Google Bard waitlist • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#231

Post by FormerBandmate » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

javiercr wrote: post #185

sho_hn wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the beta, invite-only status of GMail was, at the time, the definition of Internet Cool.

On Episode 01 of The Social Radars podcast [1], Paul Buchheit, creator of GMail, explains that the Gmail invite-only beta was actually due to shortage in hardware and difficulties to scale the service, rather than a just a "growth hack". It seems they were running the service for a long time near 100% capacity. [1] https://open.spotify.com/episode/0oRAHcP9g41jcEzpDtOa4b?si=1...

It was also far ahead of the competition. From the early reviews I’m seeing here, this isn’t

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#232

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

mellosouls wrote: post #228

cubefox wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wasn't?

Yes it was. USA only at first, I can't remember the product(s).

Heck, they still have a published whitelist of countries, though it is very long now.

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#233

Post by cubefox » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

mellosouls wrote: post #228

cubefox wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wasn't?

Yes it was. USA only at first, I can't remember the product(s).

I'm pretty sure ChatGPT was immediately available in Germany.

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#234

Post by lxgr » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

mclightning wrote: post #219

endtime wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This Google Account isn’t supported > Bard does not currently support Google Workspace accounts or when our systems indicate you may be under 18. Learn more Google: 15 years of punishment for being a loyal Dasher/ Google Apps/GSuite/Google Workspace user.

Same here, and the account switcher doesn't work.

Reminds me of when the Google Voice iOS account switcher would "trap" you in an account of an unsupported country, with the only recourse being re-installing the app and taking care to never accidentally switch to that account again (which can easily happen with the "swipe to fast switch" gesture on the account icons).

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#235

Post by sebzim4500 » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

dao- wrote: post #215

sebzim4500 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would be rather embarrassing for Google. Why? They have no idea how many users they will get. If they buy A100s on the assumption they will get 50M daily active users they run the risk of wasting an enormous amount of money if they get 1M users instead. And its not like these GPUs grow on trees. Clearly MSFT is struggling to set up compute fast enough, see the decreasing rate limits on GPT-4.

So you're saying they might be incompetent enough for their estimation to be off by 50x? You're also saying Google, _a cloud computing provider selling access to A100s_, can't scale this dynamically? > Clearly MSFT is struggling to set up compute fast enough, see the decreasing rate limits on GPT-4. Well, even so, this is how you'd deal with capacity problems, rather than by arbitrarily shutting out parts of the worl…

>So you're saying they might be incompetent enough for their estimation to be off by 50x?

Not sure about incompetence, it's just a very hard problem. Sam Altman's estimations for ChatGPT were off by 10x, for reference. Apparently some employees thought it would be a total flop that would barely make the last page of major newspapers.

> You're also saying Google, _a cloud computing provider selling access to A100s_, can't scale this dynamically?

I'm saying that Google can not acquire enormous quantities of A100s overnight, yes.

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#236

Post by mdorazio » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:41 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #32

JanSt wrote: post #26

Reading comments here: has anyone got access yet?

Nope. Even if you pass the criteria, it's still a waitlist. I'll update if they actually grant access today.

Alright, I've tried it and with some identical prompting between Bard and ChatGPT, Bard seems notably inferior. It is faster in generation, but the overall quality of response and contextual understanding isn't quite as good. Also, it straight-up refuses to even attempt writing code, returning this message: "I'm designed solely to process and generate text, so I'm unable to assist you with that."

I'm not impressed.

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#237

Post by t0mas88 » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:41 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #227

tauntz wrote: post #158

> Bard isn’t currently supported in your country. Stay tuned! Sigh. Google never learns. By the time they add support for using this in my country, there's no reason for me to use it anymore as competitors have already swept in. It's the same playbook with every US-only launch: 1. get everybody hyped up 2. make it accessible to only a minor subset of people but advertise it as a "launch" or "open beta" or whatever 3.…

Not trying to be rude, but when you're a company the size of Google - that's had MASSIVE lawsuits - you can't just willy-nilly release products globally.

You mean like a company the size of Microsoft? Bing chat was earlier and global.

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#238

Post by dwaltrip » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:41 PM UTC

tacker2000 wrote: post #116

Hilarious. Big announcement and yet nobody in this thread has been able to register, nobody is giving any first hand account of using it. Whats the point of this big announcement then? Google is such a caricature of corporatism and blunders, it’s just sad.

I'm on the waitlist. We'll see how long it takes.

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#239

Post by kick_in_the_dor » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

tauntz wrote: post #158

> Bard isn’t currently supported in your country. Stay tuned! Sigh. Google never learns. By the time they add support for using this in my country, there's no reason for me to use it anymore as competitors have already swept in. It's the same playbook with every US-only launch: 1. get everybody hyped up 2. make it accessible to only a minor subset of people but advertise it as a "launch" or "open beta" or whatever 3.…

ChatGPT wasn't available to everyone initially (huge waitlist).

Re: Google Bard waitlist

#240

Post by dao- » Tue, Mar 21, 2023, 4:43 PM UTC

sanderjd wrote: post #229

dao- wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying they might be incompetent enough for their estimation to be off by 50x? You're also saying Google, _a cloud computing provider selling access to A100s_, can't scale this dynamically? > Clearly MSFT is struggling to set up compute fast enough, see the decreasing rate limits on GPT-4. Well, even so, this is how you'd deal with capacity problems, rather than by arbitrarily shutting out parts of the worl…

Predicting the future correctly isn't a matter of competence... And yes, even Google can't scale infinitely in the face of an actual physical resource constraint. When I worked there, there was a period when there was a shortage of memory chips, which required a lot of creativity. I suspect the current period is very constrained by how fast AI/ML focused chips can be manufactured.

> Predicting the future correctly isn't a matter of competence... And yes, even Google can't scale infinitely in the face of an actual physical resource constraint.

In order to not geo-block, Google would need to be able to scale infinitely? What kind of straw man is this?

> there was a shortage of memory chips, which required a lot of creativity.

Geo-blocking doesn't strike me as particularly creative as far as solutions go. Whatever problem they're trying to address, the excuses being made here seem weak and don't make Google look any less incompetent.