Google’s struggles with its Bard AI have hit the point where it is instructing staff to step in and check the chatbot’s work.
The search giant seemingly rushed its Google Bard AI chatbot to market after rival OpenAI was first to market with the impressive ChatGPT. Now, with Bard making some high-profile mistakes, Google CEO Sundar Pichai is roping in human help.
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CNBC claims to have seen an internal email from Google vice president asking staff to check and rewrite Bard’s responses in fields where they have specific expertise or knowledge. The email apparently includes a link to a ‘do’s and don’ts page’ with guidance on how fix any faulty responses.
“Bard learns best by example, so taking the time to rewrite a response thoughtfully will go a long way in helping us to improve the mode,” reads the guide.
Employees are instructed to keep the fixed responses “polite, casual and approachable” with an “unopinionated, neutral tone,” and are instructed to not imply any sort of human emotion or experience on Bard’s part. In other words, these human-written responses shouldn’t seem like they’re being written by actual humans.
They’re also instructed to “avoid making presumptions based on race, nationality, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, political ideology, location, or similar categories,” and have been told to “thumbs down” any answers that offer “legal, medical, financial advice”.
Besides this call to arms, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also been on a recruitment drive with his own company-wide email, imploring staff to spend between two and four hours working on the misfiring chatbot.
In an evident reference to ChatGPT’s relative success, Pichai pointed out that “Some of our most successful products were not first to market,” adding that “They gained momentum because they solved important user needs and were built on deep technical insights.”
The Google web browser that forms the foundation of the company wasn’t the first of its kind, but it did prove to be the best. The problem with Bard seems to be that it’s neither the first nor the best, at least at this moment in time.
