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☆ Google contractors say they don't have enough time to verify correct answers from the company's AI chatbot and end up guessing
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The bot has been tested internally by Googlers, and now contractors are also testing a chatbot. Some contractors say they're not given enough time to rate the most accurate chatbot responses. Because each assigned task represents billable time, some workers say they will complete the tasks even if they realize they cannot accurately assess the chatbot responses. Google raters who work for Appen make between $14 and $14.50 an hour, despite supporting a business that generates most of its revenue from search and advertising. The group estimates that Google employs more than 200,000 people as contractors, who aren't recorded in the company's official headcount.

☆ Google announces a series of cost-saving measures across the company as it cuts some staff perks
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Google has announced a series of cost-cutting measures across the company. Google has announced a series of cost-cutting measures as the company continues to tighten its belt and prioritize its work in artificial intelligence. While they wrote that some of these changes would not be noticeable to many staff, they added that other things "will impact some services Googlers use at work and beyond." The note added that Google is continuing to hire at a reduced pace, while redeploying teams to higher priority work. Here's the memo in full:Googlers,This year, one of our important company OKRs is to deliver durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency.

☆ Google execs tell employees in testy all-hands meeting that Bard A.I. isn't just about search
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

In the lead up to the Bard announcement, Google executives repeatedly said the technology it was developing internally would integrate with search. “We’re working to bring these latest AI advancements into our products, starting with Search,” the company said in a blog post. That same week, at an event in Paris, Google search boss Prabhakar Raghavan unveiled some fresh examples of using Bard within search. "You see the stories of ChatGPT coincides with an event that we’re having that was actually focused on search," Krawczyk said. Specifically, the question asked why Google lost so many key people who were listed on a paper about much of the AI technology behind Bard.

☆ TikTok is automatically setting a one-hour limit for users under 18 — but it's a setting that's easy to bypass
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Jordan Hart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

TikTok announced a new one-hour screen time limit for teens, among other controls. A bill that would ban TikTok in the US was advanced by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. TikTok also announced updates to its Family Pairing feature that will allow a parent or guardian to link their account to their teen's TikTok and set parental controls. The US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday to advance a bill that would give President Joe Biden the power to ban TikTok, according to a report from CNBC. Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, sponsor of the act to ban TikTok, dubbed the app "digital fentanyl," Insider's Brian Metzger reported last week.

☆ Analysis: CATL's 'price war' shows its power, and China's EV edge
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

"It's very much a market share game," said Caspar Rawles, chief data officer at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd - more widely known by its initials - is the dominant global supplier with a 37% share of the EV market. For CATL, the discount is a way to head off a bid by Chinese EV makers to seek alternatives. CATL batteries power Volkswagen's (VOWG_p.DE) I.D. "The reductions that CATL is offering would help the Chinese EV industry," said James Frith, a principal at battery-tech focused venture capital group Volta Energy Technologies.

☆ Google asks employees to rewrite Bard's bad responses, says the A.I. 'learns best by example'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Google execs understand that the company's artificial intelligence search tool Bard isn't always accurate in how it responds to queries. The email, which CNBC viewed, included a link to a do’s and don’ts page with instructions on how employees should fix responses as they test Bard internally. "Bard learns best by example, so taking the time to rewrite a response thoughtfully will go a long way in helping us to improve the mode," the document says. Google unveiled its conversation technology last week, but a series of missteps around the announcement pushed the stock price down nearly 9%. Employees criticized Pichai for the mishaps, describing the rollout internally as “rushed,” “botched” and “comically short sighted.”

☆ Google didn't think its Bard AI was 'really ready' for a product yet, says Alphabet chairman, days after the chatbot's very public mistake tanked the company's stock
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

John Hennessy, the chairman of Alphabet, said Google was hesitant to use its Bard AI in a product as it wasn't "really ready," per CNBC. Google unveiled its Bard AI last week amid intense interest in competitor ChatGPT. But a promo for Google Bard featured a factual error — which sent Alphabet's stock down 9% in a day. Google unveiled Bard amid intense interest in rival chatbot ChatGPT, and just a day before Microsoft rolled out its AI-powered Bing search engine which is built using technology from OpenAI, the parent of ChatGPT. At the conference, Hennessy declined to comment specifically on the public's reaction to Google's Bard, per CNBC.

☆ Meet the TikTokers teaching Gen-Z how to adapt to the corporate world
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Reena Koh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Gen-Z entered the workforce during the pandemic. Gen-Z is starting a new chapter in their lives during one of the most unstable and uncertain times in history. So, during these difficult times, who do they turn to for career advice? From teaching interview tips to lessons on how to use corporate jargon to establish boundaries, many creators have amassed a sturdy following in #corporatetok. Here are the top three TikTok creators Gen-Z turns to for career advice.

☆ Google search chief warns AI chatbots can give 'convincing but completely fictitious' answers, report says
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-12 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Google's search engine boss said AI chatbots can give "convincing" but "fictitious" answers. Prabhakar Raghavan told Welt am Sonntag it's considering how to integrate Bard with Google search. Prabhakar Raghavan told Welt Am Sonntag on Saturday that they can sometimes give false but convincing answers. However, an ad for Bard showed it giving an inaccurate answer to a question about the James Webb Space Telescope. Maarten Bosma, a former research engineer at Alphabet's AI division Google Brain, tweeted that the presentation showed the company wasn't taking AI seriously enough.

☆ Google cautions against 'hallucinating' chatbots - report
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

BERLIN, Feb 11 (Reuters) - The boss of Google's search engine warned against the pitfalls of artificial intelligence in chatbots in a newspaper interview published on Saturday, as Google parent company Alphabet (GOOGL.O) battles to compete with blockbuster app ChatGPT. "This kind of artificial intelligence we're talking about right now can sometimes lead to something we call hallucination," Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice president at Google and head of Google Search, told Germany's Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "This then expresses itself in such a way that a machine provides a convincing but completely made-up answer," Raghavan said in comments published in German. Alphabet, which is still conducting user testing on Bard, has not yet indicated when the app could go public. "We obviously feel the urgency, but we also feel the great responsibility," Raghavan said.

☆ Google employees slam CEO Sundar Pichai for ‘rushed’ Bard announcement
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Google employees are criticizing leadership, most notably CEO Sundar Pichai, for the way the company handled the announcement this week of its ChatGPT competitor called Bard. Staffers took to the popular internal forum Memegen to express their thoughts on the Bard announcement, referring to it as "rushed," "botched" and "un-Googley," according to messages and memes viewed by CNBC. On Monday, Google got ahead of a Microsoft event the following day and had Pichai publicly divulge some details of the company's chatbot technology. During Google's Wednesday event, search boss Prabhakar Raghavan briefly shared some slides with examples of Bard’s capabilities. While Google employees often turn to Memegen to humorously poke fun at the company's quirks and missteps, the posts after the Bard announcement struck a more serious tone and even went directly after Pichai.

☆ The way we search for information online is about to change
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN Business —An entire generation of internet users has approached search engines the same way for decades: enter a few words into a search box and wait for a page of relevant results to emerge. Bing will not only provide a list of search results, but will also answer questions, chat with users and generate content in response to user queries. “We have even more exciting, AI-enabled innovations in the works that will change the way people search, work and play. These models are trained on vast troves of online data in order to generate compelling responses to user prompts. Microsoft and Google executives have acknowledged some of the potential issues with the new AI tools.

☆ Google to soon add generative AI features in search results
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

REUTERS/Benoit TessierSTOCKHOLM, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Google (GOOGL.O) said on Wednesday it would soon integrate artificial intelligence (AI) capable of generating text and other content in search results, as it battles to answer the challenge of Microsoft's (MSFT.O) popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. At a launch event in Paris on Wednesday, Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan said so-called generative AI would enable users to interact with information in "entirely new ways". "As we continue to bring generative AI technologies into our products, the only limit to search will be your imagination." Generative AI is used to make human-like creations through code, drawing on vast amounts of data to produce new pieces of text, video, or audio. Google said it would soon allow more developers and partners to test Bard.

☆ Google shows off more of what its ChatGPT competitor Bard can do
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Google’s Search boss Prabhakar Raghavan shared some new examples of its new conversational technology Bard in a live-streamed event in Paris on Wednesday. Bard is Google's competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT AI. Raghavan showed slides with new examples of Bard’s capabilities during a brief presentation. The latest examples come after Google CEO Sundar Pichai Monday publicly announced Google’s new conversation technology Bard that's powered by its artificial intelligence and would be integrated into search, which confirmed CNBC's original reporting. A recent advertisement for Google's service showed Bard offering the incorrect description of the telescope used to take the first pictures of a planet outside our solar system, for example.

☆ Google details plans to use AI in search results
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Google on Wednesday detailed plans to use artificial intelligence technology to radically change how people search for information online, one day after rival Microsoft announced a revamped version of Bing powered by AI. These tools are trained on vast troves of information online in order to generate compelling written responses to user prompts and queries. “As we look ahead, you could imagine how generative AI will enable people to interact with visual information in entirely new ways.”Phrabhakar Raghavan, an SVP at Google, details plans to bring the same technology that underpins Microsoft-backed ChatGPT directly into Google's search results. ChatGPT’s meteoric rise in popularity has reportedly prompted Google’s management to declare a “code red” situation for its core product: online search. The rise of AI-powered chatbots, and the incorporation of this technology into products like online search, could also carry risks.

☆ Resistance is futile. Welcome to the "generative AI" era
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

This is going to be the year of “generative AI” the way 2012 was the year of Instagram. (Yes, Bing still exists and Microsoft hopes AI can make it relevant again for the first time ever.) Generative AI is the technology that underpins ChatGPT, the chatbot that’s gotten everyone in the content-generation biz (hello!) But Google, Microsoft and their rivals are still bullish. “We have even more exciting, AI-enabled innovations in the works that will change the way people search, work and play.”

☆ Google CEO issues rallying cry in internal memo: All hands on deck to test ChatGPT competitor Bard
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Inc. speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees Monday the company is going to need all hands on deck to test Bard, its new ChatGPT rival. He also said Google will soon be enlisting help from partners to test an application programming interface, or API, that would let others access the same underlying technology. Pichai's note to employees also said search boss Prabhakar Raghavan will be "sharing progress" at an event in Paris later this week. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a version of its own search engine, Bing, that will use ChatGPT to answer users' search queries.

☆ Google contractors who rate how effective its search is will visit its headquarters this week to protest 'poverty wages'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google "raters" who test and evaluate search quality say they aren't fairly compensated. This means the raters are not technically Google employees, even though they are tasked with improving its services. In this latest action, workers in the Alphabet Workers Union have organized a visit to Google's headquarters to deliver a petition addressed to Prabhakar Raghavan, the senior vice president at Google overseeing search. Now many tech workers have considered joining unions as mass layoffs have swept the industry in recent months. In 2021, tech workers at The New York Times formed a union.

☆ Google employees scramble for answers after layoffs hit long-tenured and recently promoted employees
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Google employees are scrambling for answers from leadership and from colleagues as the company undergoes a massive layoff. On Friday, Alphabet -owned Google announced it was cutting 12,000 employees, roughly 6% of the full-time workforce. Some of the laid-off employees had been long-tenured or recently promoted, raising questions about the criteria used to decide whose jobs were cut. The company provided an FAQ for the layoffs, which CNBC has seen, but employees have complained that it doesn’t give much detail on many answers. The scramble highlights the challenges Google could face in maintaining a supportive and productive company culture for its restive workforce of more than 160,000 full-time employees.

☆ TikTok is offering IMDb data on millions of movies and TV shows, giving Gen Z another reason to ditch Google
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Travis Clark | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Users can link to movies and TV shows in their videos that direct to an in-app page with data about the title. It's one more way that young people can use TikTok as a search engine. TikTok and IMDb, a movie database owned by Amazon, announced a collaboration on Thursday that will see TikTok licensing IMDb data to power a new feature on the social platform. Creators will now be able to link to movies and TV shows in their videos. Search from the "movies and TV shows" option to find any of the 12 million-plus titles on IMDb.

☆ 3 TikTok SEO strategies that influencers are using to help boost views and engagement with their videos
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Shriya Bhattacharya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Gen Zers prefer TikTok over Google as a search engine, and influencers are taking notice. Five TikTokers shared the specific techniques they use to make their videos more SEO friendly. These strategies helped make videos more discoverable by users and brands that want to collaborate. Some TikTok creators are starting to adapt their content strategies to make their videos more SEO friendly, following a September New York Times report that Gen Z prefers TikTok over Google as a search engine. Here are three SEO strategies the TikTokers have had success with:

☆ Meet the little-known Google exec steering the company's $209 billion ad business through an uncertain economy and the minefield of privacy concerns
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Ryan Joe | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Jerry Dischler is steering Google's $209 billion ads business through major challenges. It falls to him to reinvent digital advertising to keep its $209 billion ad business going. At the same time, he has to keep growing Google's ad business amid increasingly dour spend forecasts. He went on to search ads in 2008, and by 2009, he was overseeing Google's team that developed new ad formats. Even when some parts of Google's ad business slows, as YouTube and Google network ads did last quarter, it gains strength in other areas, such as search.

☆ 3 SEO strategies TikTokers are using to help increase views and engagement on their videos
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Shriya Bhattacharya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

☆ TikTokers are increasingly using SEO to boost their reach on the app, which Gen Zers prefer over Google to search. Here are 3 techniques they’re using to make their videos more discoverable.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Shriya Bhattacharya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

In September, research found that more Gen Zers use TikTok to access information compared to Google. Here are three techniques they're using to ensure their content is more visible to users on the app. That changed in September when the New York Times reported on how TikTok is the new search engine for Gen Zers. Gen Zers are also using TikTok to find recommendations for vacation spots, activities in their area, and to learn about concepts like non-fungible tokens or artificial intelligence. This shift, combined with the news about Gen Zers, has many creators planning and posting content more intentionally.

☆ Google execs warn company's reputation could suffer if it moves too fast on AI-chat technology
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

Some of them are wondering where Google is in the race to create sophisticated chatbots that can answer user queries. After all, Google's prime business is web search, and the company has long touted itself as a pioneer in AI. Billions of people across the globe use Google's search engine, while ChatGPT just crossed 1 million users in early December. Taking Google 'for granted'Employees had other concerns about Google search. Industry estimates still show that Google holds at least 90% of the search market, and the company remains under scrutiny by regulators.

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