After Google debuted its new AI chatbot, Bard, something unexpected happened: After the tool made a mistake in a promotional video, Google’s shares dropped $100 billion in one day.

Criticism of the tool’s reportedly rushed debut harks back to an AI ethics controversy at Google two years ago, when the company’s own researchers warned about the development of language models moving too fast without robust, responsible AI frameworks in place.

In 2021, the technology became central to an internal-debate-turned-national-headline after members of Google’s AI ethics team, including Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, wrote a paper on the dangers of large language models (LLMs). The research paper—called “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? ”—set off a complex chain of events that led to both women being fired and, eventually, the restructuring of Google’s responsible AI department. Two years later, the concerns the researchers raised are more relevant than ever.

“The Stochastic Parrots paper was pretty prescient, insofar as it definitely pointed out a lot of issues that we’re still working through now,” Alex Hanna, a former member of Google’s AI ethics team who is now director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute founded by Gebru, told us.

Since the paper’s publication, buzz and debate about LLMs—one of the biggest AI advances in recent years—have gripped the tech industry and the business world at large. The generative AI sector raised $1.4 billion last year alone, according to Pitchbook data, and that doesn’t include the two megadeals that opened this year between Microsoft and OpenAI and Google and Anthropic.

Keep reading here.—HF

If you tuned in to the Super Bowl this year, then you probably saw the ads that aired during the broadcast to show off electric vehicles like the Cadillac Lyriq SUV or the Ram 1500 REV pickup truck. But if you didn’t happen to put a deposit on the REV right away, you may find yourself out of luck.

• After just five days, Ram, which didn’t disclose how many slots were available, said reservations were sold out; the vehicle itself won’t be delivered until late 2024.
• As for the Lyriq, 2023 models sold out hours after going on sale last year, while 2024 models won’t go into production until later this month.

Despite the limited inventory, though, automakers are advertising electric vehicles at a frantic pace. In 2022, marketing for EVs and hybrid vehicles accounted for nearly a quarter of estimated national TV ad spend among automakers, according to estimates from iSpot.

Keep reading here.—KS

Another week, another moment of questioning whether robots will take our jobs. The good news is that the majority of Tech Brew readers don’t think it’ll be an issue.

Last week, we asked whether you were concerned about automation affecting your role within the next decade, and after more than 2,300 responses, the results are in: About 69% weren’t worried, 22% had concerns, and 9% weren’t sure. Some of you might be wondering: Did a bot write this? (The answer is no.)

As we’ve written before, introducing a robot to the factory floor doesn’t automatically send human workers to the unemployment line—though it can and sometimes does, there are other instances in which tech can preserve and create work.

“One confusion is that automation involves completely replacing workers with machines, and that actually happens very rarely,” James Bessen, an economist at the Boston University School of Law, told us in 2021.

This week’s poll: Do you use automation tools to make your work easier?

Yes
No
Not sure

Stat: Apple may shift up to 25% of its manufacturing to India, up from 5% to 7% now, according to the country’s trade minister.

Quote: “Keep your AI claims in check.”—the title of a blog post written by Michael Atleson, attorney at the Federal Trade Commission’s Division of Advertising Practices, to advertisers

Read: The NYT on the “explosive growth in electric cars” in the New York area.

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Catch up on the top Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• How Microsoft is thinking outside the Xbox
• Inside Delta’s big-dollar, multiyear push to bring free in-flight wi-fi to the masses
• More and more financial institutions are embracing AI