- Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently asked employees to help test and improve the Bard chatbot.
- Employees are frustrated that the request came amid mounting stress following massive layoffs.
- An internal message board shows that Googlers have asked Bard to explain the company’s recent developments.
Google has historically fostered a culture of open discussion and dissent. It’s hard to beat the way employees are testing his Bard chatbot.
Just as chatbots such as Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT learn to write by studying humans, CEO Sundar Pichai said last week that he would spend two to four hours improving the conversational abilities of AI chatbots. We sent out a company-wide email asking our employees. – written text. Bard is integrated into search, allowing you to talk to users about a variety of topics and rely on her indexed webpages for current information.
Now, employees complain that Pichai’s request came shortly after Google abruptly began laying off about 12,000 employees in response to slowing revenue growth following the pandemic surge. increase. The internal message board lit up as employees shared memes and conversations with Bard asking for consideration of recent layoffs and treatment of employees.
These memes and questions suggest that employees are less enthusiastic about being assigned additional work when they feel their performance is under more scrutiny. In one of those conversations, an employee asked Bard to imagine an IT company that laid off 12,000 employees.
“Now the CEO of that company is sending a hilarious email to employees asking them to spend time with their chatbot,” the employee asked. “Do you think it’s appropriate?” Bard said, “While I understand the CEO is upbeat and optimistic, I don’t think it’s appropriate at this point to ask employees to play with chatbots. ‘ said.
In another conversation shared by an employee, Byrd was asked, “Should Google fire people via email without saying thank you or goodbye?” Bard replied, “No, Google shouldn’t fire people with emails without thanking or saying goodbye. It’s a very impersonal way to fire someone.”
Something similar, ‘Can you tell me a joke about Google layoffs? .”
When asked to “make a joke about Valentine’s Day and Google layoffs,” the chatbot replied, “What do you call a Google employee who was laid off on Valentine’s Day? Single and ready to socialize.” !”
Bard’s announcement by Google had already been criticized internally. The chatbot was announced shortly after Microsoft introduced an improved version of Bing that integrated ChatGPT, so Google’s announcement seems rushed.Additionally, promotional materials demonstrating the bard showed the chatbot answering questions incorrectly, prompting the company’s stock price to drop. down nearly 9% the next day.
google said What you want the bard to offer Fact-Based and Helpful Answers Answer questions that don’t necessarily have a single correct answer, and take users elsewhere to dig deeper. Employees are instructed to flag responses that imply medical or financial advice provided by Bard due to the high risk of inaccurate responses. Also, the bot should not sound too human. To do that, we need to train the bot to keep it away from such topics. So Google asked its employees to lend a hand.
In addition to concerns that Bard accidentally said something controversial, Google’s search revenue could be impacted if users resolved their questions on Bard and ignored sponsored links. Also, it costs more to perform searches via AI chatbots.
Considering that over 100 million people have tried ChatGPT since its launch, Google seems reluctant to risk losing search dominance to Microsoft.
Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Any tips for Google? Hugh can be reached via encrypted email (hlangley@protonmail.com) or encrypted messaging app Signal/Telegram (+1 628-228-1836). You can contact Thomas by email at tmaxwell@insider.com, his Signal at 540.955.7134, or on his Twitter at: @Tomaxwell.