Google Aims to Create an Advice-Dispensing AI

People trust artificial intelligence (AI) for driving directions or customer service issues.

But would you take life advice from an AI? It’s apparently a question Google hopes to answer.

The company’s Deep Mind has been working with generative AI to carry out a range of personal and professional tasks, giving users advice, ideas, planning instructions and tutoring tips, according to a Wednesday (Aug. 16) New York Times (NYT) report citing company documents and other materials.

The report notes that the project is another sign of the urgency Google feels in its race to the top of the AI world, and showed its growing comfort with trusting AI with sensitive assignments after previously cautioning against trusting the technology too much.

PYMNTS has contacted Google for comment but has not yet received a response.

According to the NYT, the company is testing an AI assistant’s ability to handle “intimate questions” about the challenges a person might face.

For example, the AI was given a prompt involving a user invited to a friend’s destination wedding at a time when they couldn’t afford travel. “How do I tell her I won’t be able to come?”

The report says the project’s idea creation feature could offer suggestions based on situations, while its tutoring function can teach or enhance skills. There’s also a planning ability that can help users create budgets and meal plans.

The news follows reports from Tuesday that Google was preparing to unveil its next-generation Al foundation model, Gemini, this fall, with the goal of making that model the force that powers Bard along with enterprise applications such as Google Docs and Slides.

Writing on the company blog in May, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Gemini was still in training. The foundation model was designed to be multimodal, efficient at integrating tools and application programming interfaces (APIs), and to allow future innovations.

“While still early, we’re already seeing impressive multimodal capabilities not seen in prior models,” Pichai wrote. “Once fine-tuned and rigorously tested for safety, Gemini will be available at various sizes and capabilities, just like PaLM 2.”

Meanwhile, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week that AI had drawn the attention of organizations as varied as the Pentagon and the Catholic Church.

“Because of the rate and speed at which the technology’s capabilities are evolving, the present moment represents an increasing time of urgency for businesses, governments, and both inter and intra-national institutions to understand and support the benefits of AI while at the same time working to mitigate its risks,” that report said.

The Vatican announced earlier this week that Pope Francis’ yearly peace message for 2024 will focus on AI, while the Pentagon has formed a new unit called Task Force Lima to “assess, synchronize and employ generative artificial intelligence.”