Featured in this episode of Chaos Lever
Ars Technica has put together a collection of reports regarding Advertising Company Google and their mad dash to get Bard out the door. Seems as though the surprise success of ChatGPT really caught the ole Goog off guard, and that led to a Code Red situation, a phrase which may or may not have actually been uttered by Sundar Pichai.
This “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” stance has landed Bard on some rocky ethical shores with nary an ethical lighthouse to steer them right. From the very public firing of Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell to the defection of Samy Bengio, the cadre of ethics AI researchers at Advertising Company Google has dwindled down to almost nothing.
Meanwhile, anyone working on a Bard-related project is being actively told to ignore the ethics questions and keep doing “real work.” Has that real work resulted in a product that is at all competitive with ChatGPT, which is also not known for its accurate information or responsible disclosure? No, no it hasn’t. And that’s because Advertising Company Google is not actually good at making things, they’re good at selling ads.