Bard gets a fresh coat of paint. Google moves AI tool from LaMDA to PaLM. This allows Bard to provide richer answers, solve math problems, and (soon) program.

Jack Krawczyck announces the upgrade via Twitter. Bard is now powered by PaLM, Google’s most powerful AI language model. The model is powerful enough to control robots, among other things. The first version of Bard was linked to LaMDA, which has 137 billion parameters. PaLM, on the other hand, contains 540 billion parameters.

The move from LaMDA to PaLM opens up many exciting new opportunities for Bard. This makes Bard’s answers much larger. This was one of the main criticisms of the first version of Bard, which put little creativity into the answers. In addition, Bard’s logical thinking and math skills have been enhanced, allowing him to answer more complex commands. Soon, Krawczyck adds, Bard will be able to program as well.

Careful approach

So, with Bard, Google is finally stepping up a gear. The company saw Microsoft sprinting ahead in the AI ​​race with the help of OpenAI. But Sundar Pichai defends this cautious approach in a New York Times podcast. The first public version of Bard was deliberately shortened because Google first wanted to know how people would use the tool, says Pichai. Bard also has limited availability in the United States and United Kingdom; expansion into other countries is not yet under discussion.

Pichai goes on to describe Bard as “the beginning of a long journey” and currently likens the technology to a “tuned Honda Civic competing against sports cars.” A remarkably humble stance from a company that was considered a leader in AI development until the launch of ChatGPT. That underdog role doesn’t really befit a company the size of Google, either.

The current climate seems to support Pichai’s cautious stance. The excitement about the almost endless possibilities of ChatGPT & Co. has given way to fear and worry. More than a thousand experts from the science and technology industry have signed an open letter to put the development of new AI technologies on hold for fear that we would lose control of the technology. Italy is the first country where ChatGPT has been banned for violating GDPR legislation.