Friday, April 21st 2023
Google Bard AI Chatbot Smart Enough to Assist in Software Coding
Alphabet Incorporated's Google AI division has today revealed a planned update for its Bard conversational artificial intelligence chatbot. The experimental generative artificial intelligence software application will become capable of assisting people in the writing of computer code - the American multinational technology company hopes that Bard will be of great to help in the area of software development. Paige Bailey, a group product manager at Google Research has introduced the upcoming changes: "Since we launched Bard, our experiment that lets you collaborate with generative AI, coding has been one of the top requests we've received from our users. As a product lead in Google Research - and a passionate engineer who still programs every day - I'm excited that today we're updating Bard to include that capability."
The Bard chatbot was made available, on a trial basis, to users in the USA and UK last month. Google's AI team is reported to be under great pressure to advance the Bard chatbot into a suitably powerful state in order to compete with its closest rival - Microsoft Corporation. The Seattle-based giant has invested heavily into Open AI's industry leading ChatGPT application. Google's latest volley against its rivals shows that Bard's has become very sophisticated - so much so that the app is able to chew through a variety of programming languages. Bailey outlines these features in the company's latest blog: "Starting now, Bard can help with programming and software development tasks, including code generation, debugging and code explanation. We're launching these capabilities in more than 20 programming languages including C++, Go, Java, Javascript, Python and Typescript. And you can easily export Python code to Google Colab - no copy and paste required." Critics of AI-driven large language models have posited that the technology could potentially eliminate humans from the job market - it will be interesting to observe the coder community's reaction to Google marketing of Bard as a helpful tool in software development.
Sources:
Reuters, Google AI Blog
The Bard chatbot was made available, on a trial basis, to users in the USA and UK last month. Google's AI team is reported to be under great pressure to advance the Bard chatbot into a suitably powerful state in order to compete with its closest rival - Microsoft Corporation. The Seattle-based giant has invested heavily into Open AI's industry leading ChatGPT application. Google's latest volley against its rivals shows that Bard's has become very sophisticated - so much so that the app is able to chew through a variety of programming languages. Bailey outlines these features in the company's latest blog: "Starting now, Bard can help with programming and software development tasks, including code generation, debugging and code explanation. We're launching these capabilities in more than 20 programming languages including C++, Go, Java, Javascript, Python and Typescript. And you can easily export Python code to Google Colab - no copy and paste required." Critics of AI-driven large language models have posited that the technology could potentially eliminate humans from the job market - it will be interesting to observe the coder community's reaction to Google marketing of Bard as a helpful tool in software development.
6 Comments on Google Bard AI Chatbot Smart Enough to Assist in Software Coding
These products won't replace programmers 1:1, there's way too much customization for programs for AI to do that. What it does do though is speed up development, by making writing a particular function or subroutine faster. That's generic enough that AI can do that. Eventually that might lead to fewer programmers, but definitely not replacement. It's more like with cooking and the invention of the food processor. It'll help speed things up, but you still need a chef. And AI will have that effect on many types of jobs over the next 10 years, but more on jobs that are easier to automate and that directly reduce headcount with AI. Harsh, but true. So it'll be jobs like cashiers and truck drivers, where labor can be completely replaced with AI that we might be looking back at nostalgically in a few years remembering "back in the old days" when humans did them.