Google's Bard AI Bot Mistake Wipes $100bn Off Shares

Google lost $100 billion as a result of an AI error, which is a big error by any standard.

Google was promoting Bard, its fancy new AI service, on Twitter while also providing a brief explanation of how it functions.

The AI service presented incorrect information as a fact. Credit: Google

The post explained: “Bard is an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA. Built using our large language models and drawing on information from the web, it’s a launchpad for curiosity and can help simplify complex topics.” 

Additionally, it included a gif of someone asking Bard: “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?”

Alamy

It prompted the AI service to respond in various ways, including: “In 2023, the JWST spotted a number of galaxies nicknamed ‘green peas’. They were given this name because they are small, round, and green, like peas.”

The telescope also recorded photos of galaxies that are "over 13 billion years old," according to the information provided.

The final item on the shortlist was factually incorrect, which seemed to indicate a flaw in the AI's skills.

The ‘fact’ read: “JWSR took the very pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system. These distant worlds are called ‘exoplanets’. Exo means ‘from outside’.”

Incredible, huh? Yes, but also wrong, I suppose.

Because, according to NASA, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope captured the first picture ever obtained of a planet outside of our solar system back in 2004.

As you might expect, Twitter users were quick to catch the error, with Grant Tremblay of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics writing: “I’m sure Bard will be impressive, but for the record: JWST did not take ‘the very first image of a planet outside our solar system’. the first image was instead done by Chauvin et al. (2004) with the VLT/NACO using adaptive optics.”

The error was also discovered by Bruce Macintosh, director of the University of California Observatories and a member of the team that captured the first pictures of exoplanets.

In a post, he wrote: “Speaking as someone who imaged an exoplanet 14 years before JWST was launched, it feels like you should find a better example?”

Following the tweet, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, experienced a drop in share price of about 8%, which, according to Forbes, reduced the market worth of the firm by almost $100 billion (£82,466,000,000).

A Google representative told the media outlet: “This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week.”

Nevertheless, it's better late than never.