It appears that Google is feeling a bit uncomfortable about the popularity of OpenAI’s AI chatbot, ChatGPT.
According to multiple reports, top management at Google, which has heavily invested in artificial intelligence (AI), seems to be worried about the success of ChatGPT.
This comes as no surprise, as Google has a history of being cautious with AI technology – as evidenced by the firing of an engineer who claimed an unreleased AI system had become sentient and the company’s statements about the potential harms of rolling out AI technology too early.
However, it seems that things are now taking a new direction for Google. According to a report by The New York Times, Google plans to “demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year” and unveil over 20 AI-powered projects.
While there is no specific timeframe mentioned for the launch, it is possible that a few of these projects may be presented at this year’s I/O event in May.
The report also stated that Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently invited company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to offer advice to company leaders and approve plans surrounding ChatGPT.
It’s worth noting that Google’s AI is both similar and different from ChatGPT in some ways.
For example, Alphabet-owned DeepMind Technologies have developed a dialogue agent called Sparrow, which is designed to “talk with a user, answer questions, and search the internet using Google when it’s helpful to look up evidence to inform its responses.”
Similarly, OpenAI has trained ChatGPT to interact in a conversational way, allowing it to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.
