“Exploring the Possibilities of Google’s New AI Technology: A Look at CEO Sundar Pichai’s Announcement”

Google Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during an event in New Delhi, December 19, 2022.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees Monday the company will need all hands on deck to test Bard, its new ChatGPT rival. He also said Google will soon enlist help from partners to test an application programming interface, or API, that would allow others to access the same underlying technology.

The internal memo came shortly after Pichai publicly announced Google’s new conversational technology, powered by artificial intelligence, which will begin rolling out in the coming weeks. Google has been pressured by investors and employees to compete with ChatGPT, a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which took the public by storm when it launched late last year.

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“Next week we will be recruiting every Googler to help shape Bard and contribute through special company-wide dogfood,” Pichai wrote in the email to employees, seen by CNBC. “Dogfood” is a term used in companies to refer to a practice of using one’s product before it is placed on the market.

“We look forward to hearing all of your feedback – in the spirit of an internal hackathon – more details to come,” he wrote.

Pichai’s note to staff also said search chief Prabhakar Raghavan would “share progress” at an event in Paris later this week.

The internal note comes shortly after Pichai shared with the public in a blog post that Bard’s answers must be rigorously tested to ensure they meet a “high bar of quality, safety, and realism in real-world information.”

Last week, CNBC reported that the Alphabet-owned company was hiring employees to prioritize several AI projects as part of a “Code Red” effort to respond to AI competition, including a chatbot codenamed “Apprentice Bard ‘ and new search functions. Both were confirmed by the company’s blog post on Monday.

Microsoft is reportedly planning to release a version of its own search engine, Bing, which will use ChatGPT to answer users’ searches. Microsoft is hosting its own event Tuesday, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attending.

“We’re just getting started, we need to deliver and iterate, and we still have a lot of hard and exciting work ahead of us to incorporate these technologies into our products and continue to get the most out of Google Al to improve people’s lives” , Pichai wrote in his note to employees Monday: “We have approached this effort with an intensity and focus that reminds me of Google’s early days – so thank you to everyone who has contributed.”

Pichai also talked about allowing outsiders to build their own apps and products using the same underlying technology, the Language Model for Dialogue Applications, or LaMDA, via an API.

“Next month we will begin onboarding individual developers, builders and companies to test generative language APIs (Application Programming Interface) initially supported by LaMDA, with a range of models to follow,” reads the in Pichai’s email. “Over time, our goal is to build a set of tools and APIs that make it easier for others to build more innovative applications with Al.”

A Google spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the internal note.

Source: www.cnbc.com