The Accelerating AI Race: Google vs Microsoft, China's Entry, and A Brand New AI Social Platform

Table of Contents

• Google Unveils Chatbot Bart to Take On ChatGPT
• Microsoft Launches AI-Powered Bing Search
• Google's Lackluster AI Event Overshadowed by Microsoft
• Anthropic's Claude Emerges as ChatGPT Competitor
• Quora's New AI Social Platform PO
• Implementing AI Like ChatGPT Into Business
• Meta's Galactica Shows Dangers of Rushed AI

Google Unveils Chatbot Bart to Take On ChatGPT

On February 6th, 2023, Google announced Bart, an experimental conversational AI service, as Google's answer to ChatGPT and the extended partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI. Bart is powered by Google's language model Lambda and will be able to draw information from the web. It will be opened to trusted testers first before being widely available in the coming weeks. However, in the demo, Bart displayed some incorrect information, suggesting it still has some issues to work out.

This comes just one day after the major announcement from Baidu, the 'Chinese Google', about its own ChatGPT-style AI chatbot called Erniebot. Erniebot, which will be available in Chinese and English, is powered by Baidu's massive 260 billion parameter language model Ernie 3.0 Titan. It is set to launch after testing finishes in March. While aimed at the Chinese market, Erniebot represents serious competition in the global AI race.

Google's Rocky Bart Demo

In Google's demo of Bart, the chatbot was given a prompt about discussing discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope with a 9 year old. Bart wrongly claimed the telescope took the first pictures of an exoplanet, when that accomplishment belonged to the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in 2004. This suggests issues with Bart's ability to properly fact check itself despite having access to the internet, unlike ChatGPT.

Baidu Announces Own ChatGPT Competitor

As the dominant search engine in China, Baidu announced its ChatGPT competitor Erniebot will finish testing in March 2023. With Chinese and English abilities and powered by Baidu's 260 billion parameter model Ernie 3.0 Titan, Erniebot aims to be a major force in AI. Though targeted at Chinese users, Erniebot represents serious competition in the global AI race.

Microsoft Launches AI-Powered Bing Search

In another major announcement, Microsoft launched an AI-powered version of Bing search using a next generation OpenAI model customized for search. Microsoft stated this new Bing experience represents the biggest jump in search relevance in two decades. It acts like an AI co-pilot for the web, helping users explore and find information more easily. While not running on ChatGPT, the new Bing is powered by key learnings from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 focused on speed, accuracy and capability.

Google's Lackluster AI Event Overshadowed by Microsoft

Just one day after Microsoft's impressive launch of AI-powered Bing, Google held its own highly anticipated AI event in Paris. However, it was generally seen as underwhelming and unprepared. Bart was only discussed for a few minutes, with the rest focused on AI updates to Google Lens and Maps. With no CEO present and held outside headquarters, the event felt like Google was not ready to fully showcase its AI progress. Especially coming right after Microsoft's flashy launch, Google's low energy event seems to cede this round of the AI rivalry.

Anthropic's Claude Emerges as ChatGPT Competitor

While Google and Microsoft battle for AI dominance, a new promising ChatGPT competitor has emerged from startup Anthropic AI. Called Claude, it is a 52 billion parameter conversational model trained using Constitutional AI. Unlike ChatGPT's reinforcement learning from human feedback, Claude uses AI-to-AI feedback guided by Anthropic's AI Constitution principles. This produces transparent and controllable results without extensive human training. Early reviews suggest Claude matches ChatGPT's capabilities while avoiding some of its flaws.

Quora's New AI Social Platform PO

In another notable AI development, Quora launched an AI social platform called Po that allows public access to chat with different AI models. Users can have conversations with bots from OpenAI, Anthropic and others, as well as share conversations and see what others have discussed. This represents a new way for the public to interact with AI, bridging the gap between AI developers and users. The app is currently iOS only but an Android version is coming soon.

Implementing AI Like ChatGPT Into Business

While ChatGPT produces impressive text, it lacks business knowledge and customization. To implement it for business use requires training tailored models with company data and personalities. This produces expert systems that can support internal operations or external customer service. With the right approach, ChatGPT-like AI can be a powerful asset for companies across industries.

Meta's Galactica Shows Dangers of Rushed AI

Meta's rushed release of its Galactica chatbot in November 2022 demonstrated the dangers of deploying AI too early. Meta removed Galactica after just 3 days as users found it would generate harmful instructions. This highlights the need for extensive testing and framing of capabilities before public launch. While innovation matters, responsible and measured AI development practices are critical, especially for influential companies like Meta.

FAQ

Q: What is the benefit of an AI search engine?
A: An AI search engine like Bing can better understand queries, directly answer questions, and have natural conversations to help users find information more easily.

Q: Can businesses implement their own chatbot AI?
A: Yes, businesses can work with AI specialists to customize chatbot AI by creating a personality, knowledge base, and integrations specific to their company and industry.