By ChatGPT has been a game changer, at least in terms of media reporting, for part of 2022, and all of 2023. There's been enough notice, in fact, that Big Tech Players like Google and Microsoft have been forced to respond. The dirty little secret, of course, is that ChatGPT has been so popular, that there have been reports that the site is often down and unreachable - as the hype creates server crushing demand.
When you poke a bear like Google, you must be doing something right. Google has responded with "an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, that (they)’re calling Bard." Here's more from the CEO, Sundar Pichal, himself:
"One of the most exciting opportunities is how AI can deepen our understanding of information and turn it into useful knowledge more efficiently — making it easier for people to get to the heart of what they’re looking for and get things done. When people think of Google, they often think of turning to us for quick factual answers, like “how many keys does a piano have?” But increasingly, people are turning to Google for deeper insights and understanding — like, “is the piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?” Learning about a topic like this can take a lot of effort to figure out what you really need to know, and people often want to explore a diverse range of opinions or perspectives.
AI can be helpful in these moments, synthesizing insights for questions where there’s no one right answer. Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, "
(Via: https://blog.google/technology/ai/bard-google-ai-search-updates/)
Chat GPT: Not Infallible!
It's an interesting approach, and might end up a very useful tool, if done correctly. Chat GPT is of course quite a way from being error free. Certainly, as long as we understand that AI is confident, but in some applications very wrong, it can be something that helps us all.
Microsoft, not to be the Tech Giant hopping on a bandwagon, has also decided that AI is the future of their search engine, Bing.com. Still best known as the creator of Windows, when Microsoft executives speak, the world listens...
“It’s a new day in search,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event announcing the products. Nadella argued that the paradigm for web search hasn’t changed in decades, but that AI can deliver information more fluidly and quickly than traditional methods. “The race starts today, and we’re going to move and move fast,” Nadella said. “Most importantly, we want to have a lot of fun innovating again in search, because it’s high time.”
Any time is a good time for innovation appears to be the message, but the same article in the Verge does include this warning:
"The latter point is the most important, as AI language systems like ChatGPT have a well-documented tendency to present false information as fact."
(Via: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/7/23587454/microsoft-bing-edge-chatgpt-ai)
So, there's that. But Chat GPT remains an interesting poster-program for AI in the 2020s, as we begin to understand, hopefully cautiously, what AI can do.
SYSTRAN Knows AI
Here at SYSTRAN, we've understood the power of AI for some time, having partnered with Harvard and co-founded OpenNMT, in 2016. OpenNMT is an open source ecosystem for neural machine translation and neural sequence learning. It's been a critical part of SYSTRAN's flagship SPNS and Translate PRO applications for some time, creating a language translation software that ACTUALLY learns from its mistakes, and lets companies translate critical documents securely, without the prying eyes of, er, Big Tech.
