The company says these improvements have improved Bard’s accuracy to computation-based word and math problems by 30%.

According to Google, the company is introducing a new technique called “implicit code execution” to help Bard detect computational prompts and run code in the background. The intended result is a more accurate response to mathematical tasks, coding questions and string manipulation prompts. These improvements also come with a new features that allows users to export a table to Google Sheets.

In a blog, Google leaders overseeing Bard say the improvements will make the generative AI chatbot better at answering questions such as:

• What are the prime factors of 15683615?
• Calculate the growth rate of my savings
• Reverse the word “Lollipop” for me

In the blog, Google says large language models (LLMs) are like prediction engines. Essentially, LLMs generate a response to prompts by predicting what words are likely to come next.

“As a result, they’ve been extremely capable on language and creative tasks, but weaker in areas like reasoning and math,” write Google Bard leaders. “In order to help solve more complex problems with advanced reasoning and logic capabilities, relying solely on LLM output isn’t enough.”

This new method, however, allows Bard to generate and execute code to boost its reasoning and math abilities.

According to Google, this approach is inspired from “a well-studied dichotomy in human intelligence, notably covered in Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” — the separation of “System 1” and “System 2” thinking.

“System 1 thinking is fast, intuitive and effortless,” the Bard experts write. “When a jazz musician improvises on the spot or a touch-typer thinks about a word and watches it appear on the screen, they’re using System 1 thinking. System 2 thinking, by contrast, is slow, deliberate and effortful. When you’re carrying out long division or learning how to play an instrument, you’re using System 2.”

LLMs have been essentially operating under System 1, producing responses quickly but without deep thought, leading to some issues like trying to solve complex math problems.

Meanwhile, traditional computation more closely aligns with System 2 thinking as it is formulaic and flexible, but can produce impressive results with the “right sequence of steps,” Google says.

With the latest update, Google is combining the capabilities of both LLMs and traditional code – which it compared to combining System 1 and System 2 thinking.

“Through implicit code execution, Bard identifies prompts that might benefit from logical code, writes it “under the hood,” executes it and uses the result to generate a more accurate response,” Google says. “So far, we’ve seen this method improve the accuracy of Bard’s responses to computation-based word and math problems in our internal challenge datasets by approximately 30%.”

The post Google: Bard Now 30% Better at Computation-Based Problems appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Zoom is first launching this Claude AI chatbot integration with Zoom Contact Center, but has plans to bring it throughout the entire platform, including Chat, Meetings, Phone, Whiteboard and Zoom IQ.

According to Zoom, the videoconferencing and collaboration giant has a “federated approach” to AI that leverages its own proprietary AI models along with those from leading AI companies–such as Anthropic–and select customers’ models.

Zoom says this gives the company the flexibility to incorporate multiple types of models to provide the most value for customers’ diverse needs and allow them to be customized to perform better for a customer based on their specific needs.

According to Zoom, it plans to incorporate Claude and Anthropic AI throughout its Zoom Contact Center suite of tools, which includes Zoom Virtual Agent, Zoom Contact Center and Zoom Workforce Management.

The intended result is to elevate the quality of customer experiences through better self-service and the ability to accurately understand customer intent. Zoom says the AI-enabled suite of contact center solutions will help guide customers to the best resolutions and surface insights that managers can use to coach agents and improve productivity.

Zoom also plans to use Claude and other AI tools to provide the right resources to contact center agents to help improve customer service.

The San Jose, Calif.-based firm says the integrations come with an investment into Anthropic and Claude for an undisclosed amount.

Notably, Anthropic is also backed by a sizable investment from Google, with the news of the relationship coming in February as Microsoft began heavily investing in ChatGPT creator OpenAI and integrating the AI firm’s large language models into its own products and with the goal of integrating AI assistants and other tools across the Microsoft 365 suite.

In a statement, Smita Hashim, Zoom’s chief product officer, calls Anthropic’s Constitutional AI model “primed to provide safe and responsible integrations” for Zoom’s next-generation innovations.

“With Claude guiding agents toward trustworthy resolutions and powering self-service for end-users, companies will be able to take customer relationships to another level,” Hasim said. “Partnering with Anthropic also furthers our commitment to providing customers with our federated approach to AI, optimized to deliver outstanding customer experience outcomes. Additionally, with our investment, we are advancing leading-edge companies like Anthropic and helping to drive innovation in the Zoom ecosystem and beyond.”

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The announcement came during the company’s annual Google I/O developer conference at which Google also announced new features for its generative AI chatbot Bard. Duet AI appears to be Google’s version of Microsoft’s generative AI assistant in Microsoft 365 which it calls Copilot.

Duet AI in Gmail, Slides, Sheets

According to Google, Duet AI already works behind the scenes in Workplace to help users refine emails and documents, and the company is now bringing the experience to Gmail on mobile to help users draft responses on the go.

The company’s initial launch of mobile will be fast-followed by contextual assistance that allows users to create professional replies that automatically fill in names and other relevant information.

This is in addion to Duet AI, Google says a new “Help me write” feature will be rolling out that allows users to leverage generative AI to help them write emails by typing a prompt of what they want to create a full draft of an email.

In Slides, Duet AI will help users generate images with a few words and generate an original visual to help support the text on the slides.

In Google Sheets, Duet AI will help users analyze and act on data with automated data classification and the creation of custom plans, the company says.

Google says classification tools understand the context of data in a cell and can assign a label to it to help eliminate manual data entry.

Also included in Sheets is a new “help me organize” capability that automatically creates custom plans for tasks, projects or any activity users want to track or manage. All they have to do is describe what they want to accomplish and Sheets will generate a plan for them, Google says.

Duet AI in Google Docs

In Docs, Duet AI will help users write content and include smart chips for information like location and status, as well as variables for details that users want to customize such. This adds to the “@ mention” feature in Docs that allows users to stay focused and collaborate in the document.

In addition, Google says it is adding new languages and bringing more capabilities to help with proofreading, tone and style in a new proofread suggestion pane that offers suggestions.

Duet AI in Google Meet

Like how Microsoft plans to bring Copilot into Microsoft Teams, Google wants to weave Duet AI into Google Meet, starting with the ability to generate unique backgrounds for video calls.

Test these features in Google Labs

To help users and organizations test out these new tools, Google is launching the waitlist for Google Labs and offering a limited number of spots to try out new Ai features in Search, Workspace, Project Tailwind and MusicLM.

Learn more about Google Labs and those projects in this short blog post.

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According to Google, the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech giant’s updates include expanding access to Bard, bringing new visual capabilities to its AI-powered chatbot Bard, improving the generative AI’s coding capabilities and adding new productivity integrations.

Google Expanding Bard access

Purportedly in response to ChatGPT and competitor Microsoft’s massive investment in OpenAI, Google announced its large language model-powered chatbot Bard in February and launched it in March in a preview. Now, the company is removing the waitlist and opening up Bard to over 180 countries and territories, with more coming soon, Google says.

New Google Bard visual tools

In addition to new languages, Google is soon adding new visual interactions to Bard that will allow users to ask questions and get images in response to help explain the text. Also, users can use images in their own prompts via a Google Lens integration that will allow Bard to analyze the photo and include analysis in its response.

Google Bard Developer tools

Based on feedback from developers, Google is also introducing new features designed to make Bard a better coding assistant. With coding one of the main use cases of these early days of generative AI, Google hopes to strengthen Bard’s capabilities with more precise source citations, a dark theme and “export” button.

New Google Bard integrations

According to Google, export actions allow users to take Bard’s email and document drafts and move them directly into Gmail and Docs, respectively.

Source citations are rolling out next week, and the “export” button is listed as “coming soon.” Meanwhile, dark theme is now available.

The company also says it is working on integrating popular Google tools such as Docs, Drive, Gmail, Maps and more directly into Bard, and is also adding integrations with third-party software from Adobe, Kayak, OpenTable, ZipRecruiter, Instacart and more.

The post Google Bard Updates: New Coding Features, Integrations appeared first on My TechDecisions.

According to Google, the Cybersecurity Certificate is designed and taught by the company’s cybersecurity experts and is designed to prepare learners for entry-level cybersecurity jobs in less than six months.

No cybersecurity experience is required, as the company’s goal is to fill the growing number of open cybersecurity jobs and help people make the transition to cybersecurity from other fields.

By some metrics, the U.S. alone is short about 700,000 cybersecurity professionals, which is alarming given that the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks continues to increase.

Google’s Cybersecurity Certificate program

According to Google, the cybersecurity program builds on the company’s existing Career Certificates in other technology fields, such as data analytics, digital marketing and e-commerce, IT support, project management and user experience design.

The program will teach learners how to identity common risks, threats and vulnerabilities, as well as the techniques and tools used to mitigate them. Learners will get hands-on experience with industry-standard tools, such as Python, Linux and an array of security tools like security information and event management (SIEM) platforms.

Google’s Cybersecurity Certificate program will also help prepare job seekers for the CompTIA Security+ exam, which the company calls “the industry-leading certification for cybersecurity roles.” Learners will earn a dual credential upon completing both, the company says.

Partnerships with leading companies, universities

Google’s nonprofit grantees that help promote diversity in tech will also be offering the Cybersecurity Certificate and provide learners with additional support such as coaching, interview pre and job placement assistance.

In order to validate the effectiveness of its certification program, Google in 2018 launched the Google Career Certificates Employer Consortium that includes more than 150 employers, such as American Express, Mandiant, T-Mobile, Walmart, and Google itself. The company leaned on the consortium to beta test the content in the Cybersecurity Certificate program.

Education institutions such as Purdue University, the University of Texas System, Syracuse University and Northern Virginia Community College will offer the Cybersecurity Certificate to their students.

Employers that would like to hire the company’s Certificate graduates or use the Certificate for reskilling their employees can join Google’s employer consortium.

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The White House’s announcement comes as Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior officials meet with leaders from four companies developing generative AI systems: Alphabet (Google), Anthropic, Microsoft and ChatGPT, creators of OpenAI.

The action comes as Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and dozens of other leading IT providers are integrating generative AI tools into their solutions, leading to a blistering pace of innovation in the space that has some concerned about privacy, security and economic impacts.

To help encourage the responsible development of AI, the National Science Foundation is funding $140 million to launch seven new National AI Research Institutes, bringing the total number of Institutes to 25 across the country.

According to the White House’s fact sheet, the Institutes pursue and encourage transformative AI advances that are ethical, trustworthy, responsible, and serve the public good while bolstering the country’s AI research and development infrastructure. Specifically, the new Institutes will help guide AI development in climate, agriculture, energy, public health, education and cybersecurity.

Blueprint Series: ChatGPT and Generative AI in the Workplace

The Administration also wants more eyes on the existing AI offerings from Anthropic, Google, Hugging Face, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and Stability AI and is launching an independent commission from those companies to participate in a public evaluation of AI systems.

AI Development Regulation Efforts

According to the White House, these efforts build on steps the Administration has taken to promote responsible AI development, including the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and related executive actions announced last fall, as well as the AI Risk Management Framework and a roadmap for standing up a National AI Research Resource released earlier this year.

By opening up those AI systems to further scrutiny, the Administration hopes the models can be evaluated by a community of AI experts to explore how the models align with the Administration’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and AI Risk Management Framework.

“This independent exercise will provide critical information to researchers and the public about the impacts of these models and will enable AI companies and developers to take steps to fix issues found in those models,” the Administration’s fact sheet says. “Testing of AI models independent of government or the companies that have developed them is an important component in their effective evaluation.”

The Office of Management and Budget is also releasing this summer draft policy guidance on the use of AI systems by the government and is soliciting public comment on those proposed rules.

According to the White House, other steps taken include an Executive Order that directs federal agencies to root out bias in their design and use of AI technologies, other actions to protect citizens from AI-related harms, and steps taken to address national security concerns raised by AI in cybersecurity, biosecurity and safety.

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The news comes in advance of World Password Day and a year after Google, Apple, Microsoft and the FIDO Alliance announced that the companies would begin working to support passkeys as a more secure alternative to passwords.

While Google will be supporting passkeys, they will be an additional option that people can use to sign in alongside passwords and two-step verification, Google says, hinting that users may not need passwords by next year’s World Password Day.

According to Google, passkeys will allow users to sign into apps and sites the same way they unlick their devices: with a fingerprint, a face scan or scree lock PIN. The company says passkeys will be far more secure than passwords and other authentication methods, such as one-time SMS codes.

“Over the past year we’ve shared updates on bringing passkey experiences to both Chrome and Android, which services like Docusign, Kayak, PayPal, Shopify and Yahoo! Japan have already deployed to streamline sign-in for their users,” Google says in a blog. “Starting today, this will be available as an option for Google Account users who want to try a passwordless sign-in experience.”

While the rollout is beginning for personal Google Accounts, Google Workspace account administrators will soon have the option to enable passkeys for end users during sign in, the company says in the blog.

Google acknowledged that the change to passwordless technologies like passkeys will take time, which is why the passwords and two-step verification will still work for Google Accounts.

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According to the company, which announced the news during the annual RSA Conference, Google Cloud Security AI Workbench is an extensible platform powered by a specialized, security LLM called Sec-PaLM. The model is fine-tuned for security use cases and incorporates Google’s security intelligence and visibility as well as subsidiary Mandiant’s frontline intelligence on vulnerabilities, malware, threat indicators and threat patterns.

According to Google, Security AI Workbench powers new offerings that address three top security challenges: threat overload, toilsome tools and the talent gap.

In addition, Google says Security AI Workbench will feature partner plug-in integrations to bring threat intelligence, workflow and other security functionality to customers, with Accenture being the first to utilize it.

Organizations can also make their private data available to the platform at inference time, with Google pledging to honor its data privacy commitments to customers. The tool is built on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI infrastructure, which allows customers to control their data via data isolation, data protection, sovereignty and compliance support, the company says.

In large part, the new AI tools and updates build on existing AI features in Google’s security solutions that leverage frontline intelligence, machine learning and more.

Some of the new tools included are VirusTotal Code Insight, available in preview, which uses Sec-PaLM to help analyze and explain behavior of potentially malicious scripts and better detect which are actually threats. In addition, Google is introducing Mandiant Breach Analytics for Chronicle, which leverages the combined threat intelligence of Google and Mandiant to alert organizations to active breaches in their environment, with Sec-PaLM will helping to contextualize and respond instantly to those critical findings.

The company says Google Cloud Security AI Workbench can also help reduce the number of tools IT and security professionals need to use to secure their organization’s attack surface. To that end, Google announced two new tools, Assured OSS and Mandiant Threat Intelligence AI.

Assured OSS will use LLMs to help add more open-source software packages to Google’s OSS vulnerability management solution, and Mandiant Threat Intelligence AI is built on top of Mandiant’s threat graph and will leverage Sec-PaLM to find, summarize and act on threats relevant to the organization, according to Google.

The cybersecurity industry is woefully understaffed, which is another motivation behind Google’s new AI security updates.  Specifically, the company says Chronicle AI will enable customers search billions of security events and interact conversationally with the results, ask follow-up questions and generate detections without having to learn a new syntax or schema.

Google is also introducing Security Command Center AI, a tool designed to translate complex attack graphs to human-readable explanations of attack exposure, including impacted assets and recommended mitigations. In addition, the tool will provide AI-powered risk summaries for security, compliance and privacy findings for Google Cloud.

Aside from VirusTotal Code Insight, the other offerings will be rolling out to trusted testers in the coming months and will be available in preview this summer.

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The new security features are designed to better secure Chrome and help prevent data theft as organizations increasingly rely upon the web browser for work.

According to Google, new data loss prevention (DLP) features are being added that extend beyond existing DLP protections. Via BeyondCorp Enterprise, Google’s zero trust solution, the company is adding three new solutions context-aware DLP, URL filtering, and DLP for print.

Context-aware DLP allows organizations to customer their DLP rules based on the security posture of the device used, while URL filtering allows organizations to block or warn employees from visiting certain websites that could breach acceptable use policies. Meanwhile, DLP for print can stop users from printing files that contain confidential data.

Read Next: Google Adds Security Integrations in Chrome; Cloud Enterprise Connectors Framework

Google is also giving organizations more insights to help them assess Chrome extensions for their organization with the ability to use two browser extension risk assessment platforms, CRXcavator and Spin.AI Risk Assessment, in  Chrome Browser Cloud Management.

In addition, new browser security event notifications will alert IT and security teams when an extension is installed and when a browser crashes to help jumpstart investigations. This follows reporting integrations introduced last year that enable organizations to send security event notifications to a wide range of security solution providers as well as Google security tools.

“By implementing advanced DLP and gaining more visibility into extension security and critical security events, organizations can identify potential threats and vulnerabilities before they are exploited, reduce the risk of data loss, and take a more proactive approach to cybersecurity,” writes Kiran Nair, product manager for Chrome Enterprise, in a blog.

Admins can set up Chrome Browser Cloud Management at no cost to get started, Nair adds.

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According to the organizations, the alliance will combine the companies’ experience to offer greater security to public sector entities. The Center for Internet Security (CIS) brings 20 years of helping U.S. state, local, tribal and territorial governments secure their infrastructure against cyber threats, and Google brings its experts and services from its Cybersecurity Action Team. In addition, Google brings insights from its Threat Horizons reports and resources from cyber forensics subsidiary Mandiant.

CIS also brings its established and globally recognized security frameworks, including the CIS Critical Security Controls and CIS Benchmarks, as well as operating the Multi-State and Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (MS-ISAC and EI-ISAC) that supports the security needs of state, local, tribal and territorial governments.

As part of Google’s recent strategy around cybersecurity, Google Cloud is now partnering with industry organizations in other sectors like healthcare and financial services. The company also introduced its Google Public Sector division focused on helping U.S. public sector institutions – including federal, state, and local governments, and educational institutions – accelerate their digital transformations.

According to the announcement, the organizations say this makes them “uniquely positioned to support organizations through the complexities of their digital transformations.”

In a statement, Gina Chapman, executive vice president of sales and business services at CIS, says the partnership combines two cybersecurity powerhouses and applies them to the underserved community of public sector organizations.

“The cybersecurity needs of the public sector demand best-in-class, cost-effective solutions that include implementation and operational support, and we look forward to how we can work together to support this community,” Chapman says.

MK Palmore, director of the officer of the CISO at Google Cloud, says both entities have experience helping organizations across all verticals and sizes.

“The launch of the CIS & Google Cloud Alliance is just the start in our collaboration and ability to help more organizations through these continual challenges,” Palmore says.

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