Microsoft Bing with the announcement of Bard, which was developed using Google’s language model, LaMDA.

Bard will respond to queries conversationally, using AI, much like ChatGPT. Google claims to deliver high-quality and accurate results using online information, but, the factual error in the demo suggests otherwise.

According to the experts, Bard’s response to the query, shown in the promotional ad is factually incorrect, raising concerns.

This led to a 7% decline in the share value of Alphabet. Inc, Google’s parent company. The error is considered to be one of the biggest in history, resulting in a loss of approx. $120 billion.

The question asked was:

“What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?”

Bard responded with this:

The error was pointed out by an astrophysicist at the US center of Astrophysics, Grant Tremblay. He said in a tweet,

“Not to be a ~well, actually~ jerk, and I’m sure Bard will be impressive, but for the record: JWST did not take ‘the very first image of a planet outside our solar system’”

Grant Tremblay, Twitter

The correct answer is, “the first image was instead done by Chauvin et al. (2004) with the VLT/NACO using adaptive optics,” he added.

As of now, Bard is not yet open to the public, and only a select group of experts have access to it. However, Google is developing a “lightweight model version of LaMDA” that’ll require far fewer computational resources to work.

According to reports, ChatGPT was internally referred to as “code red” at Google due to its global popularity. However, with Bard, Google aims to make a significant impact in the search industry, especially after Microsoft’s recent announcement of the new Bing, powered by ChatGPT.

Google’s language model project has been underway for some time, but its public release was postponed due to allegations made by one of its employees. With the announcement of Bard, Google is ready to make its mark in the chatbot industry.

Google has dominated the search market for many years, but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hopes to give the search giant tough competition and finally make Bing happen.

It is worth noting that Google has been continuously improving its products since its inception and has transitioned from text-based searches to visual searches. This will play a significant role in the future of search, as Bing is just advancing with its text-based search algorithms with the help of ChatGPT only. Despite this, Google, with YouTube as the largest player in the industry, may still dominate as user behavior shifts from text-based to short-format videos, making TikTok its top competitor.