Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to news on March 4, Google seems to be deviating from its original intention and did not provide any specific use cases after the launch of Bard, a chat robot, as an AI service mainly used for search. At a recent staff meeting, executives argued that Bard is not just for search, but that they are exploring building a collaborative AI service.

At the plenary meeting, executives answered questions raised by employees on the company's internal forum Dory, most of which were related to Bard. It was the first plenary meeting since Google employees criticized the company's leadership, and they were particularly unhappy with CEO Sandal Sundar Pichai's decision to hastily release Bard.

Wall Street was also disappointed with Google's launch of Bard, sending the company's share price lower on fears that Google's core search engine would be replaced as consumers eventually turn to AI-backed responses for more conversational and creative answers. Google employees also criticized the company's process of launching Bard as "hasty and clumsy" and "not in line with the company style".

Recently, Bard's product director Jack Krauchick (Jack Krawczyk) made his debut at a staff meeting and answered employees' questions on Dory.

Among them, the last concern is that Bard and ChatGPT are both large language models, not knowledge models. They are good at generating texts that look like human writing, but there is no guarantee that their text conforms to the facts. Why do we think that the most important application of such models should be the search field, and their core is to find real information?

"I just want to make it clear that Bard is not the same as search. This is an experiment to explore a collaborative AI service that we have discussed. We found that the magic of using this product is that it is like a creative partner that can help you stimulate your imagination and discover your curiosity," Krauchik immediately responded.

But Krauzick quickly added: "We can't stop users from using it like the search function." Google still supports those who want to use it for search, and to that end we have introduced a new feature called 'Search It' for internal use. We will strive to better generate related queries and convey our confidence to users. Users will see a tag that says' View other drafts', which keeps people away from similar search results. But when you want to enter a more search-oriented journey, we already have a great product, and that is Google search. "

According to information leaked by employees and rumors within Google in recent weeks, the attempt to separate Bard from search seems to mark a change in strategy in the first place. Before launching Bard, Google executives repeatedly said that the technology being developed internally would be integrated with the search function. Several Google employees said conflicting answers from senior executives led to greater confusion.

Elizabeth Reed (Elizabeth Reid), Google's vice president of search engineering, echoed Krauchick's comments, highlighting the company's widely used large language model (LLM). "as Krauchick said, Bard is separate from search, and we have a long history of introducing LLM into search," she said. " But Reid added that while Google is experimenting with LLM, it wants to "continue to keep search at the core."

Google mentioned search several times in its announcement of Bard last month. "We are trying to introduce these latest AI features into our products, starting with search," the company said in a blog post. "

Meanwhile, at an event in Paris, Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's head of search, unveiled more new examples of the use of Bard in search. Google management then urged all employees to spend a few hours a day testing Bard and rewriting the wrong answers. It was also reported that Google was testing a variety of home page search page designs that integrate Bard.

The second most popular question was that an employee asked Pichai about the different use cases of Bard because Google employees were asked to help with search and "rewrite query answers with factual information."

"it's important to acknowledge that this is a pilot project, and it's also important to acknowledge the limitations of these products," Pichai said in response. "but with Bard, you can show users the ability to talk to LLM. Over time, this ability will improve. Obviously, we are doing product engineering. The more people use this product, the better the product will become. This is a virtuous circle."

Alphabet's shares have fallen nearly 9 per cent since the launch of Bard in February. This suggests that investors want Google to act faster, given the increasing competition from Microsoft. Microsoft is a big investor in OpenAI, the founder of ChatGPT.

One employee commented on Dory: "the first public demonstration was demoralizing, caused our stock to plummet and triggered a lot of media coverage. What happened?" He asked Pichai to share frankly his thoughts on what went wrong at the Bard launch.

Pichai mentioned Krautchek's reply, although the latter did not give a direct answer. "We want to reiterate the fact that Bard hasn't been officially released yet," Krauchick said. "We admit to the world that this is what we are testing, we are testing it. But there are a lot of exciting things in this industry right now."

Krautzk also mentioned an event held this week at Microsoft headquarters, when Microsoft demonstrated how OpenAI technology supports Bing search and other products.

"you see, the ChatGPT craze coincides with events that actually focus on search," Krautzk said. "outside perception may be challenging, but as you heard today, we will continue to focus on Bard testing. Google is glad that the technology is in the hands of users to stimulate their creativity."

Pichai chimed in: "this is a tense moment." the purpose of our launch event is that once we decide to go to an outside trusted tester, things may leak, which is very important to us. we haven't officially launched this product yet. obviously, when we release, we will make it clear that this is an experimental product. "

Pichai said the company hopes to provide more details after the annual developer conference Google IO. But Google has not yet announced a date for the event.

An employee commented on Dory: "the launch of AI seems to be a knee-jerk reaction without any strategy."

In response, Pichai pointed out: "Google has invested more in AI research and development than any other company, and we have been working in AI for a long time. In that sense, you are right, we have to be user-centric and make sure we are building something influential. User input will be an important part of this process, so it is important to type it correctly."

At Pichai's invitation, Google's head of AI, Jeff Dean (Jeff Dean), answered questions about the company's loss of top talent at the plenary meeting. Specifically, the question is why Google has lost so many key people who have been included in papers explaining many of the AI technologies behind Bard.

"I think it's important to recognize that this is a very competitive area and there is a great demand for people with these skills," Dean said. Google has two of the best AI research teams in the world, and people work side by side to drive the latest developments in AI. Despite the fierce competition in the market, we have the ability to publish relevant papers and to develop products that reach millions of users every day. "

Pichai added: "in the past few weeks, we are talking to a lot of people who want to join Google, who are actually the best machine learning researchers and engineers in the world."

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