Dr Samar Fatima, Research Fellow, Enterprise AI and Data Analytics Hub 

Topics: Google, Bard, AI, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT 

“The race for search engine supremacy is getting fierce amongst tech giants with the release of Open AI’s ChatGPT instilling competitive fear in those bigger companies such as Google. 

“Google’s rushed announcement of its AI chat service, Bard, before it was ready was a knee jerk response which could be detrimental to the maturity of the AI industry.  

“There have been concerns around Bard’s accuracy, which emerged when it returned a factually incorrect answer after being asked “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about”?”   

“While Google rushed the announcement of Bard, Microsoft took a collaborative approach by investing heavily in Open AI’s ChatGPT and recently announced an updated version of its Bing search engine enabled by ChatGPT.  

“Similarly, China’s search engine Baidu also announced design and testing of ChatGPT style chatbot of its own.  

“The factual error by Bard is likely to be fixed by Google mainly because of its long-standing and influential position in AI development. However, this misstep has caused by impatience – making a public announcement before all phases of testing were successful. 

“AI, like any other technology, will require not just technological maturity, but also maturity in areas like legislation, public confidence and acceptance, appropriate governance, ethical frameworks, and other considerations to achieve AI ubiquity.  

“Taking time to get AI right is crucial. And we have seen the price that Google paid to learn this lesson.” 

— END

Dr Samar Fatima is a Research Fellow in the Enterprise AI and Data Analytics Hub at RMIT. Through her research, Samar aspires to explain the role of emerging technologies such as AI applications and the Metaverse for societal benefits by investigating components of AI governance such as fairness, transparency, explainability, ethics and accountability through AI system design, development and deployment. 

Interviews: Dr Samar Fatima, 0431 583 883 or samar.fatima@rmit.edu.au