Google opens early access to Bard, lists 5 limitations of the chatbot

Hello! It’s that time of the week again when we summarise the biggest tech stories from the previous seven days. Don’t miss out on everything that has happened or is happening while you get ready to relax after all the work and trouble.

The AI wars continue to wage fiercely, with Google finally allowing more users to access Bard, its chatbot to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The chatbot is highly anticipated by Google users worldwide, but the big tech had to return to the drawing board after the bot malfunctioned during a presentation.

If you’ve not been following the news, the popular social media platform TikTok has been of major concern to European countries and the United States for national security reasons. The Netherlands became the latest country to ban the platform for government-issued devices.

China has said it would oppose efforts by the United States to force a sale of TikTok, stating the platform is of no harm to its users nor is it a security threat to the national security of countries.

In other climes, Meta has been temporarily barred by a Kenyan court from engaging its new content moderation subcontractor, Majorel, pending the hearing of a new case filed by 43 content moderators over illegal sacking and blacklisting. Meta is looking at firing over 200 content moderators in Kenya.

Other than that, more layoffs continue to rock the tech space, with Indeed laying off about 15% of its employees, which is about 2200 personnel.

This and more are contained in this week’s global roundup of news in the tech domain.

Summary of the Bulletin

• The Netherlands becomes the latest country to ban TikTok
• Kenyan Court stops Meta from firing over 260 content moderators
• Indeed lays off 15% of employees, about 2,200 people
• Opera has increased its stake in OPay to 9.5% from 6.4%
• Google announces a limited public rollout of its ChatGPT competitor Bard

Read also: Y-Combinator sacks nearly 20% of its employees in a move to prioritise early-stage investing

Netherlands joins the growing list of nations to ban TikTok

TikTok, the popular short-form video app, has put some Western countries in a perturbing state as regards national security. During the past week, the Dutch Intelligence service, AIVD, advised the government that its officials should stop using the app due to its Chinese interests.

In accordance with that recommendation, the Netherlands has directed its government officials to cease using TikTok and similar apps on their mobile work devices to prioritize the privacy and security of the country’s data. Apps from companies based in countries with an “offensive cyber program” against the Netherlands represent an increased espionage risk, the Dutch government said in a statement 

The nation joins a growing list of nations, including the European Union, the United States, Denmark, Belgium, and Canada, that have similarly issued orders forbidding the use of the app in the hopes that it will lessen the exposure of sensitive information when the app is downloaded, particularly on government devices.

“Recent parliamentary questions and international developments have led us to make a careful assessment that goes further than advising against one application,” said Van Huffelen, state secretary for Kingdom Relations and Digitalization of Netherlands, said Tuesday. She called this step of only allowing pre-approved apps on government phones a structural solution for civil servants.

There are also concerns over TikTok’s content and potential harm to teens’ mental health. In a report released in December, researchers from the organization Center for Countering Digital Hate stated that there had been 13.2 billion views of eating disorder-related information on the site.

Kenyan court stops Meta from firing 260 content moderators

A Kenyan court has temporarily barred meta from engaging its new content moderation subcontractor, Majorel, pending the hearing of a new case filed by 43 content moderators during the week over illegal sacking and blacklisting, TechCrunch reports.

The interim injunction has also barred Sama, Meta’s outgoing content moderation partner, from effecting any form of redundancy. The hearing of the emergency application is set for March 28. In the meantime, Sama will exclusively offer content review services to Meta.

“….an interim injunction order be and is hereby granted restraining the 1st and 2nd respondents (Meta Platforms Inc and Meta Ireland) from engaging content moderators to serve the Eastern and Southern African region through the 4th respondent (Majorel) or through any other agent, partner or representative or in any manner whatsoever engaging moderators to do the work currently being done by the moderators engaged through the 3rd respondent (Sama) pending the hearing of this application,” the court said

After closing its content review arm in January, Sama plans to fire 260 content moderators who worked throughout Eastern and Southern Africa at the end of this month. The moderators accuse Sama of “unlawful termination” and Majorel of discrimination for allegedly blacklisting all of Sama’s former workers.

The law court also prohibited Meta and Majorel from blacklisting qualified content moderators on the grounds that they previously worked at Sama.

Indeed lays off 15% of employees

At a company that helps people find jobs, 2,200 employees will now have to embark on a job search of their own as Job listings site Indeed.com told employees on Wednesday that it’s laying off 2,200 people, representing 15% of its headcount, according to a person with direct knowledge of the decision.

The Information reports that Indeed CEO Chris Hyams broke the news to employees in an all-hands meeting on Wednesday morning, saying that the cuts would affect teams across the company and attributing the decision to broader economic pressures, a person who attended the meeting said. The person added that employees whose jobs were cut were notified via email following the meeting.

In a blog post, Hyams elaborated on the decision by explaining that the job market is expected to continue to cool down. Indeed makes its money by allowing companies to sponsor job listings, which shows the listing to more job seekers. But Hyams said that as of last quarter, sponsored job volumes were down 33% year over year, and total job openings were down 3.5%.

“With future job openings at or below pre-pandemic levels, our organization is simply too big for what lies ahead,” Hyams wrote. “We have held out longer than many other companies, but the revenue trends are undeniable. So I have decided to act now.”

The CEO will take a 25% cut in base pay himself.

Opera increases its stake in OPay to 9.5% from 6.4%

Opera, the consumer internet brand and developer of the eponymous web browser, has increased its stake in OPay to 9.5% from 6.4%. This follows the conclusion of the 2022 sale of Nanobank for $127 million, Techcabal reports.

In exchange for OPay shares from an unidentified PE firm, Nanobank sold the majority of its Asian operations to OPay in February of this year. Before this, Opera, a consumer internet company headquartered in Oslo, owned 42% of Nanobank, a lending venture it had created by fusing Opera’s microlending business with Mobimagic’s point-of-sale venture.

By choosing OPay shares instead of cash, Opera settled for $35.9 million less than the book value of its investment in Nanobank, leaving the internet brand with a net fair value of $76.3 million as of year-end 2022.

Opera marked its OPay ownership as “held for sale,” noting that “OPay continued its strong growth trajectory through 2022, giving us comfort in the ultimate marketability of our increased ownership stake.”

Google announces ‘rollout’ of Bard

Google released limited public access to Bard, a rival to ChatGPT. This was a significant move in Google’s quest to reclaim what many see to be lost ground in a new race to deploy AI.

Bard will be initially available to select users in the US and UK, with users able to join a waitlist at bard.google.com, though Google says the roll-out will be slow and has offered no date for full public access.

Bard is a chatbot built using a broad language model, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot. Bard will respond to your questions, and you can ask further questions to clarify his responses.

“You can use Bard to boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas and fuel your curiosity. You might ask Bard to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year, explain quantum physics in simple terms or spark your creativity by outlining a blog post,” Google VP of Product Sissie Hsiao and Google VP of Research Eli Collins wrote in a blog post.

In a conference in Paris, Google explained that Bard would work particularly well for “NORA” queries — questions to which there’s “no one right answer.” Of course, conversational AI also raises questions regarding the accuracy, sources of information and ethical stopgap.

According to Google, here are five limitations of Bard

• Bard can sometimes generate responses that contain inaccurate or misleading information even if it presents the information convincingly. However, it is trained to generate responses relevant to the context in line with users’ intent.
• Bard can be biased sometimes. It is trained to provide multiple perspectives for subjective topics like politics. The bot cannot verify input from the primary source facts or well-established consensus.
• Google highlighted that Bard might sometimes generate responses that imply that it has opinions or emotions.
• Google Bard may give inappropriate responses sometimes
• It is preferably for users aged 18 and above