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Is bard that bad? I don't know, I can't try it because I'm not from the fucking USA or UK. And they do this for every new launch. Sorry, not available in your c

Is bard that bad? I don't know, I can't try it because I'm not from the fucking USA or UK. And they do this for every new launch. Sorry, not available in your country. FFS, there is a world out there. Every fucking other company in the world doesn't bother with this shit. I was able to use OpenAI no problem. I was able to try Bing, no problem. Bard? Nope, I have no idea if it's good or bad. I can't trust what I read on Twitter because they write all sorts of nonsense about GPT too. You get a sense about what that thing is only if you try it out.

sourcecodeplz 4y ago
Just use protonvpn, it is free. worked for me.
- skinner_ 4y ago
  The point is, I'm annoyed with a company not providing a service for me, am I gonna go the extra mile to make them successful?
- ithkuil 4y ago
  I'd also need to create a throwaway google account because I can't risk they close my account due to some automated term and conditions check or whatnot
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> Is bard that bad? If Bard had been released to the public before ChatGPT, I probably would have been amazed by it (I know people love to point out errors, hallucinations, stuff AI gets wrong, but there's also the huge "Guys, you're having a fully natural, back and forth conversation with a computer. You can reference previous comments and ask it specifics about those comments. This was strictly the realm os SciFi until relatively recently.) Compared to ChatGPT, especially the GPT-4 version, Bard is nowhere close. I asked it some programming questions, and ChatGPT can write the code and explain it to me. Bard basically gave me some StackOverflow summaries. Even in areas not related to programming, ChatGPT just feels "smarter", that is that it gives more generally correct, insightful responses, where Bard feels more like it is just scraping stuff it found on the Internet and summarizing it. Note Bard is much more up-to-date than ChatGPT (I can ask it questions about current events), but even then it feels more "superficial". For example, I asked both (for ChatGPT was on GPT-3.5) "What was the outcome of the most recent US midterm elections?" Bard answered "The Republicans won control of the House of Representatives, while the Democrats retained control of the Senate. The Republicans flipped 22 seats in the House, giving them a 222-213 majority. The Democrats flipped one seat in the Senate, giving them a 51-49 majority. The 2022 midterm elections were the first midterm elections under the presidency of Joe Biden. The results of the elections were seen as a repudiation of Biden's presidency, and they have given the Republicans a strong position to retake control of the White House in the 2024 presidential election." I don't mean to get too much into political opinion on HN, but that last sentence just seems wrong to me. Even most Republican operatives were hand-wringing about Republicans underperforming expectations in the 2022 midterms. I asked Bard a follow-up, "Why do you think "The results of the elections were seen as a repudiation of Biden's presidency?" I recall even most Republican operatives thinking that Republicans underperformed expectations, for example there was no "red wave" that was widely expected." Bard responded with what is essentially gobbledygook: "The results of the 2022 midterm elections were seen as a repudiation of Biden's presidency for a number of reasons. First, the Democrats lost control of the House, which is the chamber of Congress that is most closely tied to the president. Second, the Republicans flipped a number of seats in the Senate, which is the chamber of Congress that is more insulated from the president. Third, the Democrats underperformed expectations in a number of races, which suggests that voters were not happy with the direction of the country. There are a number of reasons why the Republicans underperformed expectations. First, the Democrats were able to capitalize on a number of issues, such as inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, the Republicans were not able to unite their party around a single message. Third, the Democrats were able to mobilize their voters, while the Republicans were not. The results of the 2022 midterm elections are a setback for the Democrats, but they are not a death knell for the party. The Democrats still have control of the Senate, and they will be able to block some of the Republican agenda. The Democrats will also be able to use the results of the elections as a rallying cry for their voters in the 2024 presidential election." I mean, "the House, which is the chamber of Congress that is most closely tied to the president" - wut? "Second, the Republicans flipped a number of seats in the Senate, which is the chamber of Congress that is more insulated from the president." - but the previous response just told me the Dems "flipped a seat" to increase their margin. "First, the Democrats were able to capitalize on a number of issues, such as inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic." - the Democrats capitalized on inflation??? ChatGPT 3.5 answered "I'm sorry, but my training data only goes up until September 2021 and I do not have access to current events. However, I can tell you that the most recent US midterm elections were held in November 2018, and during that election, the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives, while the Republicans retained control of the Senate. This resulted in a divided Congress, with Democrats controlling one chamber and Republicans controlling the other. It's important to note that midterm elections are held every two years, so there will be another one in November 2022."
- ithkuil 4y ago
  It's hard to to tell how much of that is caused by the default system prompt setup that the two chat systems have. You can easily cause chatgpt to radically change its style by prepending the right system prompt. Some people even published many many "jailbreak" prompts that undid the safety priming that openai's system prompt defines. From what I read it does indeed seem that openai's experience is much more balanced; they generally seemed to have tuned things quite well and the competition is lagging behind. However it's not clear how much of that is due to fundamental quality of the model or how things have been polished in the last step. It may sound like an academic nitpick, but it's central to any discussions about whether Google has really been left behind and has lost the grip on AI. They are not doing a great service to their own bottom line by blocking access to a public beta to so many billions of people
  - int_19h 4y ago
    It's not just the prompt. Bard is just not good at things that require, shall we say, more than a modicum of understanding. Let me give you an example. Bard: https://i.imgur.com/m5UGjxU.png https://i.imgur.com/m5UGjxU.png GPT-3.5: https://i.imgur.com/XH1266o.png https://i.imgur.com/XH1266o.png GPT-4: https://i.imgur.com/ZcaZ9Qk.png https://i.imgur.com/ZcaZ9Qk.png So basically Bard didn't understand the instructions at all, GPT-3.5 understood that it needs to substitute words but can't figure out the proper context, and GPT-4 not only did almost everything correctly, but it actually went kinda meta and wrote a rationale within the context of the story for the substitutions I asked it to make (which it does on this task more than half of the time, BTW).
kyriakos 4y ago
To be fair Microsoft does this a lot too. Gamepass is not officially available to most of the world for example - you need to set your account's address to a country where its supported and then you lose the Cloud streaming feature even if you are paying for it. Its more of a surprise that Bing/ChatGPT was available worldwide right from the get go.

sourcecodeplz 4y ago

Just use protonvpn, it is free. worked for me.

skinner_ 4y ago
The point is, I'm annoyed with a company not providing a service for me, am I gonna go the extra mile to make them successful?
ithkuil 4y ago
I'd also need to create a throwaway google account because I can't risk they close my account due to some automated term and conditions check or whatnot

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

> Is bard that bad? If Bard had been released to the public before ChatGPT, I probably would have been amazed by it (I know people love to point out errors, hallucinations, stuff AI gets wrong, but there's also the huge "Guys, you're having a fully natural, back and forth conversation with a computer. You can reference previous comments and ask it specifics about those comments. This was strictly the realm os SciFi until relatively recently.) Compared to ChatGPT, especially the GPT-4 version, Bard is nowhere close. I asked it some programming questions, and ChatGPT can write the code and explain it to me. Bard basically gave me some StackOverflow summaries. Even in areas not related to programming, ChatGPT just feels "smarter", that is that it gives more generally correct, insightful responses, where Bard feels more like it is just scraping stuff it found on the Internet and summarizing it. Note Bard is much more up-to-date than ChatGPT (I can ask it questions about current events), but even then it feels more "superficial". For example, I asked both (for ChatGPT was on GPT-3.5) "What was the outcome of the most recent US midterm elections?" Bard answered "The Republicans won control of the House of Representatives, while the Democrats retained control of the Senate. The Republicans flipped 22 seats in the House, giving them a 222-213 majority. The Democrats flipped one seat in the Senate, giving them a 51-49 majority. The 2022 midterm elections were the first midterm elections under the presidency of Joe Biden. The results of the elections were seen as a repudiation of Biden's presidency, and they have given the Republicans a strong position to retake control of the White House in the 2024 presidential election." I don't mean to get too much into political opinion on HN, but that last sentence just seems wrong to me. Even most Republican operatives were hand-wringing about Republicans underperforming expectations in the 2022 midterms. I asked Bard a follow-up, "Why do you think "The results of the elections were seen as a repudiation of Biden's presidency?" I recall even most Republican operatives thinking that Republicans underperformed expectations, for example there was no "red wave" that was widely expected." Bard responded with what is essentially gobbledygook: "The results of the 2022 midterm elections were seen as a repudiation of Biden's presidency for a number of reasons. First, the Democrats lost control of the House, which is the chamber of Congress that is most closely tied to the president. Second, the Republicans flipped a number of seats in the Senate, which is the chamber of Congress that is more insulated from the president. Third, the Democrats underperformed expectations in a number of races, which suggests that voters were not happy with the direction of the country. There are a number of reasons why the Republicans underperformed expectations. First, the Democrats were able to capitalize on a number of issues, such as inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, the Republicans were not able to unite their party around a single message. Third, the Democrats were able to mobilize their voters, while the Republicans were not. The results of the 2022 midterm elections are a setback for the Democrats, but they are not a death knell for the party. The Democrats still have control of the Senate, and they will be able to block some of the Republican agenda. The Democrats will also be able to use the results of the elections as a rallying cry for their voters in the 2024 presidential election." I mean, "the House, which is the chamber of Congress that is most closely tied to the president" - wut? "Second, the Republicans flipped a number of seats in the Senate, which is the chamber of Congress that is more insulated from the president." - but the previous response just told me the Dems "flipped a seat" to increase their margin. "First, the Democrats were able to capitalize on a number of issues, such as inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic." - the Democrats capitalized on inflation??? ChatGPT 3.5 answered "I'm sorry, but my training data only goes up until September 2021 and I do not have access to current events. However, I can tell you that the most recent US midterm elections were held in November 2018, and during that election, the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives, while the Republicans retained control of the Senate. This resulted in a divided Congress, with Democrats controlling one chamber and Republicans controlling the other. It's important to note that midterm elections are held every two years, so there will be another one in November 2022."

ithkuil 4y ago
It's hard to to tell how much of that is caused by the default system prompt setup that the two chat systems have. You can easily cause chatgpt to radically change its style by prepending the right system prompt. Some people even published many many "jailbreak" prompts that undid the safety priming that openai's system prompt defines. From what I read it does indeed seem that openai's experience is much more balanced; they generally seemed to have tuned things quite well and the competition is lagging behind. However it's not clear how much of that is due to fundamental quality of the model or how things have been polished in the last step. It may sound like an academic nitpick, but it's central to any discussions about whether Google has really been left behind and has lost the grip on AI. They are not doing a great service to their own bottom line by blocking access to a public beta to so many billions of people
- int_19h 4y ago
  It's not just the prompt. Bard is just not good at things that require, shall we say, more than a modicum of understanding. Let me give you an example. Bard: https://i.imgur.com/m5UGjxU.png https://i.imgur.com/m5UGjxU.png GPT-3.5: https://i.imgur.com/XH1266o.png https://i.imgur.com/XH1266o.png GPT-4: https://i.imgur.com/ZcaZ9Qk.png https://i.imgur.com/ZcaZ9Qk.png So basically Bard didn't understand the instructions at all, GPT-3.5 understood that it needs to substitute words but can't figure out the proper context, and GPT-4 not only did almost everything correctly, but it actually went kinda meta and wrote a rationale within the context of the story for the substitutions I asked it to make (which it does on this task more than half of the time, BTW).

kyriakos 4y ago

To be fair Microsoft does this a lot too. Gamepass is not officially available to most of the world for example - you need to set your account's address to a country where its supported and then you lose the Cloud streaming feature even if you are paying for it. Its more of a surprise that Bing/ChatGPT was available worldwide right from the get go.