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Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

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Re: Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

#251
post #105

It took about 20 minutes to get off the waitlist for this (US Based). Initial impressions are that it significantly lags behind the OpenAI offerings. Creativity (storytelling) is very limited, response lengths are similar, and it does occasionally cite sources. They did finally get the James Webb telescope facts correct too!

I also got access and started feeding my prompt history with GPT-4 through to compare the responses. Overall Bard seems to hallucinate much more often. Its responses tend to be short and lacking detail. It often fails to follow key parts of the prompt that GTP-4 had no issue with.

Overall it is extremely disappointing. If this is any indication of how close Google is to competing with Microsoft then they are in deep trouble.

Re: Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

#252
post #181

BAH. "This Google Account isn’t supported" "Bard does not currently support Google Workspace accounts or when our systems indicate you may be under 18." Smooth move, Google. PAYING Workspace customers should be the first ones to get access. This blows my mind. Oh wait, no… it doesn't. They did this with other devices and apps too. You couldn't use your Workspace account. You had to use a personal account. Really dumb…

Also I can't switch to a personal account. Only option is to log out of all accounts. Other tabs (gmail, etc) show all accounts and let me switch. Not bard.

Shout-out to Firefox Multi-Account Containers, which Just Works (TM) for exactly this use case.

Re: Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

#253
I just got off the waitlist. Quick impression: it's not as good as ChatGPT. I gave it the false belief test (Alice and Bob are playing, Bob leaves, Alice hides his toy, Bob comes back, where does he look for his toy?), which it both passed and recognized as the false belief test. I then asked it to write a React program that ChatGPT has no problem with, and it hallucinated some incorrect code before eventually telling me it "can't do that." It's underwhelming so far.

For the record, here's the prompt and the result [0] from ChatGPT:

> Write a react program that I can paste into a codesandbox. It should display a counter that increases by one every second. Below the counter is a button, and when I press it, it decreases the counter by two. If pressing the button would result in the counter decreasing below zero, the button should be disabled.

To be fair, the Google FAQ states that Bard doesn't know how to code yet. I can confirm that's definitely true!

[0] https://codesandbox.io/s/prod-haze-c28sec

Re: Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

#254

Google top brass and board should just flush down their product people and start from scratch. It's embarrassing at his point how inept they are at coming up with ideas and executing on them. There's a lot of really smart people there and talented engineers and lot of that is wasted by product management being incompetent.

The main problem with Google is Sundar Pichai.

Re: Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

#255
post #240
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good ol' google ghetto multi account system. so much time wasted wrangling this stuff for docs permissions

Hasn't this been a problem for years? How have they not fixed this?

I don't think it's a problem, it's just how it intentionally works. The problem is they don't render the account switcher when you arrive to a new product that your current account hasn't signed up to.

Re: Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t speak for anyone else, but I hope for the entire companies demise, as I do for any ad tech surveillance operation.

i don't understand the hate towards ad tech that learns about you. the alternative is ads that are completely irrelevant to you, ads that treat you like some anonymous user in which case you'll get endlessly irrelevant ads for mainstream stuff like ICE cars, plastic garbage, big screen tvs, fast food, etc.

The alternative sounds great. It's not like all advertising is targeted now, anyway.

Re: Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

#257
post #86

"Bard does not currently support Google Workspace accounts or when our systems indicate you may be under 18." Why specify both conditions - if google isnt sure which one of "under 18" or "logged in with a paid account" it is then they are not putting their best on the job.

Google has finally conceded that I must be over 18, since my account was created in 2004.

Re: Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

#258

From the FAQ[1]: > Can Bard help with coding? > Bard can’t help you with coding just yet. Bard is still learning to code, and responses about code aren’t officially supported for now. A little disappointing. [1] https://bard.google.com/faq Edit: Ah, on the blog post, they mention they are using their smaller model initially: > We’re releasing it initially with our lightweight model version of LaMDA. This much smaller…

It generated some (incorrect) code for me. Just ask!

It was very hallucinatory and I got the sense it was just copying the first stackoverflow answer that you'd find for a google result of the same query.

Re: Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK

#259
post #181

BAH. "This Google Account isn’t supported" "Bard does not currently support Google Workspace accounts or when our systems indicate you may be under 18." Smooth move, Google. PAYING Workspace customers should be the first ones to get access. This blows my mind. Oh wait, no… it doesn't. They did this with other devices and apps too. You couldn't use your Workspace account. You had to use a personal account. Really dumb…

Also I can't switch to a personal account. Only option is to log out of all accounts. Other tabs (gmail, etc) show all accounts and let me switch. Not bard.

Ugh, the Google Play Console had this issue for a very long time. How is this not completely unified and identical across all G products by now?
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