AI Arms Race Begins as Google Unveils Bard

It was only last week that Chat GPT was the new kid on the block but now there is a newer technology joining the AI fray, industry heavyweight Google’s offering Bard.

This is just the start, look out for more, increasingly sophisticated AI to roll out in a development that experts have called the most significant event in the IT area since the PC and the internet.

When Google launch a new AI interface, the signs of a fundamental change in how we learn, and how we “do” being human couldn’t be any clearer.

Google will launch Bard in Paris this week, its own version of OpenAI’s AI technology, Chat GPT, which is backed by Microsoft and is the fastest company in history to get to 100 million users.

“We’ve been working on an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), that we’re calling Bard.

“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills,” writes Google CEO Sundar Picahi

Google has a few AI products ready to launch, LaMDA, PaLM, Imagen and MusicLM will bring new ways to engage with information, from language and images to video and audio.

“We’re working to bring these latest AI advancements into our products, starting with Search,” Pichai writes.

Professor and Director of UniSA’s Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning, George Siemens says, “They will make us question everything and they will change how we learn and teach, innovations such as Google Bard are just the beginning. 

“All the leading nations – the US, UK, China and many European nations – are investing heavily in understanding what this means for education and the future workforce, because it will fundamentally change human endeavour,” he says.

“It is not an issue that can be tackled piecemeal or by individual schools or universities. We need national investment to prepare for the coming AI revolution, what it will mean for education, and how we can adapt to a world where AI and human efforts will need to be integrated in schools, in tertiary education and of course, in the working world.

“The more we research and understand how we can employ AI for maximum benefit to society and how we can reframe education to support the development of creativity and connection, the better placed we will be as this revolution rolls on.

“There are big global challenges that need to be tackled in health, the environment and in geopolitics - the next generation will need the skills to work in partnership with AI to solve them.

“The sheer sophistication and capacity of these technologies will only advance further, and they are already challenging our fundamental idea of what it is to be human.

“For most of human history, it has been the notion of our ability to think, build, research, explore ideas, and create that has given us a sense of our unique status in the universe.

“Now, not only are those abilities no longer unique, but we also have many technologies able to gather and process information and produce, writing, art, music to a standard equivalent or superior to humans in a fraction of the time.” 

Prof Siemens says Australia needs to be aggressive in confronting the challenges of AI.

Image by Tara Winstead