Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#1

Post by behnamoh » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 1:50 AM UTC

I rarely see it mentioned and Google seems to have forgotten it as well. The name "Bard — an experiment" sounds like it'll be pulled down any moment.

How the hell wasn't Google able to do something like GPT-3.5/4?

Re: Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#2

Post by jimmyl02 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

Bard is actually pretty good when it responds from my experience. I definitely prefer the way it outputs results much more compared to chatgpt and it does provide sources / a UI linking to relevant material quite often. It is also searching the web for the latest info which is definitely felt in it's output. However, it often says "I can't help with that" even for relatively simple queries which makes it a little annoying to use.

In my opinion, it seems like Bard is more a test-bed for chat based search UI. I've also gotten AI generated results in the main Google search which is what I presume will be the main rollout. If executed well, it'll probably change the landscape in terms of AI assisted search.

Re: Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#3

Post by orionblastar » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

Bard writes small programs. Will never write an OS like OS/2 or DOS or Windows 10. Don't expect too much from it.

Re: Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#4

Post by nerpderp82 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

Going from a foundational model to a chat model requires a ton of RLHF. Where is that free labor going to come from? Google doesn't have the money to fund that.

Re: Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#5

Post by worthless-trash » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 2:10 AM UTC

orionblastar wrote: post #3

Bard writes small programs. Will never write an OS like OS/2 or DOS or Windows 10. Don't expect too much from it.

Do you know any LLM that will ?

Re: Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#6

Post by Racing0461 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 2:12 AM UTC

nerpderp82 wrote: post #4

Going from a foundational model to a chat model requires a ton of RLHF. Where is that free labor going to come from? Google doesn't have the money to fund that.

> Google doesn't have the money to fund that

I would say they don't have the low liability/legal and "social consciousness/esg" that a startup can do.

They even published a responsible ai framework before they got an ai that works whereas openai/msft did that after they got something to work.

Re: Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#7

Post by zer0c00ler » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 2:14 AM UTC

Bard’s biggest problem is it hallucinates too much. Point it to a YouTube video and ask to summarize? Rather then saying I can’t do that it will mostly make up stuff, same for websites.

Re: Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#8

Post by abacadaba » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 2:16 AM UTC

has a more recent training cutoff than chatgpt at least

Re: Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#9

Post by bb88 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 2:16 AM UTC

zer0c00ler wrote: post #7

Bard’s biggest problem is it hallucinates too much. Point it to a YouTube video and ask to summarize? Rather then saying I can’t do that it will mostly make up stuff, same for websites.

Wake me up when AI based search is actually useful. Then I'll be interested.

Re: Ask HN: 6 months later. How is Bard doing?

#10

Post by DiabloD3 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 2:17 AM UTC

Bard was just produced so Google could tell shareholders that they attempted to enter the "AI" space and "compete" with GPT (as if this was somehow a worthy goal, and worth the time of engineers).

Given that goal, it succeeded: they can now tell shareholders they tried and people used it, but now the market is slowly moving to abandon chatty AI type LLM things.