What you need to know
- Google has created an "experimental updates" page for Bard.
- The page serves as patch notes for what update has recently rolled in for the AI chatbot.
- The latest update includes more Search options when "Google it" is clicked and additional updates to Bard's math and logic capabilities.
AI chatbots can do a lot, and while it's not often clear what's being done to make them helpful, Google's come with a quick fix.
Google's chatbot, Bard, opened three weeks ago to the general public after a brief stint with trusted testers. With more people hopping in, the company has created a new "experimental updates" page for Bard, which appears to operate much like its page for Pixel phones, where users can come and read patch notes for a new update.
It breathes a little more transparency for the user as Google explains "what" the update is for Bard and the "why."
Google Bard's "inaugural update" patch notes from earlier this week state that the new experimental page has been created to "post the latest features, improvements, and bug fixes for the Bard experiment." The reason given by Google is so users can see what's going on and provide feedback.
The "Google it" option has received additional Search topics whenever selected. The Mountain View-based company hopes this aids users in finding a wider range of interests in related topics. Lastly, the company pushed an update to Bard's capabilities in math and logic. This is to help the AI chatbot provide "higher-quality" responses to math and logic prompts.
This specific upgrade to Bard's math and logic capabilities is due to Google's recent implementation of its PaLM language model. PaLM is coming in to aid the chatbot in understanding and responding to multi-step word and math problems due to the language model utilizing "chain of thought prompting."
Google Bard and Microsoft's utilization of ChatGPT (OpenAI) for Bing are competitors in this space. The former has started to bring its efforts in generative AI to other parts of its digital ecosystem, such as Docs and Gmail. But with everything these AI chatbots can do and the ways they're being improved with more functions, it begs the question: do we really need them?
