Google will make its chatbot technology publicly available in “the coming weeks and months” as it responds to the success of ChatGPT, a Microsoft-backed AI chatbot that has become a global phenomenon after it became available. for free.
Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google owner Alphabet, said the use of AI had reached a “tipping point” and the company was “extremely well positioned” in the field.
Pichai referred to two of the so-called big language models developed by the company, LaMDA and PaLM, with the former to be released soon. This week CNBC reported that Google had begun testing a ChatGPT-like AI chatbot called Apprentice Bard, which uses LaMDA technology.
LaMDA rose to prominence last year when Google suspended and then fired an engineer after he went public with his claims that LaMDA was “aware.” Google said Blake Lemoine’s claims about LaMDA, an acronym for Language Model for Dialog Applications, were “totally unsubstantiated.”
Pichai said on a conference call with Alphabet investors on Thursday: “Over the coming weeks and months, we will make these language models available, starting with LaMDA so that people can directly interact with them.”
Large language models like LaMDA and the one behind ChatGPT are types of neural networks, mimicking the underlying architecture of the brain in computer form, given large amounts of text to learn how to generate plausible sentences. ChatGPT has become a sensation after being used to create everything from school essays to job applications.
Pichai indicated that the chatbot technology would be integrated into Google as part of the launch. “Very soon, people will be able to directly interact with our newest and most powerful language models as a companion to search in experimental and innovative ways,” he said. Last year, Google released a set of LaMDA demos, available to small groups, as part of an “AI test kitchen.”
He also highlighted the achievements of Alphabet’s UK-based artificial intelligence unit, DeepMind, saying its database of “the 200 million proteins known to science have been used by 1 million biologists around the world.” the world”.
Analysts estimate that ChatGPT, developed by San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, has reached 100 million users since its launch on November 30. Describing the growth as unprecedented, analysts at investment bank UBS wrote: “In the 20 years since the Internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp up in a consumer Internet application.”
Microsoft, one of OpenAI’s financial backers, is integrating ChatGPT into its products and has already released a premium version of its Teams communications product, which offers AI-powered extras such as automatically generated meeting notes. Microsoft is also expected to implement OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models in its Bing search engine.
ChatGPT is an example of generative AI, or technology trained on large amounts of text and images that can create content from a simple text message. OpenAI has also developed Dall-E, an AI-powered image generator.
Michael Wooldridge, a professor of computer science at Oxford University, said that OpenAI had “set off fireworks” under big tech companies with the release of ChatGPT.
“They did it with a fraction of the number of employees at big tech companies, which must have caused consternation in Silicon Valley boardrooms,” he said. “I expect we will see a massive shift in other big tech companies toward big language models and generative artificial intelligence, and a frantic race to bring products to market and secure a user base.”
