Bard’s latest update: more features, languages and countries

fun story[0] about Bard's June update - implicit code execution (remember? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36229782) - the example that they advertised on their blogpost/video demo now no longer works.

Here's what I got as of today: https://g.co/bard/share/2580222b6fb2 (screenshot from a couple days ago: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1678495067663925248?s=20)

> What are the prime factors of 15683615?

> (after outputting some code) The output of the code is the list [5, 11, 23, 43]

this result is hallucinated - Bard tells you it is running the code, but it doesnt. If you run the code, you get [5, 151, 20773], which actually is the correct answer

now lets all acknowledge that maintaining stable performance of LLMs is an unimaginably hard problem, but* i suggest some regression testing to keep up the baseline. Would fuzz the test (really, its just another eval) because of course this test is going to be memorized in the weights soon

0: i first discussed this on monday's update https://www.latent.space/p/code-interpreter#%C2%A7misc-notes...

* Edited based on feedback from commenters, thanks.

Google is trying to "punish" Canada for bill C-18 [1]. It is absolutely gross, bully-like corporate behaviour and ultimately should earn Google much more scrutiny.

For those who don't know, bill C-18 required Google and others to pay Canadian news orgs if they scrape and present their content. This is exactly the battle Australia had with Google (Australia won, btw), but now that Canada has moved forward Google has decided to make an example for all the other mid-tier countries.

And of course C-18 has jack shit to do with BartGPT, and right now Canada has virtually zero privacy laws regarding LLMs. There is the rumblings, just as there is in every other country, and which are far more ominous and threatening in the EU, but Canada is almost always lockstep with the US on that sort of thing.

My general opinion of Google was not great -- laggardly corporation that lost most innovation and now is just riding the past -- but this sends it right off a cliff.

[1] - Google knows they can weaponize the bootlicker sorts, who have already flooded Canadian niches of the tubes to tell everyone to Leave Google Alone, and how mean the government is, etc.

I asked bard the other day about the prognosis for a 80 year old with a liver infection. It responded super confidently about a study which suggested the five year survival rate was about 50%. I asked it where I could find the study and sure enough it gave me a link to a study. It almost had me until I clicked on the link and realised the study had nothing to do with a liver infection!

I use it much less than before -- but I still think it's very useful. I think it's because I have to go out of my way to use it. I still haven't figured out how exactly to make it a natural part of my workflow, since I don't need it for any one specific thing.

Sure, here are some of the latest news on Ukraine as of July 13, 2023:

Ukraine's air defenses shot down 20 Iranian-made drones fired by Russia overnight. The drones were mostly destroyed in the Kyiv region. A Ukrainian general confirmed to CNN that Kyiv has received cluster munitions from the US. These munitions are controversial because they can cause widespread civilian casualties. Russia has lost a fifth of the territory it once controlled in Ukraine. This is according to a new analysis by the Guardian. The death toll from the war in Ukraine has reached an estimated 14,400 people. This includes both civilians and military personnel. The NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, focused on aid for Ukraine. The summit leaders pledged to continue supporting Ukraine and to provide it with more military assistance. I hope this helps!