Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 667 posts

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

#281

Post by danpalmer »

htrp wrote: post #154
danpalmer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on what's "very limited" about the Bard version here? They look roughly equivalent, slightly less flowery language, different format (day planning rather than rough), similar level of detail. Unless the facts about Japan are just wrong, which I don't have the expertise to judge, it seems about the same?

The logical reasoning in Bard is off in this example (as its basically just putting each destination together with a list of attractions in each city). Additional prompting to tell it to correct the output doesn't seem to have the same effect as it does in the OpenAI models.

Sorry, can you be more specific? As far as I can tell both are a list of destinations, activities in each, and some minor facts to motivate visits.

Arguably there's an issue in the Bard one in that it splits the Tokyo portion in two and has you return there to fly home, but also some people might prefer this to have a round-trip ticket to the same airport.

Maybe it's my lack of knowledge about Japan, but I'm just not seeing a difference between the two in terms of logical reasoning.

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

#282

Post by sebzim4500 »

chatmasta wrote: post #268
sebzim4500 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>eventually telling me it "can't do that." That might be a good sign though, if they can eventually come up with something similarly accurate to chatGPT that knows how to say "I don't know" then that would be a big deal.

I'm not sure it's so sophisticated. I think it's just recognizing that I'm asking it for code and refusing to help so it doesn't embarrass itself. I wouldn't be surprised if this is basically a hardcoded compatibility check (i.e., not even part of the model itself). I also noticed that this only started after I gave a thumbs down to its first attempt...

Yes, on further investigation it is at least as willing as GPT-3.5 to spout confident bullshit, if not more so.

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

#283

Post by aix1 »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #278

This hallucines way worse than GPT-4. Me: How many cities in the UK have a population over 1 million? Bard: There is only one city in the UK that has a population over 1 million: London. Me: What is the population of Birmingham? Bard: According to the latest 2021 UK census, Birmingham has a population of 1,144,900 people. This makes Birmingham the second-largest city in the United Kingdom. Me: So how many cities in t…

I was curious to compare this with GPT-4.

How many cities in the UK have a population over 1 million?

As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, there is only one city in the UK with a population over 1 million, which is London. However, population figures change over time, so it is always a good idea to check the latest statistics for the most accurate information.

What is the population of Birmingham?

As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, the population of Birmingham, UK was around 1.1 million people. However, this information may be outdated, so it's best to check the latest population statistics from a reliable source such as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) or the city's official website.

So how many cities in the UK have a population of 1 million?

I apologize for the confusion in my previous response. As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, London is the only city in the UK with a population of over 1 million. While Birmingham has a large population, it is below the 1 million mark. Please note that these population figures may have changed since then, so it is a good idea to check the most recent data for accuracy.

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

#284

Post by chatmasta »

axegon_ wrote: post #128
htrp wrote: 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!

Google has the tendency to do this when they aren't the first to set foot on new land. Don't get me wrong, they get a lot of things very right: Gmail works perfectly, I can't find a single reason to change my pixel for anything else, search, although there's been a lot of deterioration in the past couple of years, is still second to none. That said, self driving cars, google+, duo and all the other services they laun…

There was an HN thread the other day where people were arguing ChatGPT would be nowhere without Google's AI research. That might be true, but clearly there is a significant gap in productization ability...

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

#285

Post by anonyfox »

The point is, no one cares, google.

- you probably are behind OpenAI ChatGPT, and far behind GPT4 in the tool's quality

- people expect you to sunset the service soon either way, so no one starts to depend on it

- at this point you are a parasite that siphons from and killed the world wide web in the process

- your core value proposition (finding answers) is eaten up by the new chatbots that explain stuff instead of pointing to lists of ads and spam, most people don't care if its wrong sometimes

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

#286

Post by Jimmc414 »

First impressions of Bard are good, seems on par with Bing. Possibly less proficient producing code. It seems to be the only llm that can answer a question about Langchain, but it struggles to create a gpt-4-32k call to the chatcompletion endpoint.

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

#287

Post by jack_riminton »

I just got access and my first impression are that it's not even a 1/5th as capable as gpt4. Not worth using for anything coding related. I asked about a relatively simple css class and it just kept repeating that "As a language model, I'm not able to assist you with that."

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

#288

Post by com2kid »

jvolkman wrote: post #271
com2kid wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't find a single reason to change my pixel for anything else, Fingerprint reader on the Pixel 7 works about half the time. I had to program one finger in 4 times to make it work that often. My Oneplus 6 (immediately previous phone) had a functional fingerprint reader. OnePlus used to have a better UI as well, minor improvements on the stock Android UI that made it just a little bit nicer in places. When I got…

My Pixel 7's fingerprint reader works near 100% of the time. The only time I have problems is if my finger or the screen are wet.

What finger do you use? I use my left thumb, pick up the phone, no go. It is a complete sad joke.

After a few weeks I think I've been trained by the phone on exactly how to hold is to the fingerprint reader works more often, but the fact I can only have to use all the programming slots for fingers on just one finger is sad.

Edit: OMG, I just read online that rebooting the phone after recording fingerprints improves recognition from 20-50% to almost 100%. I just got my phone a month ago and haven't rebooted it yet, after a reboot the sensor now works reliably. What an absurd and stupid bug.

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

#289

Post by chatmasta »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #278

This hallucines way worse than GPT-4. Me: How many cities in the UK have a population over 1 million? Bard: There is only one city in the UK that has a population over 1 million: London. Me: What is the population of Birmingham? Bard: According to the latest 2021 UK census, Birmingham has a population of 1,144,900 people. This makes Birmingham the second-largest city in the United Kingdom. Me: So how many cities in t…

For comparison, I tried pasting these into Google search, and it seems like there is some overlap in sourcing:

QUERY > How many cities in the UK have a population over 1 million

ANSWER (snippet from worldpopulationreview.com) > United Kingdom has 1 cities with more than a million people, 99 cities with between 100,000 and 1 million people, and 1068 cities with between 10,000 and 100,000 people.

.

QUERY > What is the population of Birmingham?

ANSWER (knowledge box, source Eurostat, United States Census Bureau)> 1.149 million (2019), with tabs for Manchester (533k) and Birmingham, AL (208k)

.

QUERY > how many cities in the UK have a population of 1 million?

ANSWER (snippet from worldpopulationreview.com) > United Kingdom has 1 cities with more than a million people, 99 cities with between 100,000 and 1 million people, and 1068 cities with between 10,000 and 100,000 people.

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

#290

Post by getpost »

I requested access (using Firefox), and access was granted about an hour later. I used my gmail.com account. A friend with a Google workspace account was unable to request access. My initial observations are:

Responses can include other drafts, which can be slightly or significantly different. It is not clear why a particular draft is shown first.

It will write code, and it gives URL citations for some code that is generated. However, it doesn't even try to modify the code, at least in cases I tried. (chatGPT will help revise code).

It is interesting to compare chatGPT and Bard. In my small sample so far, Bard appears to have no sense of humor. Bard replies are more succinct, and in one case, provided additional context that chatGPT omitted.

EDIT: I asked, "Is your knowledge as of a certain date, or do you track recent changes on the web?"

And the reply was: "My knowledge is constantly being updated, as I am trained on a massive dataset of text and code. I am able to access and process information from the real world through Google Search and keep my response consistent with search results."

Post reply on HN