Google CEO Sundar Pichai has revealed that upgrades to the artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard, are on the way.
This is in response to the company’s criticism since the chatbot’s launch.
“We clearly have more capable models,” Pichai said on The New York Times podcast Hard Fork.
“Pretty soon, perhaps as this [podcast] goes live, we will be upgrading Bard to some of our more capable PaLM models, which will bring more capabilities; be it in reasoning, coding, it can answer maths questions better. So you will see progress over the course of next week.” Sundar stated.
According to Pichai, Bard runs on a “lightweight and efficient version of LaMDA,” an AI language model that focuses on delivering dialogue.
Bard was released to the public on March 21st, but it did not receive the attention or acclaim that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbots did.
Pichai suggested that a lack of confidence within Google was one of the reasons for Bard’s limited capabilities.
“To me, it was important to not put [out] a more capable model before we can fully make sure we can handle it well,” he said
Pichai also addressed concerns that AI development is currently moving too quickly and may pose a threat to society.
Many people in the AI and tech communities have been warning about the dangerous race dynamic that is currently at work among companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google.
An open letter signed by Elon Musk and top AI researchers earlier this week called for a six-month pause in the development of these AI systems.
Some experts are concerned about immediate risks, such as chatbots’ proclivity to spread misinformation, while others are concerned about more existential threats, claiming that these systems are so difficult to control that once connected to the wider web, they could be used destructively.