Bard AI Causes Google Losses of $100 Billion

One incorrect answer to a query by Bard AI has cost Google $100 billion.

Google’s newly announced experimental conversational Bard AI, has caused the tech giant to lose rather than gain profits. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, experienced a 7.7% stock plunge as it lost more than $100 billion in market value on Wednesday.

This comes as a direct result of Bard’s ad, which shows the tool providing a factually inaccurate response to a query asking: “what new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?” The third suggestion written by Bard AI states that “JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.”

However, Grant Tremblay, an American astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, pointed out the error in that response.

“I’m sure Bard AI will be impressive, but for the record: JWST did not take “the very first image of a planet outside our solar system”. the first image was instead done by Chauvin et al. (2004) with the VLT/NACO using adaptive optics,” he tweeted.

Not to be a ~well, actually~ jerk, and I’m sure Bard will be impressive, but for the record: JWST did not take “the very first image of a planet outside our solar system”.

the first image was instead done by Chauvin et al. (2004) with the VLT/NACO using adaptive optics. https://t.co/bSBb5TOeUW pic.twitter.com/KnrZ1SSz7h

— Grant Tremblay (@astrogrant) February 7, 2023

According to NASA’s report, the first picture of a planet outside the Milky Way was taken by the Very Large Telescope in 2004, almost 19 years before NASA’s Webb telescope.

A Google spokesperson told New Scientist: “This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program. We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”

In another tweet, Tremblay also noted how a Google search using the regular search engine yields the correct information. This further sheds light on the fact that the error was able to slip through the system because AI models rely on plausible answers, depending on statistical analysis, and are not designed to give accurate answers.

This news comes after Microsoft launched its own AI results service for its Bing search engine on February 7th. Chinese search engine Baidu also recently announced plans for a similar project.