Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Google’s ChatGPT rival is an ethical mess, say Google’s own workers

Google launched Bard, its ChatGPT rival, despite internal concerns that it was a “pathological liar” and produced “cringeworthy” results, a new report has claimed. Worker say these worries were apparently ignored in a frantic attempt to catch up with ChatGPT and head off the threat it could pose to Google’s search business.

The revelations come from a Bloomberg report that took a deep dive into Google Bard and the issues raised by employees who have worked on the project. It’s an eye-opening account of the ways the chatbot has apparently gone off the rails and the misgivings these incidents have raised among concerned workers.

ChatGPT versus Google on smartphones.
DigitalTrends

For instance, Bloomberg cites an anonymous employee who asked Bard for instructions on how to land a plane, then were horrified to see that Bard’s description would lead to a crash. A different worker said Bard’s scuba diving tips “would likely result in serious injury or death.”

Recommended Videos

These issues were apparently raised shortly before Bard launched, according, yet Google pressed ahead with the go-live date, such was its desire to keep pace with the path blazed by ChatGPT. But it has done so while disregarding its own ethical commitments, resulting not only in dangerous advice, but the potential spread of misinformation too.

Rushing ahead to launch

The Google Bard AI chatbot in a web browser shown on the screen of an Android smartphone.
Mojahid Mottakin / Unsplash

In 2021, Google pledged to double its team of employees studying the ethical consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) and invest more heavily in determining potential harms. Yet that team is now “disempowered and demoralized,” the Bloomberg report claims. Worse, team members have been told “not to get in the way or to try to kill any of the generative AI tools in development,” bringing Google’s commitment to AI ethics into question.

That was seen in action just before Bard launched. In February, a Google worker messaged an internal group to say, “Bard is worse than useless: please do not launch,” with scores of other employees chiming in to agree. The next month, Jen Gennai, Google’s AI governance lead, overruled a risk evaluation that said Bard could cause harm and was not ready for launch, pushing ahead with the first public release of the chatbot.

Bloomberg’s report paints a picture of a company distrustful of ethical concerns that it feels could get in the way of its own products’ profitability. For instance, one worker asked to work on fairness in machine learning, but was repeatedly discouraged, to the point that it affected their performance review. Managers complained that ethical concerns were obstructing their “real work,” the employee stated.

It’s a concerning stance, particularly since we’ve already seen plenty of examples of AI chatbot misconduct that has produced offensive, misleading or downright false information. If the Bloomberg report is correct about Google’s seemingly hostile approach to ethical concerns, this could just be the beginning when it comes to problems caused by AI.

Alex Blake
Alex Blake has been working with Digital Trends since 2019, where he spends most of his time writing about Mac computers…
ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice feature is finally rolling out to Plus and Teams subscribers
The Advanced Voice Mode's UI

OpenAI announced via Twitter on Tuesday that it will begin rolling out its Advanced Voice feature, as well as five new voices for the conversational AI, to subscribers of the Plus and Teams tiers throughout this week. Enterprise and Edu subscribers will gain access starting next week.

https://x.com/OpenAI/status/1838642444365369814

Read more
ChatGPT: the latest news and updates on the AI chatbot that changed everything
ChatGPT app running on an iPhone.

In the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT stands out as a groundbreaking development that has captured global attention. From its impressive capabilities and recent advancements to the heated debates surrounding its ethical implications, ChatGPT continues to make headlines.

Whether you're a tech enthusiast or just curious about the future of AI, dive into this comprehensive guide to uncover everything you need to know about this revolutionary AI tool.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT (which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is an AI chatbot, meaning you can ask it a question using natural language prompts and it will generate a reply. Unlike less-sophisticated voice assistant like Siri or Google Assistant, ChatGPT is driven by a large language model (LLM). These neural networks are trained on huge quantities of information from the internet for deep learning — meaning they generate altogether new responses, rather than just regurgitating canned answers. They're not built for a specific purpose like chatbots of the past — and they're a whole lot smarter. The current version of ChatGPT is based on the GPT-4 model, which was trained on all sorts of written content including websites, books, social media, news articles, and more — all fine-tuned in the language model by both supervised learning and RLHF (Reinforcement Learning From Human Feedback).
When was ChatGPT released?
OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022. When it launched, the initial version of ChatGPT ran atop the GPT-3.5 model. In the years since, the system has undergone a number of iterative advancements with the current version of ChatGPT using the GPT-4 model family. GPT-5 is reportedly just around the corner. GPT-3 was first launched in 2020, GPT-2 released the year prior to that, though neither were used in the public-facing ChatGPT system.
Upon its release, ChatGPT's popularity skyrocketed literally overnight. It grew to host over 100 million users in its first two months, making it the most quickly-adopted piece of software ever made to date, though this record has since been beaten by the Twitter alternative, Threads. ChatGPT's popularity dropped briefly in June 2023, reportedly losing 10% of global users, but has since continued to grow exponentially.
How to use ChatGPT
First, go to chatgpt.com. If you'd like to maintain a history of your previous chats, sign up for a free account. You can use the system anonymously without a login if you prefer. Users can opt to connect their ChatGPT login with that of their Google-, Microsoft- or Apple-backed accounts as well. At the sign up screen, you'll see some basic rules about ChatGPT, including potential errors in data, how OpenAI collects data, and how users can submit feedback. If you want to get started, we have a roundup of the best ChatGPT tips.

Read more
ChatGPT’s resource demands are getting out of control
a server

It's no secret that the growth of generative AI has demanded ever increasing amounts of water and electricity, but a new study from The Washington Post and researchers from University of California, Riverside shows just how many resources OpenAI's chatbot needs in order to perform even its most basic functions.

In terms of water usage, the amount needed for ChatGPT to write a 100-word email depends on the state and the user's proximity to OpenAI's nearest data center. The less prevalent water is in a given region, and the less expensive electricity is, the more likely the data center is to rely on electrically powered air conditioning units instead. In Texas, for example, the chatbot only consumes an estimated 235 milliliters needed to generate one 100-word email. That same email drafted in Washington, on the other hand, would require 1,408 milliliters (nearly a liter and a half) per email.

Read more