07.02.2023
Not long ago, Microsoft just announced that it would expand its investment in ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chat program that is currently booming; now, competitor Google has also announced that it will launch its own AI chat program Bard, which will be integrated with search engines. Baidu also announced on the same day that it was about to launch its own chatbot, Wenxinyiyan.
(Deutsche Welle Chinese Network) In an official blog post on February 6, Sundar Pichai, president of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, introduced a chatbot called Bard to the outside world. The application is based on Google’s own LaMDA artificial intelligence program, which can generate sentences close to human level. A Google engineer said last year that LaMDA already had sentience, a claim that was later refuted by Google officials.
At present, chatbots are one of the most popular development directions of AI applications. Just in January this year, Microsoft just announced the expansion of cooperation with the OpenAI laboratory in the United States. The latter launched the chat robot ChatGPT in November last year, which attracted global attention. Some teaching institutions worry that the human-level text generated by ChatGPT will facilitate cheating and plagiarism; others worry that the rapid development of artificial intelligence will make some human occupations obsolete.
In Google’s official Twitter, Pichai said that Bard will ask for feedback from test users before it is officially launched. Google also plans to integrate artificial intelligence into its search engine to tackle complex questions like “which musical instrument is easier to learn”.
Pichai emphasized that Bard will seek to combine the breadth of world knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of Google’s large language models.
Exactly how Bard will differ from rival ChatGPT is unclear. As far as the demo screen is concerned, Bard will also remind users that they may get inappropriate or inaccurate answers like ChatGPT.
Google feels intense competitive pressure in AI
Before the launch of ChatGPT in November last year, Google had a relatively conservative attitude towards the application of natural language artificial intelligence, believing that the level of technological development was not enough. However, Google has come under increasing pressure after Microsoft announced an expanded partnership with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and the integration of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. The latter is worried that Bing Search, which is powered by AI, may affect the popularity of Google Search. The urgency to compete in the chatbot space comes a week after Google parent Alphabet reported poor earnings.
In recent years, Baidu has also vigorously developed artificial intelligence applications such as unmanned driving.
In addition, China‘s Baidu company also disclosed on February 7 that the company will also open its own chat robot “Wen Xin Yi Yan” to the public after completing the internal test in March. The English name is ERNIE Bot. According to Baidu, ERNIE has “cross-modal and cross-language deep semantic understanding and generation capabilities”. The search engine operating company emphasized: “ChatGPT is a milestone in artificial intelligence, and it is also a watershed. This means that the development of AI technology has reached a critical point, and companies need to deploy as soon as possible.”
(AFP, Reuters)
Technology environment |
12.08.2022
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