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I just tried Bard based on this comment, and it's really, really bad. Can you please help me with how you are prompting it?

moffkalast 3y ago
If you have to worry about prompting, it already tells you everything one needs to know about how good the model is.
- Tostino 3y ago
  I don't think that's true at all. Think of it like setting up conversation constraints to reduce the potential pitfalls for a model. You can vastly improve the capability of just about any LLM I've used by being clear about what you specifically want considered, and what you don't want considered when solving a problem. It'll take you much farther, by allowing you to incrementally solve your problem in smaller steps while giving the model the proper context required for each step of the problem-solving process, and limiting the things it must consider for each branch of your problem.
pverghese 3y ago
Don't know what you are doing? But Bard is so much faster than openai and its answers are clearer and more succint.
- minihat 3y ago
  This is just... false. Bard is not just a little worse than gpt-4 for coding, it's more like several orders of magnitude worse. I can't imagine how you are getting superior outputs from Bard.
- BeefySwain 3y ago
  Can you give an example of a prompt and the output for each that you find Bard to be better for?
  - 300bps 3y ago
    I'd be surprised if he can. Both accounts that are purporting how useful Bard is (okdood64, pverghese) have comment histories defending or advocating for Google frequently: Examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35224167#35227068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35224167#35227068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35303210#35360467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35303210#35360467
300bps 3y ago
I’ve been seeing similar comments about Bard all over Twitter and social media. My testing agrees with yours. Almost seems like a sponsored marketing campaign with no truth to it.
- sundarurfriend 3y ago
  After my first day with Bard, I would have agreed with you. But since then, I've found that Bard simply has a lot of variance in answer quality. Sometimes it fails for surprisingly simple questions, or hallucinates to an even worse degree than ChatGPT, but other times it gives much better answers than ChatGPT. On the first day, it felt like 80% of the responses were in the first (fail/hallucinate) category, but over time it feels more like a 50/50 split, which makes it worth running prompts over both ChatGPT and Bard and select the best one. I don't know if the change is because I learnt to prompt it better, or if they improved the models based on all the user chats from the public release - perhaps both.
m4jor 3y ago
If it needs to write a code, I usually prompt it with something like: "write me a script in python3 that uses selenium to log into a MyBB forum" note: usually it will not compile and you still have to do some editing

moffkalast 3y ago

If you have to worry about prompting, it already tells you everything one needs to know about how good the model is.

Tostino 3y ago
I don't think that's true at all. Think of it like setting up conversation constraints to reduce the potential pitfalls for a model. You can vastly improve the capability of just about any LLM I've used by being clear about what you specifically want considered, and what you don't want considered when solving a problem. It'll take you much farther, by allowing you to incrementally solve your problem in smaller steps while giving the model the proper context required for each step of the problem-solving process, and limiting the things it must consider for each branch of your problem.

pverghese 3y ago

Don't know what you are doing? But Bard is so much faster than openai and its answers are clearer and more succint.

minihat 3y ago
This is just... false. Bard is not just a little worse than gpt-4 for coding, it's more like several orders of magnitude worse. I can't imagine how you are getting superior outputs from Bard.
BeefySwain 3y ago
Can you give an example of a prompt and the output for each that you find Bard to be better for?
- 300bps 3y ago
  I'd be surprised if he can. Both accounts that are purporting how useful Bard is (okdood64, pverghese) have comment histories defending or advocating for Google frequently: Examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35224167#35227068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35224167#35227068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35303210#35360467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35303210#35360467

300bps 3y ago

I’ve been seeing similar comments about Bard all over Twitter and social media. My testing agrees with yours. Almost seems like a sponsored marketing campaign with no truth to it.

sundarurfriend 3y ago
After my first day with Bard, I would have agreed with you. But since then, I've found that Bard simply has a lot of variance in answer quality. Sometimes it fails for surprisingly simple questions, or hallucinates to an even worse degree than ChatGPT, but other times it gives much better answers than ChatGPT. On the first day, it felt like 80% of the responses were in the first (fail/hallucinate) category, but over time it feels more like a 50/50 split, which makes it worth running prompts over both ChatGPT and Bard and select the best one. I don't know if the change is because I learnt to prompt it better, or if they improved the models based on all the user chats from the public release - perhaps both.

m4jor 3y ago

If it needs to write a code, I usually prompt it with something like: "write me a script in python3 that uses selenium to log into a MyBB forum" note: usually it will not compile and you still have to do some editing