Google's Bard AI is getting better at programming

It can also now export to Sheets.

SOPA Images via Getty Images

It seems like there’s a new update announced every day in the ongoing race to have the most advanced AI. The latest comes courtesy of Google, which is launching further improvements to Bard, including better advanced reasoning and math abilities.

Bard will no longer rely solely on large language models, which are best for predictions as opposed to solving complex problems. Instead, it should now identify when further processing could help and then generate background code to improve correctness. According to Google, this update boosted computation-based word and math problems’ accuracy across their internal challenge datasets by 30 percent.

Google claims Bard should be able to provide information such as the prime factors of numbers in the millions, the growth rate of your savings and what words like “lollipop” look like backward (because that will undoubtedly convince AI naysayers that it’s the ultimate tool). The company itself gives a standard disclaimer explaining: “Bard won’t always get it right — for example, Bard might not generate code to help the prompt response, the code it generates might be wrong or Bard may not include the executed code in its response.”

In addition to integrating code generation, Google has also announced a function that allows data that Bard produces to be editable and manipulated in Sheets. It’s a minor update, but one people who hate spreadsheets will undoubtedly appreciate. It’s a minor update, but one that will take some of the stress out of building and maintaining spreadsheets.