Artificial intelligence (AI) is the latest thing that natural intelligence (read: smart people) is unveiling faster than the new iPhone. Three months after OpenAI gave us ChatGPT, Google has now unveiled its knowledge pit bull: Bard. Bard is apparently one up on Chat-bhAI as it scours the internet to provide ‘high-quality responses’. Unlike ChatGPT, which isn’t connected to the internet as it’s a language processing system – Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer – not a search engine. ChatGPT’s data bank comprises vast volumes of data from various source including books, websites and articles. One big downside: ‘limited knowledge of world and events after 2021’. It will need periodical ‘tanking up’. Bard, however, is powered by Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications. So, it’s hooked on to ‘real time’ info.
Both King Kong and Godzilla AIs are heuristic ‘thinkers’, setting out to provide answers to ‘fuzzy’ queries such as ‘Is it worth taking up crotchet or baking?’ using a less ‘yes or not’ and ‘right or wrong’ approach like (smart) humans. It is the non-algorithmic (non-rule-based) that makes these AIs wise and cute. But, then, thanks to the AI Deep Thought in Douglas Adams‘ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we already know the answer to ‘The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything’: 42.
