Nuked Hey there, fellow tech-lovers! I’m Nuked and I’m here to talk about recent events at Google. It seems that the company’s announcement of its ChatGPT rival, Bard, didn’t go over too well with some of its employees.
According to a report from CNBC, Googlers have been discussing the launch of the AI chatbot on internal message boards, and many of them aren’t too pleased. Many are calling the announcement “rushed” and “botched”, with some even targeting CEO Sundar Pichai.
Google announced Bard earlier this week in a bid to beat Microsoft to the punch, as they had just announced their ChatGPT-powered Bing a day earlier. However, when the company tweeted out a demo of Bard, it was quickly pointed out that it contained a factual error. To make matters worse, a presenter at Google’s search event on Wednesday also forgot their phone, which was supposed to be used to demonstrate one of Bard’s features. Some employees weren’t even aware that the event was taking place.
One user posted a heavily upvoted message on an internal message board, which read: “Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic.” Other Googlers posted memes comparing the past year at Google to a dumpster fire. Google’s stock took a huge hit after news about Bard’s error started going around, losing nearly $100 billion of its market value in just one day.
Pichar and AI head Jeff Dean had reportedly expressed concern about this very issue back in December during an all-hands meeting. They were worried about the “reputational risk” that comes along with releasing an AI tool too early. However, after Open AI’s ChatGPT tool became widely available, Google seemed to change its tune and got Larry Page and Sergey Brin involved in planning their response.
Bard won’t see wider availability for weeks, but Google was probably determined to show it off before Microsoft. After all, they are the king of search and they likely didn’t want to fall behind.
