Google will make its chatbot technology available to the public in the “coming weeks and months” in response to the success of ChatGPT, a Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence chatbot that has become a global phenomenon since it was made available for free.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said AI use had reached a “inflection point” and that the company was “extremely well positioned” in the field.
Pichai mentioned the company’s two so-called large language models, LaMDA and PaLM, the latter of which is set to be released soon. CNBC reported this week that Google had begun testing Apprentice Bard, an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT that uses LaMDA technology.
LaMDA shot to prominence last year when Google suspended and then dismissed an engineer after he went public with claims that LaMDA was “sentient”. Blake Lemoine’s claims about LaMDA – an acronym for language model for dialogue applications – were “wholly unfounded,” according to Google.
Large language models, such as LaMDA and the one behind ChatGPT, are types of neural networks that are fed massive amounts of text in order to be taught how to generate plausible sentences. Neural networks are computerized representations of the underlying architecture of the brain. ChatGPT has gone viral after being used to create everything from school essays to job applications.
Pichai stated that as part of the rollout, chatbot technology would be integrated into Google.
He also lauded Alphabet’s UK-based AI unit DeepMind, claiming that its database of “all 200 million proteins known to science” has been used by 1 million biologists worldwide.
According to analysts, ChatGPT, developed by the San Francisco-based company OpenAI, has reached 100 million users since its November 30 launch. Analysts at investment bank UBS described the growth as unprecedented, writing, “In 20 years of following the internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp in a consumer internet app.”
With the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI has “put a firework” under big tech companies, according to Michael Wooldridge, a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford.
