Google asks employees to help Bard get the answers right, says AI ‘learns best by example’

Bard is meant to be Google’s answer to ChatGPT, the new AI sensation that has taken the internet world by storm. (Credit: NurPhoto/Getty Images)

Google executives have understood that the company’s artificial intelligence search tool Bard isn’t always accurate in its response to queries and have asked employees to fix the wrong answers, according to a CNBC report.

Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s Vice-President for search, has asked staffers in an email to help the company make sure its new ChatGPT competitor gets the answers right. The email, which CNBC viewed, included a link to a do’s and don’ts page with instructions on how employees should fix responses as they test the AI-enabled search tool internally. The staffers are encouraged to rewrite answers on topics they understand well.

“Bard learns best by example, so taking the time to rewrite a response thoughtfully will go a long way in helping us to improve the mode,” the document says.

“This is exciting technology but still in its early days,” Raghavan wrote. “We feel a great responsibility to get it right, and your participation in the dogfood will help accelerate the model’s training and test its load capacity (Not to mention, trying out Bard is actually quite fun!).”

Earlier, CEO Sundar Pichai had asked employees to spend two to four hours of their time on Bard, acknowledging that “this will be a long journey for everyone, across the field.”

At the top of the do’s and don’ts section, Google provides guidance for what to consider “before teaching Bard.”

Under do’s, employees have been asked to keep responses “polite, casual and approachable.” The responses should be “in first person,” and maintain an “unopinionated, neutral tone”, it says.

For don’ts, employees are told not to stereotype and to “avoid making presumptions based on race, nationality, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, political ideology, location or similar categories.”  Also, “don’t describe Bard as a person, imply emotion, or claim to have human-like experiences,” the document says.

Google says “keep it safe,” and instructs employees to give a “thumbs down” to answers that offer “legal, medical, financial advice” or are hateful and abusive.

To incentivise people in the organisation to test Bard and provide feedback, Raghavan said contributors will earn a “Moma badge,” which appears on internal employee profiles.

The top 10 rewrite contributors from the Knowledge and Information organisation, which Raghavan oversees, will be invited to a listening session where they can “share their feedback live” with Raghavan and people working on Bard.

“A wholehearted thank you to the teams working hard on this behind the scenes,” Raghavan wrote.