Google execs tell employees in testy all-hands meeting that Bard A.I. isn’t just about search

Google executives are persevering with to cope with the fallout from final month’s fumbled announcement of the corporate’s synthetic intelligence engine referred to as Bard, however their efforts to scrub up the mess are inflicting additional confusion among the many workforce.

In an all-hands meeting on Thursday, executives answered questions from Dory, the corporate’s inner discussion board, with many of the top-rated points associated to the priorities round Bard, in keeping with audio obtained by CNBC. It’s the primary companywide meeting since Google employees criticized management, most notably CEO Sundar Pichai, for the way in which it dealt with the announcement of Bard, Google’s ChatGPT competitor.

Wall Street has punished Google guardian Alphabet for the Bard rollout, pushing the inventory decrease on concern that the corporate’s core search engine is vulnerable to getting displaced as customers finally flip to AI-powered responses that enable for extra conversational and inventive solutions. Staffers referred to as Google’s preliminary public presentation “rushed,” “botched” and “un-Googley.”

Jack Krawczyk, the product lead for Bard, made his all-hands debut on Thursday, and answered the next query from Dory, which was seen by CNBC.

“Bard and ChatGPT are large language models, not knowledge models. They are great at generating human-sounding text, they are not good at ensuring their text is fact-based. Why do we think the big first application should be Search, which at its heart is about finding true information?”

Krawczyk responded by immediately saying, “I just want to be very clear: Bard is not search.”

“It’s an experiment that’s a collaborative AI service that we talked about,” Krawczyk mentioned. “The magic that we’re finding in using the product is really around being this creative companion to helping you be the sparkplug for imagination, explore your curiosity, etc.”

But Krawczyk was quick to follow up by saying, “we will’t cease customers from making an attempt to make use of it like search.”

He mentioned Google remains to be catering to individuals who need to use it for search, indicating that the corporate has constructed a brand new characteristic for inner use referred to as “Search It.”

“We’re going to be trying to get better at generating the queries associated there, as well as relaying to users our confidence,” Krawczyk mentioned. He added that customers will see a tab that says “view other drafts,” which might level individuals away from search-like outcomes.

“But as you want to get into more of the search-oriented journeys, we already have a product for that — it’s called search,” he said.

The attempt to separate Bard from search appeared to signify a pivot in the initial strategy, based on what employees told CNBC and on internal memes that circulated in recent weeks. In the lead up to the Bard announcement, Google executives repeatedly said the technology it was developing internally would integrate with search.

Several Google employees, who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak on the matter, told CNBC that the inconsistent answers from executives has led to greater confusion.

Elizabeth Reid, vice chairman of engineering for search, echoed Krawczyk’s feedback on Thursday, specializing in the corporate’s intensive use of huge language fashions (LLMs).

“As Jack said, Bard is really separate from search,” Reid said. “We do have a pretty long history of bringing LLMs into search,” she said, citing models named Bert and Mum.

But while the company experiments with LLMs, it wants to “keep the heart of what search is,” Reid said.

In Google’s announcement last month, it mentioned search several times.

“We’re working to bring these latest AI advancements into our products, starting with Search,” the corporate mentioned in a blog post. 

That similar week, at an occasion in Paris, Google search boss Prabhakar Raghavan unveiled some contemporary examples of utilizing Bard inside search. And following the announcement, firm leaders urged all employees to assist by spending a couple of hours testing Bard and rewriting flawed solutions, citing a “great responsibility to get it right.”

CNBC also previously reported the company was testing various Bard-integrated home search page designs.

Another top-rated question Thursday asked Pichai for different use cases for Bard, since Google employees were asked to help on search and “to rewrite queries with factual information.”

“It’s important to acknowledge that it’s experimental,” Pichai mentioned in his response. “It’s super important to acknowledge the limitations of these products as well.” Those limits are something he’s addressed in the past.

Pichai said that with Bard, “you are exposing the ability for users to converse with LLMs,” which will improve over time. “And obviously we are product engineering on top of it,” he mentioned.

“Products like this get better the more the people who use them,” Pichai said. “It’s a virtuous cycle.”

Following Google’s launch of Bard in February, Alphabet’s stock price dropped almost 9%, suggesting that investors were hoping for more in light of growing competition from Microsoft, which is a large investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

Employees are well aware of how the introduction was received.

“The first public demo was demoralizing, sent our stock into a nosedive, and invited massive media coverage,” learn an worker remark from Dory that was learn aloud. Then got here the query, “What really happened?” and the request to “please share your candid ideas on what went flawed on the Bard launch.”

Pichai referred the reply Krawczyk, who danced across the topic with out giving a direct reply.

“Questions like this can be fair and we want to reiterate the fact that Bard has not launched,” Krawczyk said. “We acknowledged to the world that this is something that we’re experimenting with — we’re testing it. But there’s a lot of excitement in the industry right now.”

Krawczyk also referenced an event held at Microsoft’s headquarters that week, in which the company showed off how OpenAI’s technology can power Bing search results and other products.

“You see the stories of ChatGPT coincides with an event that we’re having that was actually focused on search,” Krawczyk said. “There can be challenges around the external perception but, as you heard today, we continue to focus on Bard’s testing.”

Krawczyk added that Google is excited to get the technology in “users’ hands to capture their creativity.”

Pichai chimed in to say, “It’s an intense time.”

“The purpose of the blog post was once we decided we were going to external trusted testers, things could leak and it was important we positioned it,” Pichai said. “We haven’t launched the product yet. And obviously when we launch, we’ll make clear it’s an experimental product.”

Pichai said that the company hopes to provide more details after Google IO, the annual developer conference. Google has yet to announce dates for the event.

Another top-rated employee comment from Dory said, “Launching AI seems like a knee-jerk reaction without a strategy.”

Pichai began his response by noting that Google spends more money on AI research and development than any other company.

“I disagree with the premise of this question” he mentioned, letting out fun. “We are deeply working on AI for a long time. You are right in the sense that, we have to stay focused on users and make sure we are building things which are impactful.” He said, “user input is going to be an important part of the process so it’s important to get it right.”

Jeff Dean, Google’s AI chief, was called upon by Pichai at the all-hands meeting to answer a question regarding the company’s loss of top talent. Specifically, the question asked why Google lost so many key people who were listed on a paper about prominent architecture used for AI.

“I think it’s important to realize this is a super-competitive field,” Dean mentioned. “People with these kinds of skills are in high demand.”

Dean said Google has “two of one of the best AI analysis groups in the world” and “individuals working aspect by aspect on pushing ahead the state of artwork in AI.”

Despite the competitors in the market, “we have the ability to get things out in papers here but also work on products that touch on millions of users every day,” Dean said.

Pichai added that, “Just over the last couple of weeks, we are talking to some people who want to join Google who are literally some of the best ML researchers and engineers on the planet.”

A Google spokesperson did not instantly reply to a request for remark.

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