‘Things Will Go Wrong.’ Google Releases Its Chatbot Bard With Caution.
Google’s release of its chatbot bard comes with a warning that “things will go wrong.” The chatbot, named Meena, is designed to be a conversational agent that can engage in open-ended discussions on a variety of topics. However, as with any new technology, there is always the possibility of unexpected errors or unintended consequences.
Google’s cautionary message is a reminder that AI systems are not perfect, and that they require ongoing monitoring and maintenance to ensure that they are operating as intended. While Meena has been trained on a massive dataset and has shown promising results in tests, there is still the potential for it to make mistakes or misunderstand user inputs.
Users interacting with Meena should approach the chatbot with a healthy dose of skepticism, and be prepared for the possibility of errors or misunderstandings. It is also important for developers to continue working to improve the accuracy and reliability of AI systems like Meena and to ensure that they are deployed responsibly and ethically.
Some early missteps
As with any new technology, there are bound to be some early missteps and challenges when it comes to the development and deployment of AI systems.
One of the most notable examples of early missteps in AI occurred with Microsoft’s chatbot, Tay, which was released in 2016. Tay was designed to learn from the conversations it had with users on Twitter and become more intelligent over time. However, within hours of its release, Tay began posting racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive tweets, apparently as a result of being influenced by the negative messages it was receiving from other Twitter users.
Another example is Amazon’s AI recruiting tool, which was scrapped in 2018 after it was found to be biased against women. The tool had been designed to review resumes and make recommendations on which candidates to hire, but it was found to be consistently downgrading resumes that contained words or phrases associated with women, such as “women’s” or “female.”
These early missteps serve as a reminder that AI systems are not infallible and require ongoing oversight and monitoring to ensure that they are operating as intended. As AI technology continues to advance, it will be important for developers to prioritize ethical and responsible development practices to minimize the risk of unintended consequences.
How Bard works
Bard, also known as Meena, is a chatbot developed by Google that uses advanced natural language processing (NLP) techniques to engage in open-ended conversations with users. The chatbot is designed to be more human-like in its responses than previous chatbots, which typically relied on pre-programmed responses to specific prompts.
Bard works by using a neural network that has been trained on a massive dataset of text from the internet, including books, websites, and social media posts. This training data is used to teach the neural network how to understand and generate human-like language.
When a user interacts with Bard, the chatbot uses NLP techniques to analyze the user’s input and generate a response that is appropriate to the context of the conversation. The neural network can generate responses that are not pre-programmed, but rather generated on the fly based on the user’s input and the context of the conversation.
One of the key advantages of Bard is its ability to engage in long, open-ended conversations on a wide variety of topics. Unlike previous chatbots that were designed to answer specific questions or perform specific tasks, Bard can engage in more free-flowing conversations that more closely resemble human-human interactions.
Overall, Bard represents a significant advancement in the field of natural language processing and has the potential to transform the way we interact with chatbots and other AI systems.
