Google employees have voiced their criticism of CEO Sundar Pichai over the announcement of the company’s ChatGPT competitor, Bard. According to messages and memes viewed by CNBC, staffers deemed the announcement as “rushed”, “botched” and “un-Googley”. The company’s decision to publicly divulge some details of Bard’s chatbot technology prior to a Microsoft event was also viewed unfavorably.
Google employees are expressing concern about the “hasty” arrival of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) solution, Bard, and the company’s apparent desire to compete with OpenAI and Microsoft. While the tech giant’s executives have touted Bard as a direct competitor to ChatGPT, the workers are worried that the company is rushing to integrate this new technology into their systems too quickly after an error in Bard’s presentation, in which it claimed that James Webb telescope had been the first to photograph a planet located outside the Solar System, caused the company’s shares to lose $100 billion.
According to CNBC’s report, the employees have criticized the leadership, particularly CEO Sundar Pichai, for what they see as a rushed and substandard presentation of the new tool that does not meet the usual high standards expected from Google. The criticisms were expressed on the internal forum, Memegen, using both messages and memes.
This criticism comes at a time when Google is attempting to compete with Microsoft and OpenAI in the AI field. Microsoft has been actively integrating AI into its services, such as the Bing search engine, and investing in OpenAI’s GPT and DALL-E technologies. Google’s announcement of Bard seems to be a response to Microsoft’s advancements in the AI space. However, the haste with which Google is trying to catch up with its competitors is causing concern among its employees.
In particular, one meme read, “Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic…Please return to taking a long-term outlook”. The post received many upvotes from employees.
A highly-rated meme also referred to Google’s hastened reaction to Microsoft’s event and the negative effect it had on the company’s shares. Alphabet shares have tumbled over 9% this week on concerns about ChatGPT’s threat to Google’s core search business.
Google’s position in artificial intelligence (AI) has been a familiar concern for the company, with employees asking about the company’s competitive edge in AI as ChatGPT was taking off in the public eye. Executives responded by saying the company’s reputation could suffer if it moves too fast on AI-chat technology, which is far from perfect.
Last month, Google announced it would lay off 12,000 employees, representing 6% of the company’s workforce. The decision has also been the subject of a highly read meme this week, which featured a photo of actor Nicolas Cage smiling and said “Firing 12k people rises the stock by 3%, one rushed AI presentation drops it by 8%.”
