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Bard can now connect to your Google Apps and services

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Re: Bard can now connect to your Google Apps and services

#71

I still think chat is not all natural for humans to interact with computers, mainly because most people are not actually good at phrasing their needs and even if they are, typing it for the LLM to understand takes so much time. Thanks to QWERTY keyboards, our keyboards are not efficient for typing either.

Counterpoint: Google’s search engine is pretty successful? This suggests that people can use a freeform text box as input.

Typing can be augmented with autocomplete. Some people like using a microphone, though.

Re: Bard can now connect to your Google Apps and services

#72
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it comes down to "how important is it to be right"? For many of the queries, it's not that important and if I lose the 5% gamble, it's annoying but ultimately inconsequencial. If it's an important thing to be right about, then I will verify it from both.

I don't know how else to ask this: how are you so okay with disregarding accuracy? What questions are you asking where you don't care if the answer is wrong? I guess I just fundamentally don't understand what the point is. Why not just bookmark the "random article" link on Wikipedia if it doesn't matter anyway?

I ask a fair number of code questions where bugs and stuff will be caught either immediately or shortly after first use. If 5% of those are wrong, totally fine with me.

I also sometimes ask questions like "what is the tallest mountain in the US" or "what is the hottest desert on Earth" or similar. If I really need to know that the answer is correct, at a minimum it gives me a name to search for to verify height in feet compared to others, etc.

Re: Bard can now connect to your Google Apps and services

#73
post #67
post #28

"Extensions" and integration into the rest of the Google ecosystem could be how Bard wins at the end of the day. There are many tasks where I'd prefer an integration with my email/docs over a slightly smarter LLM. Unlike ChatGPT plugins, Google has the luxury of finetuning its model for each of their integrations. The new feature for enriching outputs with citations from Google Search is also pretty cool.

Yes, exactly. Integration is where the real power of these agents can live. I really want an agent that can help me with pretty simple tasks - Hey agent, remember this link and that it is about hyper fast, solar powered, vine ripened, retroencabulators. - Hey agent, remember that me and Bob Retal talked about stories JIRA-42 and JIRA-72 and we agreed to take actions XYZ - Hey agent, schedule a zoom meeting with Joe i…

oh so a working google assistant? :)

Re: Bard can now connect to your Google Apps and services

#74
post #53
post #28

"Extensions" and integration into the rest of the Google ecosystem could be how Bard wins at the end of the day. There are many tasks where I'd prefer an integration with my email/docs over a slightly smarter LLM. Unlike ChatGPT plugins, Google has the luxury of finetuning its model for each of their integrations. The new feature for enriching outputs with citations from Google Search is also pretty cool.

Yes - but the big question is this: how to monetize this? This might completly kill search and ads.

It’s a competitive differentiator of workspace vs Office that will help retain existing users and maybe some day cause large enterprises to think more about switching.

Re: Bard can now connect to your Google Apps and services

#75
Just tried it for a few minutes with all extensions enabled and it failed at almost every task I proposed.

How many emails are in my gmail? (Completely incapable of answering this, didn't even try, just listed my last ~5 emails)

Based on my gmail account, how many flights have I booked in the last two years? (Also completely incapable, and didn't try, and again listed those same last ~5 emails)

When is the cheapest one way flight from NYC to Bali over the next six months? (Was for some weird reason only capable of returning round trip flights, but it did at least give me a plausible date and list of flights)

I'm probably using it wrong, but not a super "wow" first impression.

Re: Bard can now connect to your Google Apps and services

#76

Just tried it for a few minutes with all extensions enabled and it failed at almost every task I proposed. How many emails are in my gmail? (Completely incapable of answering this, didn't even try, just listed my last ~5 emails) Based on my gmail account, how many flights have I booked in the last two years? (Also completely incapable, and didn't try, and again listed those same last ~5 emails) When is the cheapest o…

[dead]

Re: Bard can now connect to your Google Apps and services

#79
This morning I asked it if it could query YouTube and I got short description of the YouTube API. I don't know whether the API details have been public.

I then used it to search for videos,

> There are several YouTube videos with a title that begins, "Gregory Blackstock, The Incomplete Historical World," List those videos with the YouTube URLs.

In this particular instance, the titles aren't unique, but the videos are different. The result appeared to be correct. The list was formatted to I can paste it into an email, something that doesn't happen when I search YouTube itself. Nice!

My next prompt was

> Make a list of the top 5 most viewed YouTube videos about moths.

Strangely, the result was 3 groups of 5 videos, with some duplicate results.

> Why did you list 15 videos in your reply when I asked for 5?

Reply: "I apologize for the confusion. I am still under development, and I am always learning.

I listed 15 videos because I found it difficult to narrow down the list to just 5. There are many beautiful and fascinating moth videos on YouTube, and I wanted to share as many as I could.

I will try to do better next time. If you have any feedback on how I can improve my responses, please let me know."

Re: Bard can now connect to your Google Apps and services

#80
post #30

Bard is so terrible. I can’t imagine anyone is actually using it based on my experience.

I have the integration with google search enabled and now I only use GPT very rarely. Having it at the top of the SERP with zero effort is much more convenient. The fact that it gets many things wrong becomes irrelevant when it takes no effort on my part. Even when it is totally wrong, its feature to intersperse the output with links to its sources is quite nice.

Are you in the US? I'm in the UK and have had an ad for it in the Google app for a while, but it always errors when I tap it on my phone.

Believe it's US only which is why it won't work, but would love to give it a go. Did try a VPN but no luck still!

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