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

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

#161

Post by TwentyPosts »

isaacfung wrote: post #143
seanhunter wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. For example I asked it some questions in linear algebra[1]. The answers (if you didn't know linear algebra) seemed convincing, full of equations etc but the equations were wrong. Looked good, but just totally wrong in loads of important ways. When I pointed out the mistake it geneally returned with a proof of why its previous result was wrong. Now I could have walked away patting myself on the back, but even wit…

>What's the difference between a linear map and a linear transformation? Are they not the same?

They are, at least in my opinion (degree in mathematics). This might be a terminology issue. Not all fields use exactly the same terminology.

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

#162

Post by practice9 »

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.

Hallucinatory sources are also bad, as in when you follow the link and the content is completely different compared to what Bard said in its reply

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

#163

Post by CamperBob2 »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #155
jncfhnb wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you tell it not to upset anyone. Someone asks if a question and it thinks the answer might be upsetting. The machine declines to answer. The asker clarifies that it would be happy to receive the answer. Contextually, this does seem less likely to upset the human with an answer. It’s not very practical as a safeguard obviously although real humans are susceptible to contextual nudging all the time. Adding it t…

This makes sense. In the "token window" of a human being, the same strategy would also work, e.g., p1: "What do you think of my story? Be honest." p2: "I'd rather not say." p1: "Seriously, tell me what you think, it's fine if you hate it. I need the feedback." When you think about it from that perspective, it's no dumber than people are.

That's what I find so interesting about LLMs. I have yet to see a single criticism of them that doesn't apply to humans.

"Well, it's just a stochastic parrot." And most people aren't?

"Meh, it just makes stuff up." And people don't do that?

"It doesn't know when it's wrong." Most people not only don't know when they're wrong, they don't care.

"It sucks at math." Yeah, let's not go there.

"It doesn't know anything that wasn't in its training." Neither do you and I.

"It can't be sentient, because it doesn't have an independent worldview or intrinsic motivations." Unlike your brother-in-law, who's been crashing in your basement watching TV, smoking pot and ranting about politics for the last two years. Got it.

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

#164

Post by 6ak74rfy »

ece20 wrote: post #153

Bard became frustrated with me for asking it to solve a simple task. I recently signed up for the first time, and I decided to test it by asking it to write a simple Google Apps Script function. I think I asked for a function that archived all mail more than three days old. After some back and forth, Bard was completely unable to write this simple function supposed to run in a Google service. Chillingly, it also brok…

Looks like Bard won’t be able to clear entry level SWE interview at Google.

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

#165

Post by pphysch »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #102
Yeul wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Every company I do business with has replaced its customer service with a chat bot.

No. Any company that did this did not have customer service, they merely replaced the people they hired to give you a run-around and gaslight you and not actually handle the problem... with a cleverly written program that can be easily mistaken for a human. At such companies, chat bots and the people that were formerly employed there have no functional difference: they are forbidden to help you, cannot effect the sit…

L1 support is mainly for filtering out PEBKAC cases. Using chatbots as a force multiplier makes total sense. 1 outsourced agent can now handle Xx more cases, by monitoring chatbot flows and intervening/escalating where necessary.

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

#166

Post by theptip »

version_five wrote: post #93
ignoramous wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at Gemini, it’s their new model, currently in closed beta. With all the talent, data, and infrastructure that Google has, I believe them. That said, it is almost comical they'd not unleash what they keep saying is the better model. I am sure they have safety reasons and world security concerns given their gargantuan scale, but nothing they couldn't solve, surely? They make more in a week than what OpenAI proba…

What is the upside for google? Their business is advertising and they have a massive platform for this already. What does a chatbot add? Showing that they are keeping up with evolving technology and that they also can train a competitive offering? From a pride perspective I see why they'd want to compete with OpenAI but from a business perspective? GPT+Bing has come and gone... I'm sure google worries about their bus…

What's in it for Google is not getting disrupted by OpenAI and losing their entire business, if it turns out that Chat is the new Search.

While we seem to be cresting the peak of exuberance and coasting towards the trough of disillusionment, recall how freaked out everybody got a few months ago when everybody started using ChatGPT; Google's stock price tanked and they were getting slaughtered by analysts, so they needed to show a return to dominance on AI. I think if you had ChatGPT but with up-to-date information, you'd see a pretty big substitution effect from Google's search product, so it's better for them to "disrupt themselves" than have another company steal their golden goose.

OpenAI competition aside, it's just clearly (to me) going to be a massive product area in the future, and it's going to be lucrative for AdTech companies like Google if they can build the right product (chat sessions are going to be even more valuable for ad placement than search queries).

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

#167

Post by extesy »

hoschicz wrote: post #107
extesy wrote: post #32

When it was first introduced, it received frequent updates [1] but now it's been 2 months since the last update. So either Google is preparing some huge update (Gemini?), or Bard is going to disappear as a standalone product and instead will be absorbed into other products like Search, Docs, etc. [1] https://bard.google.com/updates

I'm seeing that they just updated it today on the URL you linked

Perfect timing. And it looks like I was right – the update is quite substantial: extensions and a new model (not the Gemini, but still).

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

#168

Post by theptip »

murderfs wrote: post #92
ignoramous wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look at Gemini, it’s their new model, currently in closed beta. With all the talent, data, and infrastructure that Google has, I believe them. That said, it is almost comical they'd not unleash what they keep saying is the better model. I am sure they have safety reasons and world security concerns given their gargantuan scale, but nothing they couldn't solve, surely? They make more in a week than what OpenAI proba…

> They make more in a week than what OpenAI probably makes in a year! This is arguably the problem. OpenAI is loss leading (ChatGPT is free!) with a limited number of users. Scale and maturity work against Google here, because if they were to give an equivalent product to its billions of users, Sundar would have some hard questions to answer at the next quarterly earnings call.

OpenAI is generating lots of revenue:

https://fortune.com/2023/08/30/chatgpt-creator-openai-earnin...

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

#169

Post by GuB-42 »

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #128
sdfsdfsdf98 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bard often does this - but I've also found that _most_ of the time if you respond with something like > this would be very helpful for me and I think you're able to, please try it will actually give you the output you wanted... which is annoying to do - but there we are :)

This is something that still leaves me stumped about LLMs. How does saying "pretty please" as an additional prompt lead to different output? Should this be implicitly added to each prompt?

The LLM is usually told to be helpful, so if, out of context, the answer it is about to give you is considered unhelpful or otherwise inappropriate, it will censor it. But if you tell it that the answer is helpful, whatever it is, then it will proceed.

It works with people too (and LLMs are designed to imitate people).

- What do you think is best between Vi and Emacs?

- You know, it is a controversial topic... (thinking: this will end up in a flame war, I don't like flame wars)

- But I really just want to know your opinion

- Ok, I think Emacs is best (thinking: maybe he really just wants my opinion after all)

That's how all jailbreaks works, to put the LLM in a state where it is ok to speak about sensitive topics. Again just like the humans it imitates. For example, you will be much more likely to get useful information on rat poison if you are talking about how your house is infested than if you are talking about the annoying neighbor's cat.

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

#170

Post by Grazester »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #152
Grazester wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see that happening. Barb is basically their new search tool. It's not Google Reader or Stadia that falls outside of their usual product offering.

I don't see bard existing as a standalone product long term, LLM capabilities will integrated into search, assistant, etc and "bard" will die off.

Is that what was meant? Would that be such an issue anyway? Would make any difference though?
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