Google reveals AI updates as it Vies with Microsoft

 Advanced Tech rolls on.  In China,  Baidu's Ernie makes a AI  play. 

Google reveals AI updates as it vies with Microsoft    in the BBC

Google has announced it is rolling out generative artificial intelligence (AI) to its core search engine.

The move comes after Microsoft incorporated GPT-4 into its Bing search engine earlier this year.Search Generative Experience - which will be part of Google - will craft responses to open-ended queries, the company said.

However, the system will only be available to a limited number of users and is still in "experimental" phase.

"We are reimagining all of our core products, including search," said Sundar Pichai, the boss of Google's parent company Alphabet. Additionally, the company announced a new feature on Google's Android system will proactively warn users about unknown AirTags, tiny devices developed to track personal items like keys and wallets.

The technology giant said the "unknown tracker alerts" would go live this summer.

The announcement came after Apple and Google said last week they were working together to address the problem.

Last year two women sued Apple over AirTag stalking.

Women who have been tracked using the devices told the BBC last year that not enough was being done to prevent misuse.

Apple AirTags - 'A perfect tool for stalking'

Google made the announcement at its annual developer conference, where leaders of the company touted their latest advancements in artificial intelligence and new hardware offerings, including a $1,799 (£1,425) phone that opens and closes like a book.

The company said it was removing the waitlist for "Bard", its experimental, conversational, chat service, which will be rolled out in English in 180 countries and territories.

It also said the chatbot would soon be able to respond to prompts with images as well as text.

Google has been under pressure to burnish its artificial intelligence offerings, after the runaway success of rival chatbot ChatGPT, which is funded by Microsoft.

A previous attempt to show off its credentials in the field, in February, ended in embarrassment, after it emerged that - in an advert intended to illustrate its capabilities - Bard had answered a question incorrectly.

The incident wiped $100bn (£82bn) off parent company Alphabet's share value - an indication of how keenly investors are watching how the tech giants' AI ventures play out.

Microsoft is deploying ChatGPT technology into its search engine Bing, after investing heavily in the company that developed it, OpenAI. Chinese tech giant Baidu also has a chatbot, called Ernie.

Chirag Dekate, analyst at Gartner, said Google remained an industry leader and was well poised to benefit in the interest in AI.

"Google has the tools to dominate the AI battles, the perennial question is - will they?" he said.

Early Looks at Ernie

 No direct testing seen yet.

Baidu Unveils Generative AI Ernie Bot With Pre-Recorded Videos, Disappointing Investors,   

 Eric Hal Schwartz in Voicebot.ai

Baidu introduced its generative Ernie Bot in a series of video presentations that promised a lot of features without actually demonstrating them live. The scripted nature of the event led to a brief dip of its Hong Kong shares by nearly 10%, though planning ahead did ensure Baidu avoided a gaffe like the incorrect answer to a question produced by the Google Bard generative AI chatbot when it was first revealed last month.

BAIDU ERNIE BOT

Baidu CEO Robin Li introduced Ernie, which stands for Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration, at the event. He played several videos showing Ernie performing math, generating images and videos from text prompts, and speaking in multiple Chinese dialects. The AI performed flawlessly in the video, but investors were apparently eager to see how it would perform in the wild, leading to the stock dip. Ernie is not widely available, with only those who received invitation codes from Baidu able to interact with the bot. Companies interested in employing Ernie for enterprise purposes must apply for the chance to link their software to Baidu’s cloud platform hosting the AI model.

Li admitted that Ernie is still not perfect, which might be why the company went for videos over live demonstrations. Li said Ernie had to be released “because the market demands it.” That seems to be backed up if Baidu’s boast of 650 companies in the Ernie ecosystem and 30,000 corporate user applications are to be believed.

Despite investor disappointment, Baidu has been working toward conversational generative AI for some time. The company has engaged in AI research for all kinds of products, including a virtual human named Xijiajia capable of painting a picture of a cat upon request. Xijiajia is Baidu’s digital human ambassador, one of several such virtual beings produced by Baidu, including the “interactive virtual idol” DuXiaoxiao. Some of the demand may also be a result of restrictions on American generative AI chatbots. Chinese social media platform WeChat banned ChatGPT last year, and strict rules on deepfakes have set up a potentially tricky regulatory system for any AI that can mimic specific people’s way of talking.

“Baidu envisions a future where we join forces with all to drive the evolution of AI, empowering every individual with access to state-of-the-art productivity tools and ensuring that the benefits of these advancements are shared by all,” Li said in a statement.  ... 

Baidu's Ernie Bot Debut

 Chinas Ernie Bot Doesn't do so well in first demo.  But the design of the western version is well known, so don't expect this lead to last. 

China’s ChatGPT rival Baidu Ernie is off to a rough start   From TechCrunch

Rita Liao@ritacyliao,  March 16, 2023

Baidu, China's search engine giant, introduced its Ernie Bot.

Following on the heels of GPT-4’s buzzy debut and the announcement of Microsoft 365’s AI makeover, Baidu, China’s search engine giant, introduced its Ernie Bot.

Since ChatGPT blew the world away, Baidu has been widely considered the closest Chinese candidate to build an equivalent to the OpenAI chatbot. Naturally, Ernie’s launch was much anticipated. On Thursday, Baidu CEO Robin Li gave a one-hour presentation on Ernie that only offered a small glimpse into the chatbot. The jury is still out on what Ernie can do and how it actually works.

For now, Ernie is only available for testing through invitation and others need to get on a waitlist. TechCrunch hasn’t tried it yet, so it’s unfair to draw any conclusions about Ernie’s capability.

But the public was clearly underwhelmed. Industry observers inside and outside China pointed to the fact that rather than showcasing Ernie through a live demo, Baidu opted for a lengthy presentation with pre-recordings of Ernie’s answers. The company’s shares slumped as much as 10% in Hong Kong following Li’s presentation.

In slides, Li presented the prompts for Ernie and its answers in five functional areas:

Literature writing: The user asked Ernie for advice on writing a sequel to the celebrated sci-fi novel “The Three-Body Problem.”

Business writing: The user asked Ernie to suggest names for a large-language model company that helps small-and-medium enterprises digitize.

Logic and reasoning: Ernie was asked to solve the famous “chickens and rabbits” math puzzle.

Chinese interpretation: Ernie was asked to define a traditional Chinese idiom and write a poem based on the phrase.

Multi-modal generation: Ernie was given a question (“Which city is most suited for implementing smart transport?”) and asked to perform “multi-modal” tasks based on the initial prompt, such as reading the answer out in a Chinese dialect and generating an image based on the text.

Baidu evidently did try to demonstrate what Ernie could achieve, and the answers were satisfactory; but still, investors weren’t impressed by the carefully orchestrated reveal. One can’t help but wonder if Baidu avoided a live demo due to its lack of confidence, and whether it had rushed the launch because of OpenAI’s impressive advancement. After all, even AI titan Google made a mistake in the demo of its conversational AI Bard.

Fangbo Tao, CEO and founder of AI startup Mindverse and a former AI scientist at Alibaba and Facebook, echoed the sentiment.    ....'

China's Baidu's ERNIE Plans to Compete

Have followed Ernie as an assistant style chatbot for some time, and saw chatbot style approaches like 'Ernie' in a visit to China.   Previously mentioned here.    Unclear yet how ERNIE compares to ChatGPT in abilities.  Here just a short overview.  

China’s Baidu reveals generative AI chatbot based on language model bigger than GPT-3  in TheRegister,  Tue 7 Feb 2023  

Probably bilingual bot will be called ERNIE outside China, Wenxin Yiyan within

Chinese web giant Baidu, which has “AI” in its name and has made AI the focus of its hyperscale cloud, has revealed it will launch a generative AI chatbot later this year.

Chinese media reported the launch and Baidu confirmed it to The Register.

“The company plans to complete internal testing in March before making the chatbot available to the public,” a Baidu spokesperson wrote.

The bot will be named “Wenxin Yiyan文心一言” or "ERNIE Bot" in English.

The spokesperson added that the bots are based on the Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration (Ernie) model first proposed in 2019. We were told Ernie “expands into a series of advanced big models that can perform a wide range of tasks, including language understanding, language generation (ERNIE 3.0 Titan), and text-to-image generation (ERNIE-ViLG).”

“What sets ERNIE apart from other language models is its ability to integrate extensive knowledge with massive data, resulting in exceptional understanding and generation capabilities,” the spokesperson added.

Just what the bot will be capable of is not known, but Baidu has over the years described its ambitions for something that sounds an awful lot like ChatGPT. As we noted yesterday, Baidu has discussed "proposed a controllable learning algorithm and a credible learning algorithm to ensure the model can formulate reasonable and coherent texts". It’s done the hard work to deliver such a system, having in 2021 detailed “ERNIE 3.0 Titan” – a pre-training language model with 260 billion parameters.

ChatGPT uses the 175-billion parameter GPT3 model.  ... ' 

Baidu Challenges GPT!

 AI thaws, and the Race is on.  Some details below, and at the link.   Had seen a demo of ERNIE and its use with Baidu before. 

Baidu to Launch Powerful ChatGPT Rival   By Ryan Daws | January 30, 2023 | TechForge Media

Categories: Applications, Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots, Companies, Machine Learning,

Ryan is a senior editor at TechForge Media with over a decade of experience covering the latest technology and interviewing leading industry figures. He can often be sighted at tech conferences with a strong coffee in one hand and a laptop in the other. If it's geeky, he’s probably into it. Find him on Twitter (@Gadget_Ry) or Mastodon (@gadgetry@techhub.social)

Chinese web giant Baidu is preparing to launch a powerful ChatGPT rival in March. .. 

Baidu is often called the “Google of China” because it offers similar services, including search, maps, email, ads, cloud storage, and more. Baidu, like Google, also invests heavily in AI and machine learning.

Earlier this month, AI News reported that Google was changing its AI review processes to speed up the release of new solutions. One of the first products to be released under Google’s new process is set to be a ChatGPT rival, due to be announced during the company’s I/O developer conference in May.

However, Baidu looks set to beat Google by a couple of months.

Bloomberg reports that Baidu will reveal its own AI-powered chatbot in March. The currently unnamed tool will be integrated into the company’s search product.  Powering the Baidu ChatGPT competitor is ‘ERNIE’ (Enhanced Language RepresentatioN with Informative Entities), a powerful AI model with 10 billion parameters.

Researchers have found that deep-learning models trained on text alone – like OpenAI’s GPT-3 or Google’s T5 – perform well for numerous problems, but can fall short on some natural language understanding (NLU) tasks when the knowledge is not present in the input text.

The first version of ERNIE was introduced and open-sourced in 2019 by researchers at Tsinghua University to demonstrate the NLU capabilities of a model that combines both text and knowledge graph data.

Later that year, Baidu released ERNIE 2.0 which became the first model to set a score higher than 90 on the GLUE benchmark for evaluating NLU systems. ... ' 

Baidu and GLUE China Benchmarks

China and langage meaning.  A very key part of ultimately delivering useful conversation.

Baidu has a new trick for teaching AI the meaning of language in 7Wdata

Earlier this month, a Chinese tech giant quietly dethroned Microsoft and Google in an ongoing competition in AI. The company was Baidu, China’s closest equivalent to Google, and the competition was the General Language Understanding Evaluation, otherwise known as GLUE.

GLUE is a widely accepted benchmark for how well an AI system understands human language. It consists of nine different tests for things like picking out the names of people and organizations in a sentence and figuring out what a pronoun like “it” refers to when there are multiple potential antecedents. A language model that scores highly on GLUE, therefore, can handle diverse reading comprehension tasks. Out of a full score of 100, the average person scores around 87 points. Baidu is now the first team to surpass 90 with its model, ERNIE. .... "

Baidu Open Sources its Language Understanding

In O'Reilly:

Baidu has open-sourced its natural language understanding framework, ERNIE 2.0 (enhanced representation through knowledge integration) and the ERNIE 2.0 model, a pretrained language-understanding model that achieved state-of-the-art results and outperformed BERT and the recent XLNet in 16 NLP tasks in both Chinese and English.  ... "