Google’s Chatbot

I recently initiated a conversation with Google’s new chatbot, Bard, asking an initial question and following up on it. Our conversation consisted of six questions I asked and six responses by Bard. My first question was: “I’ve read that the universe may be of infinite size. If it is, wouldn’t space have had to have expanded at an infinite rate since the Big Bang?”

Bard replied with varying degrees of responsiveness to my questions, then elaborated on its answer, often with what seemed like stock material. Twice it began a reply by saying, “I understand your confusion.” This seems to have been a scripted attempt to express empathy while projecting a sense of authoritativeness. It wasn’t effective in that regard, because in neither instance did I think that I had exhibited confusion, and at least one its sentences was internally inconsistent.

Overall Impression: Bard was somewhat informative, but less adept than I thought it might be. I’m sure it will become more sophisticated in time. I’m hoping to try Open A.I.’s ChatGPT and compare how it handles the same line of questioning, but whenever I try to access it, it says,“Try again in an hour.” In a New York Times article the other day, Brian X. Chen reported on having compared the two and found ChatGPT to be considerably more advanced than Bard.