Google overlooked red flags, warnings from employees ahead of Bard launch

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Google reportedly ignored repeated warnings from employees and went ahead with the launch of Bard, its AI chatbot, which was subsequently called out for inaccurate responses, something the technology giant's staff had flagged.

According to a Bloomberg report, Bard's development was fast tracked after top executives declared a "competitive code red", as it played catch up with OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT .

Bard testers raised repeated concerns about the AI being a "pathological liar", which gave false information that could "result in serious injury or death". Another employee called Bard's responses "cringe-worthy".

In another case, Bard supposedly gave scuba diving suggestions "which would likely result in serious injury or death".

In February, a Google employee posted a thread on an internal forum that called Bard "worse than useless" and pleaded with executives not to launch the bot in its current state.

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A former Google employee, Meredith Whittaker told Bloomberg that "AI ethics had taken a back seat" at Google and "if ethics aren’t positioned to take precedence over profit and growth, they will not ultimately work".

Google reportedly debuted Bard as an experiment, so the public won't be harsh on the bot.

In March, Google's AI principles and governance lead Jen Gennai overruled internal assessments of Bard from her team which said that it was not ready for launch.

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Gennai defended her position in a statement to The New York Post, saying internal tests suggested "risk mitigations and adjustments to the technology, versus providing recommendations on the eventual product launch".

Google spokesperson, Brian Gabriel, told The New York Post that "responsible AI remains a top priority at the company” and they were continuing to invest, "in the teams that work on applying our AI Principles to our technology".